Jump to content
  TPR Home | Parks | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Instagram 

wkirsch

Members
  • Posts

    1
  • Joined

  • Last visited

wkirsch's Achievements

Newbie

Newbie (1/14)

  • First Post

Recent Badges

0

Reputation

  1. Below is the review of my experience so far at Universal Orlando Resort. Even though I am still here, I feel like I have visited long enough to share my thoughts and provide a thorough assessment. This is the very first time I have visited the two parks. Context: I am young medical professional who went to Universal Studios Resort in Florida for a 5-day vacation with my husband and two stepchildren, a boy (aged 15) and a girl (aged 9). I have no financial relationships with Universal or Walt Disney to disclose and do not have any friends/family who are affiliated with the companies or parks. I booked everything through the official ‘Universal Vacations’ website. I am currently on Day 3 of our 5 day trip. I have had a love for theme parks AND Harry Potter ever since I was a child. I have been very eager to visit Universal before the Harry Potter themed section was even announced. I am a season pass holder to the Cedar Fair parks (Cedar Point, Carowinds, King's Island, etc) and have driven cross-country just to ride a specific roller coaster. As far as major theme parks, I have been to Disneyland, Disney World, and Universal Studios Hollywood. Most recently, I went on a 6-day trip to Disney World with my family around this time last year. The trip to Disney was around $500 cheaper than my trip to Universal, even though it was a day longer. Hotels that we stayed at were comparable. Review: My trip to Universal Studios Resort in Florida has been the most miserable theme park experience I have ever had. While I'm trying my best to not compare my experience to Disney, I believe the fact that they are direct competitors and have similar costs gives me the right to a fair comparison. This will hopefully assist families who are undecided between Disney and Universal. The good: The Harry Potter themed areas were built with astonishing detail. I was amazed at how well it represented the movies. The areas where you could interact using the wands were neat (at a cost of $50 per interactive wand). The food was delicious and prices were reasonable for a theme park. The express passes were helpful as they got us through most of the lines pretty quickly, although you can't use them for any of the Harry Potter attractions. However, The Mummy and The Hulk were both great roller coasters and were up to par, if not better than the Harry Potter rides. In addition, the water taxi at no cost was a nice convenience to get between the hotel and park. The Bad: The bad experiences started after I booked and before I even left the plane from Ohio. We ordered 5-day park-to-park passes, a 5-night stay at the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel [includes the express passes (i.e. fast passes)], a 3-day photo pass, a 5-day Full Service Dining Plan, and a shuttle from the airport. We bought everything in late November. Unlike Disney where you can make dinner reservations several months in advance through their website, all of Universal's restaurants go through different platforms such as Zomato, OpenTable, etc. and the soonest that I could reserve was a month in advance. This plan includes VERY FEW table service restaurant options and does not include any of the restaurants at their on-site hotels. As soon as I found out the latest I could make dinner reservations was 5 pm at their table-service restaurants within the actual theme parks, I called and switched to the quick service plan. The second thing I noticed prior to leaving was they changed the park closing hours to an hour earlier and added ride closings since I booked. While they do have a disclaimer on their website, the fact that Islands of Adventure closes at 6 pm and Universal Studios Florida at 7 pm when Magic Kingdom at Disney closes from 8-11 pm during this time of the year is absolutely ridiculous. Also Disney informed us of the ride closings while we were booking 5 months prior and didn't change their hours at all prior to our arrival, let alone at the last minute. I brushed these two details off prior to leaving for the trip and gave Universal the benefit of the doubt. After spending three full days between the two parks, all I can say is that the Harry Potter themed sections are the only things that Universal has going for them. Upon arrival to Universal Studios we received 17+ cards, some plastic and some paper, to keep track of between the 4 of us: paper cards for park admission, plastic cards for dining plan, plastic cards for the hotel room, paper cards for express passes, and a paper card for photos. The paper cards for park admission had no identification on them so we had to write our names on the back because they have to correlate with your fingerprint. At Disney, we had 4 waterproof MagicBands that allowed us to do everything without the use of tickets, plastic cards, or even credit cards. We arrived to Universal Studios Florida section at the park and immediately line up for our first ride of our trip, the Despicable Me Minion Mayhem ride. Luckily our fast passes actually came in handy because we only ended up waiting in line for about 10 minutes. However, it broke down about 2 minutes into the ride and we were stuck in the car for about 25 minutes while employees had to walk around and individually unlock each restraint. Not off to a good start. Another similar event occurred on the Spider-Man ride where the screens and sound shut off and we were riding the rest of ride just bouncing along with no effects. This was not an isolated event had many of the indoor rides were broken throughout the day. Go over to Rip Ride Rockit, they immediately point you to a locker to store your cell phones, wallets, and anything else in your pockets. Luckily they are free for the first hour as you have to go through a metal detector to just get on the ride; therefore, it's a requirement to put your belongings in a locker. I understand that there are safety reasons behind their actions, but I think it's slightly overkill to have to stow away your wallet (don't forget to grab your express passes and photo card before you put it in the locker). I've visited dozens and dozens of amusement parks with bigger and more intense roller coasters and have never dealt with something similar except for metal detectors upon entry INTO the park. The logistics behind the photo pass is extremely inconvenient. For the majority of the rides, you have to flip through several pictures until you come across yours. Then instead of adding it straight to your account, you have to go up to the clerk with your picture number shown on the screen and they give you a receipt that has a unique code on it that’ll allow you to add the photo to your album after you log in online. On the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride, I waited in line for 20 minutes as the employee had to stand there and flip through each picture until the person or group saw themselves. A group of four girls in front of me got frustrated and left the line after they couldn't find theirs. A lot more complicated than the magic band that registers what vehicle you are in and then automatically uploads your picture. The actual pictures themselves leave something to be desired as well. The pictures where there should be a cartoon character in our daughter’s hand, there isn’t one; we are all pointing at nothing. We also managed to get pictures of other random people in our photo album with some of our actual pictures missing. After riding two day’s worth of dark (indoor) rides, I came to the conclusion that all the newer ‘thrill’ rides have a similar layout. This is what you should expect from almost all the rides themed after a movie: you get in a car that seats 12 people, you put on 3D glasses, you whip around a corner, watch a 30 second CGI clip, whip around another corner, watch another clip, get sprayed with water, whip around another corner, watch another clip, get hot air blown on you, whip around another corner, watch a clip that makes you feel like you are free-falling, get sprayed with fog, then you arrive back at the station with the Universal employees clapping at you so you feel obligated to clap like the ride was the best thing in the world. That’s all I have to say about the dark rides. As expected based on everything else, the dining plan stipulations are ludicrous as well. The dining plan information page online specifically states that you are able to use your beverage credits to purchase drinks from food carts and quick service restaurants. Apparently that doesn’t hold true to everything: I went to purchase a bottle of pumpkin juice and lemonade from a food cart in Hogsmeade but was told that I couldn’t use a beverage credit to purchase the ‘bottled’ drinks due to franchising rights, even though we were allowed to get 'Gillywater' which contained the same trademarked information. Instead, we were directed to get the same exact drink within the Hog’s Head (after a 15 minute wait in line) as a beverage credit can be used if served in a Harry Potter cup. This makes zero sense. Furthermore, as I was exiting the park with my cup of pumpkin juice, I was hastily told by the employee that I wasn’t allowed to leave with the drink so I had to chug what I could and throw away the rest. Since the park unfortunately closed so early, we thought we would be able to spend more time at the hotel pool in the evenings. I noticed that there wasn’t anybody using the pool that we had a view of from our room. I called the hotel operator and asked if the pools were open at our hotel. I was told ‘Yes’ and then hung up on when as I was responding with a follow-up question. When we walked down to the 'beach pool' which is the largest and most kid-friendly pool at our hotel (includes water slides), the sign on the gate said it was closed due to 'inclement weather'. I asked the front desk why it was closed and she said they were doing annual maintenance from January 8 to February 15. I inquired why we were never informed about this and she stated that we should have received a letter in our welcome package but since we booked through Universal Vacations instead of the actual Loews website, we didn’t get the letter. Conclusion: Overall, we have experienced everything Universal has to offer, the good and the bad, within a matter of 3 days. As you can see, the bad has far outweighed anything good during our trip so far. I will leave this park $5,000 short with a handful of positive memories. Not even my absolute love for Harry Potter will ever give me a desire to return to these two parks. I will be going to Walt Disney World from now on and recommend my family and friends to do the same. I'd love to get feedback from others about similar or differing experiences! Thank you for taking the time to read! --- William
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use https://themeparkreview.com/forum/topic/116-terms-of-service-please-read/