Universal Orlando Resort

Universal is made up 2 parks, 1 water park, 6 on-site resorts and an eating and shopping area that connects the parks and resorts together called City Walk.

The best thing that comes with booking a Universal Vacation is the not so much of a need for planning months and months ahead of time. With Disney you almost HAVE to book at least 180 days out with Universal you still need book at that 6 month mark but it’s not a necessity unless you are going during the holidays or you’re wanting a specific hotel.

And another thing that you don’t really have to worry about either is dining reservations. There are only 2 table service locations in each park the rest are going to be located in City Walk. So if you time it just right you could walk right in and be seated or at the most you might have 30min to an hour wait for table. It’s pretty much that same thing as waiting at a busy/popular restaurant in your hometown. But just because the wait and want to dine at the City Walk locations isn’t in high demand, doesn’t mean that the restaurants aren’t any good. There’s a verity of food here as well as restaurants at the onsite hotels.

What about Fast Passes Reservations? Nope, you don’t need those either. With Universal you can get what’s called an Express Pass. This is very different from a Fast Pass. With Fast Passes you have a select return time; with the express pass you have select rides that you can skip the line. There are two different Express Passes; the basic pass gets you to the front of the line for select rides once per ride and the other pass, the unlimited pass, gets you to the front of the line as many times as you want for these select rides. Now the express pass in not included with your park ticket, you will have to pay a little extra for the express passes. BUT I would rather pay a little extra to skip the line as many times as I want than only be able to choose 3 rides. Seriously with the unlimited express pass you COULD do all of the rides in both parks in one day but what’s the fun in rushing everything into one day right?

The two theme parks are Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. Universal is based on movies and Islands of Adventure is based off of books.

Now let’s talk about the 6 on-site resorts. For the longest time there were only 3 on-site resorts and they are in the deluxe price range. Those resorts are The Lowes Royal Pacific, Lowes Portofino Bay and the Hard Rock Hotel. The newest resort, Sapphire Falls is in the moderate range for the type of hotel and price. The last two are Value and they are Cabana Bay and opening August 2018 is the Aventura Hotel.

The difference between all of the resorts is of course the price but the benefits and transportation are going to be the main differences between them. With the deluxe hotels, your method of transportation is going to be Universal’s water taxis. With moderate resort, Sapphire Falls, you have the choice of walking to parks or taking the water taxi as well. The only difference about the transportation to and from Sapphire Falls is that it’s a little bit further away from City walk so you’re going to have a longer walk and boat ride. For the two value resorts you won’t be getting the boat transportation, you will have to either take a bus or walk. The bus transportation is just for these resorts so it’s not going to be the hassle that you’re used to at Disney and the walk from these resorts is gonna give you some extra steps in our step count for the day. BUT the good part about the value resorts is that they are the closest to Universal’s new water park Volcano Bay, which we’ll get to in just a second.

Now about City Walk. I’ve mentioned it a few times in this post so let me explain to you exactly what it is. It is for the most part what Downtown Disney was; a mixture of restaurants, shops and nighttime entertainment. City Walk is what everyone sees before they get to parks, whether you are entering through the parking garages or the resorts.

There are 12 restaurants, 6 bars and nightclubs, 8 shopping locations a movie theater and mini-golf. There is so much to do in City Walk just like there is so much to do at Disney Springs. Also, with City Walk you don’t have to have a park ticket to get into City Walk.

Now the last thing that I’m going to talk about is Universal’s newest theme park, Volcano Bay. It opened on May 25, 2017 and it is located right off of I-4 next to Cabana Bay. From the videos that I have a watched on youtube that showcase the park, it really does look amazing! I mean a huge Volcano is just there. And from what I can tell you are really secluded in the park from all of the landscaping that went on to block out the noise from the interstate and the surrounding area. Volcano Bay has few new unique aspects to it that sets it apart from the other water parks in the area. There’s a thing called Tapu Tapu which is their very own ride reservation system, all of the rides that require you to get on a tube you will not have to lug those up all the stairs to get to the slides and it’s located on property so it’s easy to get to.

Well that’s gonna to do it for this post. This post was just a general overview of Universal Studios Florida, but be sure to be on the look out for future posts about everything with Universal Studios Florida!