staying on site at Universal Orlando--having doubts - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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staying on site at Universal Orlando--having doubts
this coming may, i will be in WDW with my mother for five nights. we are staing at AKL. on the fifth day, my mother is leaving and my husband is flying down. we (my husband and i) are then going to universal--i'd be there early wednesday, he would arrive wednesday night and we'd be there until sunday afternoon. we currently have reservations at PBH at my husband's request. but i'm starting to freak out about how much it is going to cost (to put it into perspective, we rented and APARTMENT in PARIS for TWO WEEKS for the same amount of money we are spending on four nights at PBH...and that's not counting the park admission! )
so clearly i'm freaking out. maybe it is just the post-holiday credit card bill...i don't know. but i'm having a REALLY hard time justifying it. (clearly! i need an emoticon that is breathing into a paper bag!) my question is--is it 'worth it' for what we are looking for. to help with the response, here's 'what we're looking for':
1. a trip that is both fun and relaxing
2. fun in the wizarding world (we are huge nerds)
3. the ability to sit by a pool with drinks
4. convenience (husband doesn't want to leave the resort/park area AT ALL)
basically, our thought was we could get up in the morning, do a park early, sit by the pool all afternoon, and then do city walk at night. this would be over the course of three full days. both parks close very early the friday night we are there--5pm. not sure why this is.
thoughts/feedback on this? should i just stick with what we have (and find a paper bag to breathe into whilst paying?), or try to save some $$$ staying off site? or bend his arm and convince the husband he really wants to do disney (at a moderate with an AP rate)? that last one will be REALLY hard--he's super psyched about universal.
I am in the minority here, I know, but our family has decided that we will pretty much always stay off site from now on. We stay at a condo at the Windsor Hills resort. We just booked our next trip and will get a 3 bedroom, 2 bath condo with kitchen, washer & dryer for $89 a night. The condo is all decorated with Disney themes and is close enough that you can see fireworks off the balcony at night. For a little more, we could have rented a townhouse with a private pool, but we felt our kids are a little too young for that right now. For us, the extra space makes for a much more pleasant vacation, as does the extra money. We rent a car regardless, so the driving isn't a big deal to us. (We'd actually prefer to drive to the parks than take the buses.)
Of course, staying on-site has lots of benefits, but staying off-site isn't as terrible as many will sometimes make it seem. You really have to do what works best for your family.
$89/night? for a 3 bedroom 2 bath condo? see THIS is why i'm breathing into a bag! with taxes etc, we're paying $290/night. for a HOTEL ROOM. AAAACK!
oh and maybe i should have specified--we don't have kids. i'm in the minority in that aspect! we went to disney for a convention in november and i LOVED it. because of that trip i'm taking my mother in may, which is why my husband is coming down--i'll already be there. for him the benefits of a disney/universal vacation are 1. i'm happy (great husband!) 2. it is quick and easy to get to (a $200 two-hour flight) 3. it is fun.
we once loved vegas (minus the gambling--we don't)--but that was BDW--before disney world!
we once loved vegas (minus the gambling--we don't)--but that was BDW--before disney world!
how funny my husband and i say that all the time! for adults wdw has all the fun and "yum" and relaxation of Vegas, but without all the gambling and riff-raff... we don't gamble either.
Being Offsite isn't as bad as one might think the only thing to consider is parking costs. Just remember to budget the cost to park at the theme parks your visiting when staying offsite. I know WDW includes parking fees for AP holders and resort guests who chose to drive from there WDW owned resorts. But I am not sure how USO works parking. I know that when we go to City Walk we wait until 6pm to go because they lower the price of parking to $6 instead of something like $15-$17 for a day.
But you can definitely find a nice hotel offsite from USO and pay to park and still save a ton of money over the $290 a night your paying. I wouldn't pay that much for a room Disney, Universal, or Elsewhere.
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Being Offsite isn't as bad as one might think the only thing to consider is parking costs. Just remember to budget the cost to park at the theme parks your visiting when staying offsite. I know WDW includes parking fees for AP holders and resort guests who chose to drive from there WDW owned resorts. But I am not sure how USO works parking. I know that when we go to City Walk we wait until 6pm to go because they lower the price of parking to $6 instead of something like $15-$17 for a day.
But you can definitely find a nice hotel offsite from USO and pay to park and still save a ton of money over the $290 a night your paying. I wouldn't pay that much for a room Disney, Universal, or Elsewhere.
ditto to that last sentence! ok. i'm weighing the actual cost of the hotel with the non-tangible cost of making my husband happy. he really REALLY doesn't want to drive on this trip. he's flying down after work and working the day after we return (and we return late in the evening) so he was going for relaxation over price. i'm all about price before relaxation! good thing we really like each other. ha!
edit: lest i sound like a kept woman, i am ALSO working the day after we return, at pretty much the same job (we are both teachers, but in different districts).
We've stayed at the Royal Pacific 3 or 4 times now. The first couple times I went to Universal we were offsite. Then we tried on site, and love it. The Express Pass is an awesome benefit - you can ride everything that has an EP line multiple times. The boat ride to the park is great, the restaurants are nice. I was able to get a AAA rate of around $175 last summer. The resorts are gorgeous, too - well themed and friendly staff. We've had good meals and nice drinks on our trips.
I'm torn - yes it's a lot of $$ but sometimes being settled in your resort with no driving and a lovely theme is what you need to relax. (But if the bill will cause more stress than the vacation relieved it is a problem!!)
Maybe you could call the onsite hotels directly and see if there is a better rate? Or switch to Royal Pacific, the least expensive onsite hotel?
Go for it. We love to stay at the Hard Rock which is in the middle of the 3 on site hotels price wise. No driving, you get front of the line access to the rides, you get a City Walk party pass. The parks close earlier than Disney-you can go eat relax at the pool and then go to City Walk. It is just relaxing and you can walk to to parks or take the water taxi. From the Hard Rock it is only a 6 min walk. I think it is 15 min from the other resorts.
sigh...i just checked about 'downgrading' to RPR, and i think it (universal) is getting MORE expensive. i'm not sure what is up with this, but now all of the hotels are even more expensive than when we booked. should we change now (and clearly we won't), we'd be paying as much for Royal Pacific as we are for Portofino Bay (meaning 'if we booked PBH today, we'd be charged almost $300 MORE over a four night stay'!) well then...good thing we booked it a month ago! what is up with that? i found that universal hotels are no longer on expedia--i followed the expedia directions on mousesavers and continued to land on a 'this hotel information is no longer available' page. i have a suspicious thought that now that WWoHP is so huge, they are no longer offering discounts on anything. i don't know whether i should be annoyed that we're going to 'have to' pay so much or be happy that we won't have to pay even more. though i'm leaning towards the former.
how hard could it be, really, to convince my husband to just stay at disney? not hard, i'm thinking. easier than paying off the universal trip! ha!
i'm not sure what is up with this, but now all of the hotels are even more expensive than when we booked. should we change now (and clearly we won't), we'd be paying as much for Royal Pacific as we are for Portofino Bay (meaning 'if we booked PBH today, we'd be charged almost $300 MORE over a four night stay'!) well then...good thing we booked it a month ago! what is up with that?
As the dates of the desired reservation get closer, the number of available rooms goes down. At the same time, most people don't book their rooms months in advance, so more andmore people are trying to GET one of those rooms.
As supply dwindles, and/or demand increases .. the price rises.
Quote:
i found that universal hotels are no longer on expedia
Expedia recently stopped doing business with American Airlines - after AA pulled it's listings from Orbitz. (Source.)
If US has a deal or other close business relationship with AA, or if AA is invested in those hotels ... that might explain their being pulled from Expedia.
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I've done Universal both onsite and offsite. The nice thing about staying on site was walking to the parks and being able to use the front of the line access. Pluse we could hang at the pool and then clean up and walk to CityWalk for dinner and hang out. My next trip we stayed at Marriott World Center and visited Universal/IOA and Seaworld and found it was just fine driving there each day (we got there before the parks opened) and were still able to do a lot even without front of the line (at Spring Break!). I think you'll be fine staying offsite....if you have a car.
PBH is the most expensive of the three onsite choices. Have you thought about staying at RPH to save a bit of $?
Did you check for discounts when you booked? I'd never pay rack rate at Universal (or Disney). There are too many discounts out there to pay full price. Universal has AAA discounts, AP discounts (and an Universal AP is much cheaper than a disney AP), and special discounts for residents of FL, GA, and AL. I've also read that people booked Universal on Priceline and similar sites. Universal sends out emails with special offers from time to time, so sign up for emails on their site.
I'd check Mousesavers' Universal page to see if you can lower the price of your room at PBH:
PBH is the last of the Universal resorts I would stay at. It's the furthest away from the parks and the most expensive. You could check into one of the other 2 resorts and see if you get a better deal. And a standard room is plenty of space - their rooms are very nice and spacious. I think paying for a Club level room or suite is an added expense that's not really necessary.
You could also shorten your stay--I think 3 nights would allow you to see the parks at a leisurely pace. One night's stay onsite actually gives you 2 days worth of Express pass access. You can check in that morning and obtain your room keys and head to the parks. They will store your luggage until your room is ready. On the day you check out you can store your luggage at the hotel and use your room key all day in the parks.
We will never visit Universal without staying onsite - the convenience of being able to walk to the parks along with the Express access is priceless!
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Last edited by Shell_of_the_South; 01-05-2011 at 01:31 PM..
That's strange, that your rates are so high for May. Like I said, we got RPR for about $175 last August, and WWoHP was newer then (and crowded!). I don't know your dates, but when I chose a random weekend in May it looked like the RPR had rooms starting at $225 if you stay 3 nights. Did you try calling the RPR directly? From my last trip, their phone number is 407-503-3000. I would mention AAA or any other membership you have which might give a discount.
I was going to say the same about staying onsite for less nights. If you got your DH to agree to stay just two nights you get three days of express pass usage and you could stay at disney or another offsite location the other nights.
We stayed at Royal Pacific and it was beautiful but I do think it was overpriced compared to Disney resorts. BUT that front of the line access ROCKED, lol
I think you should definitely stay onsite for your husband's happiness but maybe you can negotiate about staying all four nights?
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WDW is another story - I would never stay off-site!
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Michelle - with my step sisters!
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