The third gate would be great, but until then you can get a general lift by doing little things to encourage the centre of gravity to shift upwards, and that's what I think Universal is doing.
Disney is centred on the once-in-a-lifetime guest, spending a fortune on overpriced products because they're unlikely to come back, and trying to convince people there's nothing worth seeing off-property.
Universal seems to be taking the opposite approach. Instead of trying to get people to blow thousands of dollars on a one-off vacation, they want people to see Orlando as somewhere where - if you only do a couple of days at Disney and don't stay in WDW - a vacation doesn't have to break the bank. With this in mind it's no biggie if only part of the vacation is spent in Universal's parks, and if they are taking a percentage, no matter how small, of room rates, that's a bonus.
By building something new every year, they guarantee people spend at least one day in their parks, but by encouraging a more general trend of visits in that part, even being comfortable with people heading off to Sea World, or the malls, or I-Drive... while you wait for the timing to be right to build a third gate, you're subtly training people to visit more often and always taking some of their dollars, even if not a huge amount.
Then when you do open your third gate, boom you have the hotels and infrastructure ready, and suddenly you look like WDW North overnight.
