Disney to Universal 1 day 2 parks with transportation

[BigHero4]

Has anyone recently purchased the Universal Orlando 1 day 2 parks ticket with transportation from a Disney hotel? I recently received a quote and it seemed pricey... mainly due to the transportation from Mears. Seems more cost effective to buy a 1 day 2 park ticket from Universal and then use Uber/Lyft. Any thoughts on this from folks that have done it in the last couple years?

 

[Weather_Lady]

You are correct - buying the tickets directly (from Universal, or to save a few dollars, from Undercover Tourist) and then doing Uber/Lyft between Universal and WDW is the way to go. I don't recall what my family paid when we Ubered (or Lyfted - we used them interchangeably) between Universal and WDW last year, but I don't think it was much more than $25, and that was for a larger vehicle (not the cheapest rideshare tier, but the next one up) to fit 4 people and 4 carryons. Mears charges nearly that much per person.

 

[LeighM]

I looked into doing that for my upcoming trip. I have the free member account with JetBlue and they have promos with Lyft. For your first Lyft ride you can choose to have either 50% off the fare or 700 points credited to your JB account. I can't remember if it has to be booked through the JB app or if there's a code. But that's another way to save money. When I priced it out for us, it was about $9 from my Disney resort to Universal using their discount.

 

[JillC LI]

If you are only spending one day at both Universal parks, depending on the time of year and the crowds, it might be nice to have an Express Pass. When we want to spend a day at Uni, we plan it for either the first or last day of our Disney trip, and we stay one night at Uni so that we can get the EP included in the price of the hotel along with early access to the parks as well. Just a thought.

 

[thomas998]

If you are only spending one day at both Universal parks, depending on the time of year and the crowds, it might be nice to have an Express Pass. When we want to spend a day at Uni, we plan it for either the first or last day of our Disney trip, and we stay one night at Uni so that we can get the EP included in the price of the hotel along with early access to the parks as well. Just a thought.

Very good point. When we do Universal on a Disney Trip we always schedule our trip so that we are in a Universal hotel at the time we want to do universal. It is a bit of a pain to switch hotels, but the advantage of getting the early access to the Harry Potter land is worth it as that part of the parks tends to get extremely crowded and can eat up a lot of your time. On thing to keep in mind if you do decide to stay at Universal to get that benefit is that not all hotels will give you the express pass, but they will all give you early access. The question of whether it makes sense to stay a night in the more expensive hotels vs the cheaper Cabana Bay that doesn't give you the free express pass will depend on how many people are in your group because you can always buy the express pass when staying at Cabana Bay. Last time we did it I think with the hotels available we would have been better off if we had 3 people that needed an express pass by staying in the better hotel but if we were a party of 2 we would have been better off at the Cabana Bay.