My wife and I headed down to Orlando for a childless trip, which has happened all of once in the past decade, so we were ready! Having posted quite a great deal about the decline of Walt Disney World over the past few months, I was quite ready to evaluate what was going on at Universal Orlando, as we had visited in September and came away very impressed.
We stayed at the Royal Pacific Resort, which is operated by Loews, and were there for four nights. The first impression was quite clear, it's a beautiful resort and we were paying less than what the Disney moderate resorts were being priced for during the same period and there was simply no comparison in quality. To begin with, you obviously have a substantially larger room. Our room was outfitted with a king sized bed and Loews is one of the hotel operators that's been investing heavily in high-end mattresses. The bed was insanely comfortable and the options in the room were numerous. From the Kuerig coffee maker to the flat panel, well stocked bathroom soaps, shampoo, lotion, etc., and resort specific logo items everywhere. The logo items included excellent note cards, things that Disney used to do, but that time has long gone except for the Disney Parks branding.
Housekeeping came each morning between 8:30 and 9:00 AM and they were outstanding. The hotel was very impressive and you received a luxury style resort without the absurdly inflated WDW prices. The walkway to the parks and CityWalk along with the boat service were terrific as well.
When we lived in Orlando, we had both WDW and Universal APs and even though Disney had been on the decline for quite some time, Universal never met their standards even in decline. How it has all changed! From the Cat in the Hat to Harry Potter to Spiderman, we had fully functioning ride effects. We'd visited so many times when living in Orlando that you knew what to expect and what wasn't going to work. Every little thing was running, each and every day. Most notable was how things had even been plussed even in E.T. and fog effects were working all over the property, attraction after attraction. Clean. Period. From the bathrooms to the streets, clean.
Spiderman is terrific with the high definition 3D, I hadn't gone on Despicable Me last time and was really impressed with it. And, of course, Harry Potter is just incredible. The technology, the ride, etc.
From long time Disney first fans, the tide has changed for us that past few years and this trip really solidified the change. We also found the cast members to be extremely friendly and there were surveys all over the place about the cast, service, etc. What I found to be the most interesting part of the survey was the fact that you were actually able to easily express a negative opinion instead of when we would get surveyed by Disney and they would also with the parsing of words essentially never have feedback appear to be negative even if you had a terrible experience.
We stayed at the Royal Pacific Resort, which is operated by Loews, and were there for four nights. The first impression was quite clear, it's a beautiful resort and we were paying less than what the Disney moderate resorts were being priced for during the same period and there was simply no comparison in quality. To begin with, you obviously have a substantially larger room. Our room was outfitted with a king sized bed and Loews is one of the hotel operators that's been investing heavily in high-end mattresses. The bed was insanely comfortable and the options in the room were numerous. From the Kuerig coffee maker to the flat panel, well stocked bathroom soaps, shampoo, lotion, etc., and resort specific logo items everywhere. The logo items included excellent note cards, things that Disney used to do, but that time has long gone except for the Disney Parks branding.
Housekeeping came each morning between 8:30 and 9:00 AM and they were outstanding. The hotel was very impressive and you received a luxury style resort without the absurdly inflated WDW prices. The walkway to the parks and CityWalk along with the boat service were terrific as well.
When we lived in Orlando, we had both WDW and Universal APs and even though Disney had been on the decline for quite some time, Universal never met their standards even in decline. How it has all changed! From the Cat in the Hat to Harry Potter to Spiderman, we had fully functioning ride effects. We'd visited so many times when living in Orlando that you knew what to expect and what wasn't going to work. Every little thing was running, each and every day. Most notable was how things had even been plussed even in E.T. and fog effects were working all over the property, attraction after attraction. Clean. Period. From the bathrooms to the streets, clean.
Spiderman is terrific with the high definition 3D, I hadn't gone on Despicable Me last time and was really impressed with it. And, of course, Harry Potter is just incredible. The technology, the ride, etc.
From long time Disney first fans, the tide has changed for us that past few years and this trip really solidified the change. We also found the cast members to be extremely friendly and there were surveys all over the place about the cast, service, etc. What I found to be the most interesting part of the survey was the fact that you were actually able to easily express a negative opinion instead of when we would get surveyed by Disney and they would also with the parsing of words essentially never have feedback appear to be negative even if you had a terrible experience.
