Universal Vacations

[Dog Ate Mouse]

2014 will be my first time in a long time that the wife and I are planning to go To Universal and Islands of Aventure. We have a 96 year old Mom who has been having a tremendous amount of health issues that has prevented us from going on vacation for three years. So we sat down and talked over dinner last night and decided to do vacation this coming year a little differrent in Fla. We are going to go to uni for three days and then Sea World followed by Bush Gardens. Never been to Bush Gardens in Fla at all. We will be looking to stay at one of the Uni Resorts for the entire 7 seven days. Then we plan to drive back and stay at Hilton Head and just chill from all that we will take in and do. Then proceed to drive back into South Jersey on a Saturday. So my question to all which of the Resorts would you stay at in Uni for the entire duration of seven Days and Nights. We know the Hard Rock is not for us. So it does narrow things down just a little. Any suggestions and why you would choose one resort over the other????? We do plan to at least spend an entire day at the resort to swim and be lazy and drink without having to do anything else.

 

[JillC LI]

I haven't stayed at Portofino, but I thought the Royal Pacific (which is less expensive) was quite lovely.

 

[danpam1024]

We're a HRH family. Portofino was a tad "stuffy" for us and is the farthest from any park (we like to walk). Never been to RP-looks great. CBR opens in late May, IDK when you're trip is planned, but that may be a great option if you don't care about EP.

 

[Glasgow]

We just got back from 5 nights at RPR yesterday - it was fantastic with just one exception. A couple of adjacent rooms had young (sorry you good youngsters out there!) guests that were obnoxiously loud 3 out of the 5 nights we stayed there -- I'm talking music, yelling, etc from 10pm - 1am. It was miserable, had to bang on the walls, go into the hall and confront people, call the front desk, etc. It's not the hotel's fault mind you, just another case of disrespectful guests, probably there for Halloween Horror Nights I guess .. still though, left a sour taste in our mouths regardless.

Otherwise, the hotel and pool area was great, especially with the zero entry pool which allowed our small kids to play without having to be in there with them at all times. The walk to the parks was ~10mins, so no issues there either - the water taxi was great too, little to no wait every time we used it. When compared with Disney, I'd rank the resort itself just under AKL and WL but certainly above any of the Mods, except maybe CSR (purely based on the pool and grounds). Since the parks were not that busy it allowed us to do everything we wanted and leave early in the afternoon to enjoy a couple of hours at the pool before dinner.

RPR has 5 restaurants but to be honest I thought they were all pretty pricey, although that wasn't a surprise. There wasn't a quick service restaurant or place to get small meals though, so you need to factor that in if you don't have a big food budget. Oh, one other thing - the check in process was slow and needlessly complex since your express pass and tickets are all separate from your hotel key card, so you have to get all of those things separately - its a bit of a pain when you have your luggage and your kids running around, but I suppose it's just a small inconvenience in the grand scheme. I can see how the express pass would be very useful but we barely used it seeing as how almost everything was walk-on! I can't tell you what a treat that was after being in so many huge lines time after time on our previous WDW trips over the past 5-7 years.

That's about it!