Universal Studios Orlando – Top Tips

I am just back from a great holiday visiting Orlando and the Gulf Coast of Florida. I will start off with our time in Orlando. This was our 5th visit to Orlando and probably our best time! We only spent 6 nights in Orlando and didnt even venture onto International Drive.

Our first 3 nights we stayed in Lowes Royal Pacific. This is an on site Universal hotel that comes with lots of perks. We booked a club level room. The room itself was standard but the club level offered us access to the Club Lounge. Here we got breakfast, Afternoon snacks, evening hot option of food and late night cookies. We also had bottled water, tea & coffee and soft drinks available from 7am – 9.30pm and from 4.30pm-6.30pm wine & beer. We worked out this saved us a small fortune as we all know how expensive theme park food & drinks can be. We made full use of the club lounge and found it to be a nice quiet place to chill out after a full day in the park.

The other great benefit of this hotel is that its around 8 min walk to City Walk & Islands of Adventure. If your feet are not up to the walk then hop on the FREE boat shuttle that takes around 5 mins to City walk and you can easily access both Islands of Adventure & Universal Studios from here.

If staying in selected on site hotels (Lowes Royal Pacific, Lowes Portifino Bay & Hard Rock Hotel) You will also gain early park access. We were able to visit Universal Studios from 7am (great on the first day when you wake up at 5am due to jet lag)! Not all rides are open but selected rides including Harry Potter & Fast & Furious were all open with no queues and we could walk straight on.

Talking about walking straight on – If staying in any of the above hotels you also get FREE Express Passes. This gives you skip the queue access to pretty much every ride. This is normally around $100 per person per day. This is why I booked the Lowes Royal Pacific. The cost of the room was the same as paying for express passes! These are good the the day you check in and the day you check out. So a 3 night stay will give 5 full days of express passes. These are good for use in all the parks including Volcano Bay.

If its your first time visiting the parks then grab a re fill drinks cup (around $15) your first day you get FREE drinks re fills and any other day you can pay around $8 to get drinks all day. Here is a TOP TIP – If you are anything like me you have these cups around the house! They NEVER expire. We took a Universal cup that was 3 years old with us and just paid the daily re fill rate of $8. This will work in Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure and Volcano Bay.

We also visited Halloween Horror nights. The hotel offered a Kids Camp (at a fee) Charlie went here from 5.30pm – 11.30pm and had dinner there too whilst we went off to Halloween Horror nights. This is a separate ticketed event and I purchased the tickets before we left the UK. The Express Pass you get for staying on site doesnt cover Horror Nights and I purchased the Express Pass for the event before we left the UK too. We did get exclusive early access by staying on site and this was great as the general admission queue was at least 100 people deep. If you know anyone that has been to Horror Nights they will tell you how busy it is and how long you will wait to get into the horror houses (up to 2 hours in some cases) With the Express Pass we waited no more than 15 – 20 mins. We got all houses, shows and Scare Zones done by 11pm.

Finally – Car Parking. If staying on site the car parking charges are $25 per day. If you are not staying on site the parking will cost the same. Top Tip if not staying on site make sure you book a hotel with FREE shuttles to the park. The only restriction is these are only available at selected times. Taking a car gives you much more freedom.

Pop by next time to find out about Mickeys not so scary Halloween party, Busch Gardens and the Gulf Coast.