The Disneyland Story: The Unofficial Guide to the Evolution of Walt Disney’s Dream
Universal vs Disney: The Unofficial Guide to American Theme Parks’ Greatest Rivalry
The Unofficial Guide to Disney Cruise Line
The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland
The Unofficial Guide to Las Vegas
The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World
The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World with Kids
The Unofficial Guide to Washington, D C
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5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
List of Maps
About the Authors
Introduction Why “Unofficial”?
Universal Orlando: An Overview
CRITICAL COMPARISON OF ATTRACTIONS FOUND AT BOTH
UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOLLYWOOD AND UNIVERSAL ORLANDO
UNIVERSAL LEXICON IN A NUTSHELL
COMMON ABBREVIATIONS AND WHAT THEY STAND FOR
PART 1 Planning Before You Leave Home
Gathering Information
IMPORTANT UNIVERSAL ADDRESSES
UNIVERSAL ORLANDO PHONE NUMBERS
Timing Your Visit
UNIVERSAL ORLANDO CLIMATE
Allocating Money
UNIVERSAL ORLANDO ADMISSIONS
Making the Most of Your Time and Money at Universal Orlando
PART 2 Accommodations
The Basic Considerations
Universal Orlando Resort Hotels
Universal Orlando Resort Hotel Services and Amenities
Universal Orlando Resort Hotel Profiles
Universal Orlando Vacation Packages
Off-Site Lodging Options
The Best Hotels Near Universal Orlando HOW THE HOTELS COMPARE
The 10 Best Hotel Values THE TOP 10 BEST DEALS
PART 3 Arriving and Getting Around
Getting There
Getting Oriented
PART 4 Universal Essentials
Money, Etc.
Packing the Essentials
Problems and Unusual Situations
Services
Universal Orlando for Guests with Special Needs
PART 5 Universal Orlando with Kids
It’s a Small Universe, After All
About the Unofficial Guide Touring Plans
Stuff to Think About Strollers
Lost Children
Universal, Kids, and Scary Stuff
SMALL-CHILD FRIGHT-POTENTIAL TABLE
POTENTIALLY PROBLEMATIC ATTRACTIONS FOR GROWN-UPS
ATTRACTION HEIGHT REQUIREMENTS
Universal Characters
CHARACTER-GREETING LOCATIONS
Babysitting
PART 6 Universal Studios Florida
Getting Oriented at Universal Studios Florida
Universal Studios Florida Attractions
Live Entertainment at Universal Studios Florida
Special Events at Universal Studios Florida
Universal Studios Florida Touring Plans
PART 7 Universal Islands of Adventure
Getting Oriented at Universal Islands of Adventure
Hotels in the Universal & International Drive Areas
South Orlando
I-Drive Area Sneak Routes
Universal Studios Florida
Universal Islands of Adventure
Universal Volcano Bay
Universal Orlando CityWalk
ABOUT the AUTHORS
Seth Kubersky is the coauthor of The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland and The Unofficial Guide to Las Vegas, a contributor to The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, and a regular contributor to the Unofficial Guides blog (TheUnofficialGuides.com). A resident of Orlando since 1996, Seth is a former employee of Universal Orlando’s entertainment department. He covers arts and attractions for Orlando Weekly, Attractions Magazine, and other publications. You can find Seth online at SethKubersky.com and on social media (@skubersky).
Bob Sehlinger is the author of The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World and The Unofficial Guide to Las Vegas and coauthor of The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World with Kids (with Liliane J. Opsomer). He has served as publisher of the Unofficial Guides series since its inception.
Len Testa is the coauthor of The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World and The Unofficial Guide to Disney Cruise Line (with Erin Foster), as well as the webmaster of Touring Plans (TouringPlans.com). Len has also
contributed to The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland, The Unofficial Guide to Las Vegas, and The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World with Kids.
WHY “UNOFFICIAL”?
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
THE AUTHORS AND RESEARCHERS of this guide specifically and categorically declare that they are and always have been totally independent. The material in this guide originated with the authors and has not been reviewed, edited, or in any way approved by Universal Orlando or any other companies whose travel products are discussed. The purpose of this guide is to provide you with the information necessary to tour with the greatest efficiency and economy and with the least hassle and stress. In this guide we represent and serve you, the consumer. If a restaurant serves bad food, a gift item is overpriced, or a certain ride isn’t worth the wait, we can say so, and in the process we hope to make your visit more fun, efficient, and economical.
DANCE TO THE MUSIC
A DANCE HAS A BEGINNING and an end. But when you’re dancing, you’re not concerned about getting to the end or where on the dance floor you might wind up. In other words, you’re totally in the moment. That’s the way you should be on your Universal Orlando vacation.
You may feel a bit of pressure concerning your holiday. Vacations, after all, are very special events—and expensive ones to boot. So you work hard to make your getaway the best that it can be. Planning and organizing are essential to a successful Universal Orlando vacation, but if they become your focus, you won’t be able to hear the music and enjoy the dance.
So think of us as your dancing coaches. We’ll teach you the steps to the dance in advance, so that when you’re on vacation and the music plays, you’ll dance with effortless grace and ease.
A BETTER MOUSETRAP?
DIE-HARD DISNEY DEVOTEES may want to cover their mouse ears, because we are about to utter the ultimate blasphemy: it is possible to enjoy an awesome Orlando vacation without spending a single minute in Mickey’s world. For much of the past half century, the notion of spending a holiday in Central Florida without seeing Walt Disney’s sprawling wonderland seemed silly. While visitors might take a day or two out of their trip to explore independent attractions such as SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, or Kennedy Space Center, the Magic Kingdom and its sister parks were seen by most as the area’s main draw.
Much to the Mouse House’s dismay, that situation is swiftly shifting. While Walt Disney World is in no danger of closing for lack of interest, its share of Orlando’s lucrative tourism market has been steadily and significantly swinging in favor of an energetic upstart located a few miles up I-4: Universal Orlando Resort.
Originally opened in 1990 as a single theme park packed with advanced but unreliable attractions, Universal Orlando has matured into a full-
service, fully immersive vacation destination with enough world-class activities to keep a family occupied for four days or more. Universal Studios Florida, a longtime rival of Disney’s Hollywood Studios that draws its inspiration from movies and television, has been almost entirely overhauled since its debut, and it now houses one of the world’s top collections of cutting-edge attractions. Universal Islands of Adventure debuted in 1999 as the most modern, high-tech theme park in the United States, featuring an all-star lineup of thrill rides that makes it the best park in town for older kids and young-at-heart adults.
Together, the two parks are home to the game-changing Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a meticulously imagined, multilayered experience that draws millions of Muggle fans from around the world to the hallowed halls of Hogwarts Castle and Gringotts’ Wizarding Bank. Surrounding the two parks are six immaculately appointed on-site resort hotels; the elaborately themed Volcano Bay water park; and the CityWalk complex, full of restaurants, nightclubs, and entertainment options appealing to families and adults. And Universal Orlando has grown beyond the resort’s original boundaries, opening a pair of value-priced resort hotels on the former site of the old Wet ’n Wild water park and constructing a brand-new theme park complex near the Orange County Convention Center.
Universal Orlando’s ascendancy is not about to bankrupt Walt Disney World, but Mickey’s political battles and slow pace of post-pandemic expansion offer Universal an opportunity to usurp Disney’s onceunquestioned domination. And those who approach Universal with open eyes will find that the resort can provide just as much magic and fantasy in its own fashion. Universal Orlando has an energy, pace, and attitude all its own that might appeal to the most adamant anti–amusement park person, and could even convert confirmed Disney customers. Instead of opting for the same old rat race, consider spending your next vacation playing
Quidditch with Harry, saving New York with Spidey, and drinking a Duff with the Simpsons. You might just find yourself asking, “Mickey who?”
IT TAKES MORE THAN ONE BOOK TO DO THE JOB RIGHT
WE’VE BEEN COVERING CENTRAL FLORIDA tourism for almost 40 years. We began by lumping everything into one guidebook, but that was when the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT were the only theme parks at Walt Disney World, at the very beginning of the boom that has made Central Florida one of the most visited tourist destinations on Earth. We now have a few titles that provide specialized information tailored to specific Central Florida visitors. Though some tips (such as arriving at the parks early) are echoed in all the guides, most of the information in each book is unique.
The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World is the centerpiece of our Central Florida coverage because, well, Walt Disney World is the centerpiece of most Central Florida vacations. The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World is evaluative, comprehensive, and instructive—the ultimate planning tool for a successful Disney World vacation, including a condensed version of this book’s Universal Orlando information.
The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World with Kids, by Bob Sehlinger and Liliane J. Opsomer with Len Testa, offers a wealth of planning and touring tips for a successful Disney family vacation.
Finally, you hold our in-depth guide dedicated to the attractions and amenities of the Universal Orlando Resort. All of these guides are available at most bookstores and in digital editions.
THE DEATH OF SPONTANEITY
ONE OF OUR ALL-TIME favorite letters came from a man in Chapel Hill, North Carolina:
Your book reads like the operations plan for an amphibious landing: Go here, do this, proceed to Step 15. You must think that everyone is a hyperactive, type-A
theme park commando. What happened to the satisfaction of self-discovery or the joy of spontaneity? Next you’ll be telling us when to empty our bladders.
As it happens, Unofficial Guide researchers are a pretty existential crew who are big on self-discovery. But Universal Orlando—especially for firsttime travelers—probably isn’t the place you want to “discover” the spontaneity of needless waits in line or mediocre meals when you could be doing much better.
In many ways, Central Florida’s theme parks are the quintessential system, the ultimate in mass-produced entertainment and the most planned and programmed environment anywhere. Lines for rides form in predictable ways at predictable times, for example, and you can either learn here how to avoid them or “discover” them on your own.
We aren’t saying that you can’t have a great time at Universal Orlando if you play it by ear, and enjoying the resort requires much less advance planning than an equivalent vacation at Walt Disney World. What we are saying is that you should think about what you want to do before you go. The time and money you save by planning will help you and your family have more fun.
THE SUM OF ALL FEARS
EVERY WRITER WHO EXPRESSES an opinion is accustomed to readers who strongly agree or disagree: it comes with the territory. Extremely troubling, however, is the possibility that our efforts to be objective have frightened some readers away from Universal Orlando or made others apprehensive.
For the record, if you love theme parks, Universal Orlando is as good as it gets—absolute nirvana. If you arrive without knowing a thing about the place and make every possible mistake, chances are about 90% that you’ll have a wonderful vacation anyway. The job of a guidebook is to give you a heads-up regarding opportunities and potential problems. We’re certain that we can help you turn a great vacation into an absolutely superb one.
THE UNOFFICIAL TEAM
THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN by Seth Kubersky, building on decades of research from The Unofficial Guides by Bob Sehlinger, Len Testa, and the rest of the Unofficial team. Derek Burgan, star blogger at TouringPlans.com, shares his “Saturday Six” lists and restaurant recommendations with us; Alicia Stella of OrlandoParkStop.com is our top source for updates on Epic Universe and other upcoming attractions; and Jon Self supplied vital research for this guide’s dining and off-site hotel reviews. Our prologue (see below) is excerpted from Sam Gennawey’s Universal vs. Disney: An Unofficial Guide to American Theme Parks’ Greatest Rivalry. Special thanks to Genevieve Bernard for her research assistance, proofreading, and patience. Holly Cross, Emily Beaumont, Andrew Mollenkof, and Jenna Barron edited the project; Brian Cooper, Chris Eliopoulos, and Tami Knight drew the cartoons; Steve Jones and Cassandra Poertner created the maps; and Rich Carlson indexed the book; thanks go to each of them.
UPDATES AND BREAKING NEWS
LOOK FOR THESE at the Unofficial Guide website, TheUnofficialGuides.com, and at our sister website, TouringPlans.com. See page 23 for a complete description of these sites.
COMMENTS FROM READERS
MANY OF THOSE WHO USE The Unofficial Guides contact us to share comments or their own strategies for visiting Central Florida. We appreciate all such input, both positive and critical, and encourage our readers to continue writing. Readers’ comments and observations are frequently incorporated into revised editions of The Unofficial Guides and have contributed immeasurably to their improvement. If you contact us, you can
rest assured that we won’t release your name and email address to any mailing lists, advertisers, or other third party.
Reader Survey
After your vacation, please fill out our reader survey by visiting touringplans.com/universal-orlando/survey. Unless you instruct us otherwise, we will assume that you don’t object to being quoted in a future edition.
How to Contact the Authors
Seth Kubersky and Bob Sehlinger c/o The Unofficial Guides 2204 First Ave. S, Ste. 102 Birmingham, AL 35233 info@theunofficialguides.com.
If you email us, please let us know where you’re from. And remember, as travel writers, we’re often out of the office for long periods of time, so forgive us if our response is slow.
UNIVERSAL ORLANDO: An Overview
PROLOGUE: AMERICAN THEME PARKS’ GREATEST RIVALRY
UNIVERSAL STUDIOS DIDN’T SET OUT to challenge The Walt Disney Company in the theme park business. The men who ran the Music Corporation of America (MCA) were quite happy with the industrial tour they created in 1964 at Universal City. The Universal Studio Tour took visitors behind the scenes of the largest and busiest back lot in Hollywood to show how motion pictures and television programs were manufactured….
In 1979 MCA bought land in Orlando 10 miles north of Walt Disney World and later announced that it was going to build a motion picture and
television production studio. The new studio would have also featured a tour just like the one in California. Lew Wasserman, MCA’s legendary chief executive, knew better than to compete with Disney and its dominance with fantasy landscapes. He enjoyed the fact that the two Southern California tourist attractions complemented each other, and he was making money with minimal investment.
Everything changed just a few years later. In 1984 Disney hired Michael Eisner as its new chief executive officer and Frank Wells as president. Before Disney, Eisner had been president of Paramount Pictures, and Wells had been a well-respected executive at Warner Bros. Within two weeks of the Disney leadership change, MCA president and Wasserman’s protégé, Sidney Sheinberg, sent a letter to his old friends proposing a meeting to discuss ideas that would be in the mutual interest of both companies.
It made sense to turn to Michael Eisner. While he was at Paramount, Sheinberg had shown him MCA’s Florida plans with the hopes of forming a partnership. Eisner liked what he saw. When nothing came of the talks, Eisner blamed the impasse on powers higher up the corporate food chain at Paramount’s parent company, Gulf and Western. Now that Eisner was in charge of Disney, Sheinberg thought Eisner would be excited to become MCA’s partner in Florida.
During the call, a confident Sheinberg suggested to Eisner, “Let’s get together on a studio tour in Orlando. We tried with your predecessors, but they were unresponsive. We think we can help you.”1 Much to the surprise of the MCA executives, Eisner told his old friend, “We’re already working on something of our own.”2 …
Then, on February 7, 1985, Michael Eisner made headlines at his first meeting with Walt Disney Productions shareholders. Before a packed house at the Anaheim Convention Center, he announced that Disney would soon start construction of a third theme park at Walt Disney World. The
heart of Disney’s park would be a real working production studio with two soundstages and a working animation studio….
The men at MCA were livid. After reviewing Disney’s plans, Sheinberg claimed that Eisner stole the idea he heard at the 1981 pitch at Paramount. For his part, Eisner claimed the presentation occurred “many, many years” ago and added “when I arrived at [Disney], the studio tour was already on the drawing boards and had been for many years.”3 …
A bitter Sheinberg replied, “You’re going to have to work awfully hard to convince me that [Eisner] didn’t know about [MCA’s plans].
That’s ridiculous…. Disney announced it would do the theme park and would have you believe it’s been in the works since 1926—if you believe in mice, you probably believe in the Easter Bunny also.”4 At MCA, you do not get mad. You get even. This is how the greatest rivalry in the theme park industry began.
A UNIVERSAL PRIMER
UNIVERSAL ORLANDO RESORT’S main campus is located on roughly 735 acres inside the city of Orlando, about 8 miles northeast of Walt Disney World (which actually lies within the municipalities of Lake Buena Vista and Bay Lake). The resort consists of two theme parks—Universal Studios Florida and Universal Islands of Adventure—along with the Volcano Bay water park; eight Loews-operated Universal hotels; and the CityWalk dining, nightlife, and shopping complex.
Universal Studios Florida (USF) opened in June 1990. It debuted a year after the similarly themed Disney–MGM Studios (now known as Disney’s Hollywood Studios) but made almost four times the area of its facility accessible to visitors. USF’s original attractions focused on characters and situations from familiar Universal films, from Jaws and King Kong to Earthquake and E.T. Unfortunately, while the opening-day rides incorporated state-of-the-art technology and lived up to their billing in
terms of creativity and uniqueness, several lacked the capacity or reliability to handle the number of guests who frequent major Florida tourist destinations.
With only one theme park, Universal played second fiddle to Disney’s juggernaut for almost a decade. Things began to change when Universal opened Islands of Adventure (IOA) in 1999. Adding a second park, along with the CityWalk nightlife complex and three on-site resort hotels, made Universal a legitimate two-day destination and provided Universal with enough critical mass to begin serious competition with Disney for tourists’ time and money.
IOA opened to good reviews and sizable crowds, and it did steady business for the first few years. Ongoing competition with Disney, however, and a lack of money to invest in new rides eventually caught up with IOA. Attendance dropped from a high of 6.3 million visitors in 2004 to a low of 4.6 million in 2009, less than half that of Animal Kingdom, Disney’s least-visited park in Orlando that year.
In the middle of this slide, Universal management made one bold bet: securing the rights in 2007 to build a Harry Potter–themed area within IOA. Harry, it was thought, was possibly the only fictional character extant capable of trumping Mickey Mouse, and Universal went all out to create a setting and attractions designed to be the envy of the themed-entertainment industry.
The first phase of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, as the new land was called, opened at IOA in 2010 and was an immediate hit. Its headliner attraction, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, broke new ground in its ride system and immersive storytelling. Families raced to ride the attraction, and IOA’s attendance grew 28% in 2010 and another 28% in 2011.
Harry Potter single-handedly upended the power structure in Florida’s theme parks. Emboldened by its success, Universal’s new owner, Comcast
—which acquired a majority stake in the NBCUniversal conglomerate in 2011 and purchased full ownership from General Electric in 2013— embarked on an unprecedented wave of expansions, rapidly adding new attractions and extensions, including The Wizarding World of Harry Potter–Diagon Alley at USF and additional on-site hotels.
While Disney responded to the Potter phenomenon by slowly building Avatar and Star Wars attractions, Universal struck another blow in the summer of 2017 with the opening of Volcano Bay, its first highly themed on-site water park. Volcano Bay aims to revolutionize the water park experience through cutting-edge slides and advanced Virtual Line technology. Like USF and IOA, Volcano Bay is a state-of-the-art park vying with Disney parks, whose attractions are decades older on average. Despite Walt Disney World deploying a wave of upgrades around the resort’s 50th anniversary and teasing future additions, Universal’s everaccelerating expansion appears undaunted, with a massive second campus dubbed Epic Universe due to open in 2025 a few miles to the south.
The gamble seems to be paying off for Universal. Comcast’s theme parks have reported consistently climbing quarterly revenues, and the Themed Entertainment Association estimated that IOA’s attendance was second only to the Magic Kingdom’s in 2022, with USF besting both EPCOT and Animal Kingdom. COVID-caused closures resulted in revenue plummeting at all theme parks during 2020, but Universal Orlando moved more aggressively than its competitors to bring visitors back, returning to pre-pandemic attendance levels by 2021, and breaking all-time records by 2022, although crowds dipped across Central Florida in summer 2023.
Disney and Universal officially downplay their fierce competition, pointing out that any new theme park or attraction makes Central Florida a more marketable destination. Behind closed doors, however, the two
