1. Disney's water park was MUCH MUCH better than the one Universal Associates with. WetnWild was a nice park, the people were friendly, but if you can manage it, go to Typhoon Lagoon. The wave pool was amazing. Hubs lost his hat in the water, and atleast 4 people tried to help us find it. There was basically more personable people at Disney, and the "magic" was there.
2. Universal's park hopper was much cooler! Hogwarts express to go between parks was AWESOME. Disney has its bus system, because theres so many parks and so many hotels, and they're spread out, I get that. But every time we wanted to go to a new park, we had to leave the park, walk to the busses, or wait for the Monorail, and you still had to walk like 10 minutes just to get to the bus, then if there were alot of people going back to their hotels or to a new park, you either didn't get a seat or you were waiting for the next one. It was just nuts...
3. The magic. I only had ONE person be annoyed about something at Disney, and seem slightly frustrated with their job. Every single solitary person we encountered at Disney was extremely kind and into the fact that they were supposed to be the happiest people, and act like freaking cartoon characters. Universal had a couple people who were really into their job, but most of them were like, "raise your arms for the bar.... please don't step out of line" monotone voice. Disney people were like, 'HEY! you should be smiling!!!" it was crazy.
4. Rides. Universal's rides were NUTS. We got on the Dr. Doom ride first second in on Wednesday and OMG it was AWESOME. But then we got on the Simpson ride and frankly they could do without that stupid thing. We waited in line for EVER and it was basically a short ride with alot of videos... it was the Line Ride from South Park... HOWEVER it made up for it with stuff like Escape from Gringotts, and Jurassic Park, the Mummy, Popeye, etc. Their rides were GREAT and the ones they had that were "meh" were still good. As previously stated, they have MANY a ride with videos... I get motion sick easily when I have to focus on one thing, so videos and the whipping around motion of the coasters made me sick to the point I could not bring myself to get on spiderman again.
Disney had some good rides, and you had to wait a long time to get on them. Their GREAT rides were awesome, but their "meh" rides were still "meh..." The Space Invaders Toy Story ride actually broke down while we were on it, which was really weird. My sister and her family were with us for that one and I could hear my nephew going "what happened?"
5. Food!! We had the Disney dining plan which I HIGHLY ENCOURAGE if you enjoy trying new foods. You still have to tip everyone, BUT you don't have to worry about the huge bill cost. We got breakfast each morning, and a snack around lunch, then we had a big sit down dinner each night but Friday, where we had Wawa Hoagies which was AWESOME. I love a little taste of home. We didn't really eat in Universal so theres no contest here on that one. I just wanted to encourage the Dining plan because it really worked well for us. I had not done it when I was there with my friends back in 2006, and I preferred it this time. We also plan on going back to the Biergarten next time too. Hubs and me are both German and enjoy German foods and OMG WAS IT DELICIOUS. You have to sit with other people, but still, its a buffet so its not family style, but it is...?
Complaints:
Don't stay at the lower cost hotels at Disney is you don't have to. My husband and I were really annoyed that they hadn't changed the sheets more than once when we were. We noticed because one of us had gotten something on the sheets, and stained it slightly, and it was still there 3 days later... We also had an empty bag of chips under the bed at the end of the trip that was not placed there by either of us...
Finally on the first day we were there, house keeping knocked on our door super early and asked if we'd be wanting house keeping, when I said, "not right now... " seeing as it was 8am... she gave me an attitude and told me I need to use the "do not disturb" sign. I'm sorry I was not expecting house keeping at 8am seeing as my hotel room wasn't even ready until 6pm the night before... and was supposed to be ready at 3pm....
Universals employees could use some pep in their step... a good portion of them were very blah about work. I get it, its a job, but atleast PRETEND you enjoy working there like some of your coworkers... like the 5 we encountered....
Tips!!!
- Use the Disney Dining plan. 100%, I loved it. We got a cup, we used them every day, it was great.
- Do the Disney park hopper and water park option. We wished we had paid for that instead of WetnWild because we paid extra when we got there for Typhoon Lagoon (it was a mix up on my part...) and we loved Typhoon lagoon SO MUCH MORE.
- Stay at one of the pricier Disney hotels if you can. We weren't thrilled in the end with PopCentury's employees.
- Stay at the Disney hotels if you're going to Disney. We watched people trying to park each day and it was NUTS. You stay at the parks and you get transportation to every park, and you can go for "magic hours" they're special times they're open early or late for only their guests.
- Check your Disney Transportation and that they'll get your bags. Somewhere their was a mix up with ours and we had to real quick get everything sorted before getting on the bus because somehow we weren't on the list for that... still had transportation, just they weren't getting our bags until we changed it AT the airport.
- Eat at Biergarten. It was DELICIOUS. And do atleast one disney character experience
- Check 6 months before your trip for doing Reservations of stuff. I checked what I thought was advanced and I was a month late so it was harder for us to get the stuff we wanted, like Dinner at Be Our Guest. Though we had breakfast and Lunch there so it worked out
All in all, Hubs and I agreed, Universal's rides were AMAZING and we loved them, BUT it lacked the magic that was going on at Disney. Disney's ride were okay, but it was truly Magical being there. The atmosphere was just amazing, and it was great seeing Disney and the "magic" from my nephews reactions.
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