I book Universal Premier resorts for my family of four about 1 year ahead of time & we’ve never paid more than $400/nt.
That’s room & included express passes for the 4 of us. It’s a no-brainer for us.
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My response is you get (or don’t get) what you pay (or don’t pay) for.
UXP is more convenient, but it is soooo expensive and getting a Premier hotel is not cheap! For my upcoming stay, I could have stayed in a 2BR at Cabana Bay for about $1500 cheaper overall than 3 nights x 2 regular rooms at HRH or PBR with an AP rate. Yes, I could have spanned my two non-VB park days over just one UOR night, but with kids a double transfer is a huge hassle.
Genie+ is relatively cheaper but you pay for it with time and hassle.
I think UXP works well for UOR but wouldn’t work in its current form at WDW because there are too many “premier” aka “Deluxe” hotel guests. So Genie+ works better for WDW, for better or worse.
In other words, the systems at the respective parks are about right, IMO. (+/- making Genie+ much easier to use – select your first LL in advance for one – and adding Hagrid’s to UXP.)
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It’s an absurd price as a ticket add-on, that’s true. We stayed at RPR with our family of 5, which made it a great deal for us. If you can fill a Premiere hotel room, it’s a bargain for EP. We loved being able to easily reride our favorites!
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Adding it to a day ticket seems absurd- my son went with a couple of his work buddies and he was shocked by the price tag -
But we have the premier passes and it’s built in after 4pm- it works really well us as the pass gives us early opening privileges also (no matter where we are staying on or off property)
Although I may scoot off for early entry- my kids aren’t rope drop fans…
Explain this dummy hotel.
We booked 1 night at HRH but were staying elsewhere. I checked in at 730am even though room wasn’t ready, they gave me room key cards for the fam which we could use as Express Pass right away. When they texted me that room was ready I went back and got new room key cards. They told me the 1st ones wouldn’t work the next day. So I had to make 2 trips to front desk but HRH is so close to parks it wasn’t a big deal.
We actually went to the room for a nap in late afternoon on checkin day so nobody can say we didn’t sleep there 
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