It does have “immediate” access to the parks. Similar to Grand Californian at DCA. You can walk right in. They are putting a LOT of $$ value on that perk
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Oh, that’s VERY interesting. I very much enjoy walkability to parks but can’t really discern that much value around “length of walk” in all honesty.
Agreed! It’s why I didn’t pay $700 - $900 / night at GC when I went to DLR!! 
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We got a pretty decent deal on it with AP discount…(somewhere around 40%)
Only reason we are doing staying there in multiple days in December.
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I have seen reviews of the lights randomly turning on overnight but that’s also happening at Stella Nova and Terra Luna and the answer for the ones at Helios is a bit easier than the “budget” hotels in that you have to unplug ALL the lamps, literally unplug them. At the Stella and Terra you have to put stickies over the little red lights in the bathroom area to stop the motion sensors. If that’s the only issue, I’ve got my hack of unplugging everything at night ready.
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Definitely happing at Stella Nova - the lights made me nuts!
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I already put painter’s tape over anything that glows in the room so I can sleep. I’ll be prepared!
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Happy to expand, I’ll also link to my review on Trip Advisor here—it’s long, just FYI, in case anyone wants to read it.
The lights were the least of our concerns—and I stayed at Stella, Terra, and Helios in the last four weeks and had ZERO light issues. I think engineering fixed the lights in most of the rooms.
Helios is charging deluxe pricing but is at best a moderate hotel, and a crappy one at that. The staff are not professional, the quick service is pricey ($12 for a breakfast sandwich, for example), and all of their public areas are TINY for the amount of guests in the hotel. Like, they clearly were short on space for everything except for the pool area (which overlooks a massive show building).
You’ll be on top of other guests the whole time, and it’s not relaxing. I didn’t use the entrance for early entry but read horror stories about that too since it’s not meant to handle 700+ guests an hour before the park opens (there is one security scanner and two ticket scanner podiums).
The pool is fine, not great. There’s lots of shade and the staff are nice there. It was almost too warm—I like a heated pool, but it didn’t feel refreshing with how hot it was.
Also, the front desk and management staff, including the assistant GM who we interacted with multiple times given the issues we had, are not polished or equipped to help out with any issues that come up. We also didn’t have housekeeping service our room on one of the days, and the manager was also confused as to how that happened.
I’d really recommend anyone stay anywhere else—either a Premier hotel that gives Express at the other two parks for the same money, or stay at Stella Nova and walk to Epic in ten minutes or bus over in two.
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Yes, Cabana Bay gets the EPA to EPIC - all of the UO hotels do 
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Hmm 
Seems like they should start offering EP with Helios stays for the other parks to draw some of those guests away from RD at Epic.
Otherwise, what’s the upcharge for? 
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I don’t think they’ll ever offer EP with Helios—it’s part of the Loews contract for the first three hotels, and I doubt Universal wants more “free” Express in circulation. I’m not really sure what Helios could offer to incentivize folks to go to the other two parks.
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If not EP, it would have to be an even earlier extra hour to pull folks from Epic.
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I agree with you on premise, but I don’t see Uni spending the money on staffing to open the parks even earlier for what would amount to maybe a few hundred guests (Helios has 500 rooms so 1,000 folks based on double occupancy, but not everyone is going to a park every day, let alone Islands or Studios).
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I don’t think there would be anything to incentive those guests to go to IOA/USF. The attraction of Helios is the Epic entry.
I have seen vlogs showing the madness of entry in the morning though. They need to fix / add more taps / security.
It’s not like others hotels where you are forced to take some form of transit. The docks at the other premiere hotels can accommodate multiple boats and quickly get 40 - 50 people on their way!
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This seems like a terrible oversight.
It’s not shocking that almost every guest in that hotel is going to want to utilise that perk every day of their stay.
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Yeah, it’s only because Helios has a dedicated entrance into the park, unlike any of the other hotels on property.
Again, guests are constantly on top of each other at this hotel, and it’s not pleasant, especially when you can stay at an actual five star hotel for the same or cheaper.
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I think Helios pricing is going to go waaay down when people realise the rooms are basically the same as the ones at SN and TL, except some of them have theme park views, and it has an overcrowded entry into the park.
I’m just going to be happy to go to Bar Helios and see the view from the top. Especially of the nighttime show:
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That is a gorgeous view.
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I was just going to reply to say exactly this 
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Zero (or almost zero) chance of this.
When I booked Helios (Park View room), I thought the upcharge was for the immersive experience of being adjacent to Epic and the dedicated entrance to Epic, but this thread has me questioning whether I should switch resorts.
We are doing 1 day at Epic and 3 days at WDW and planned to stay 2 nights and Helios and 3 nights at BLT, but maybe I should switch to staying at BLT the whole time and then drive to Epic for 1 day. That way we don’t need to switch resorts. I know we would lose the early entry hour, but the experience of Helios was the big draw for us.
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