Moving hotels from Disney to Universal

Universal Orlando Resort
1

Hi all,

I will be coming to Orlando for 7 nights in September with my twin 14 year old boys.

Plan is first 5 nights at POP Century and doing the 4 parks (we have the 4 park magic ticket). Sept 21-25

We just booked for Sat Sept 26 Universal Loews so we can do the 2 Universal parks on Sat 26 and Sun 27 and have express passes. (Kids are MAD Harry Potter fans)

We fly out midday on Monday 28th so my question is:

Is it worth booking POP Century for the whole 7 nights and leaving bags there and just taking a small backpack to Universal for the 1 night and just Uber there early Sat morning and back Sunday night. Use Disney MDE to and from airport.
OR
Booking a cheap hotel in Universal area for the Sunday night.

Trying to get advice whether it is worth burning a night at POP (and paying extra to stay there Sunday night over a cheap Universal area hotel) versus moving hotels each night for our last 3 nights.

If we do Option 2- moving hotels- is it easy to transfer luggage within Universal hotels? i.e check out Sunday morning and get our bags transferred.

Thanks in advance for all your help!

Ash

2

On my last trip, I spent three nights at Royal Pacific and moved to Cabana Bay for my last night. I dropped off my luggage the morning of my check out day at luggage services at Royal Pacific, and they transferred my luggage to Cabana Bay for me. It was all there and ready to go when I got back to the resort at 7 that night.

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3

Hey, welcome. You’re going to have a busy time doing six parks in six full days, but it is doable with proper planning - and those EPs will help you a lot at USR.

So, we did something quite similar last October, eight attractions in eight full days with WDW-USR hopping.

2 nights AoA (HS, KSC)
2 nights HIE Universal (VB, USF)
1 night RPR (for EPs) (IoA)
4 nights PoP (MK, EP, AK)

You’ll obviously need to check in to your Loews hotel early on Sep 26 to get your EPs - very early if you also want to make use of early entry! I’d consider carefully (based on crowds, hotel location, weather, opening hours) which park to do on which day, and have a backup plan that works with the order swapped (we had to do that due to a tropical storm - you’re in the season and USF is far more indoors than IoA!)

If I understand correctly, your plan is:

Sep 21 fly in, Pop
Sep 22-25 WDW, Pop
Sep 26 early move to USR, Loews
Sep 27 USR, cheap USR hotel or back to Pop
Sep 28 fly out

So you really need to compare (since the WDW-USR is the same either way):
A) 2 nights at Pop + 1-way transport USR-WDW
B) 1 night at a cheap USR option + 1-way transport USR-MCO
C) 1 night at Pop + 1-way transport USR-WDW (same as A but you take all your bags to save on a burner night at Pop)

I suspect B and C will be similar in price, with B cheaper, and A clearly more than either. You will be travelling between hotels twice in any case, it’s just whether you have to do the whole checkout-pack-unpack-checkin cycle each time.

Personally, if you’re not planning on doing anything at WDW before your flight on that last day, I’d go for B. You have essentially no extra costs over the others and in real terms are just adding a few more bags to your WDW-USR trip.

If you did want to do something at WDW on the last day, then clearly C is better.

If you just want to do “something” then maybe a short trip to VB. it compares well with the Disney water parks, especially if you are already at USR (this assumes you would do a WP or other “low effort” activity at WDW).

Have a great trip!

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4

Thanks for your detailed post and advice :slight_smile:
I think we will go with Option C, the extra $ saved is worth the hassle of one extra check in%

5

We just did that same type of thing over Thanksgiving week, except we did our 2 nights at Universal first (Portofino) then switched to AOA. It was difficult for our group to move b/c we don’t pack light and had a friend with us in a different room so we had to coordinate with him. But we managed. If I had it to do over I might do the two hotels thing for ease. But I doubt we’d be willing to take on that cost. Now that I’ve done it once I think I could make it easier, mostly by bringing less snacks for the room and stuff like that (we don’t do breakfasts just snacks so that we can get in early). It really is worth it for express pass and we also loved the water taxi.

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