In the past, DW has only been willing to do only 1 Orlando trip per year (4-5 nights).
This year I was planning on Universal with 1 night at MK for either MNSSHP or MVMCP.
When DD10 and DS8 found out, they said that’s not enough time in Disney and they don’t want to give up Disney time. So I said, we can do Disney instead with 1 day at Universal like the past couple years. The kids said they wanted more time at both Disney and Universal.
So … I asked DW if we could make the fall trip 5 nights of Disney and then spend 2 days at Universal on another trip during the winter.
To my pleasant surprise, DW said if both kids and I want to do that, then she is ok with going along with it.
We will do 1 day at Epic and 1 day split between IOA/USO.
I now have 3 nights booked at RPR to get unlimited express for our IOA/USO day and will purchase express for Epic.
Question: Seems like a waste to pay RPR prices for 3 nights when only using unlimited express for 1 day, but when I looked into purchasing unlimited express for 4 of us and staying at a less expensive resort for 3 nights, the total cost was about the same so figured I’d go with RPR and get the short walk to CitiWalk, IOA and USO.
I would like 3 park days, but DW only wants to do 2. I’m happy she is willing to do 2 so I’m not pushing it. We will arrive early evening on arrival day, then spend the next 2 days at the parks, and then depart late morning on departure day.
When I looked into the options for my trip, it ended up being cheaper to stay somewhere else and get 3-day (in my case) Express passes that covered all 3 parks, as well as 3-day, 3-park, park-to-park passes. So we can go to any of the three parks and use express on one ride on each attraction every day. This was very close in price to getting Express for just Epic - not much of a savings, unfortunately.
I’m not sure how 2 days changes the math, but you may want to look into it.
To follow up on @Jeff_AZ ’s post (that was why I asked about 3 days), if you do find the 3 day (unlocked Magic is now selling tickets you can add express to (I did not price them out) you could then look at Aventura (walk to two original parks or take Sapphire Falls boat) or Cabana. Bay (longer walk).
It is past Royal Pacific but I measured with my Apple Watch as under a mile (I think .8) it also shares a driveway with Sapphire Falls so you can take the boat.
I’m currently planning for a 4 night/3.5 park day trip in late June/early July and went back and forth on several options.
4 nights at RPR was very pricey but I really didn’t want to have to deal with a split stay (with lots of bags, as it’s on the end of a longer trip for us) - so I had settled on 4 nights at CB and buying multi-day EPs.
Until another liner suggested looking into a 1-night reservation at RPR just for the 2-day unlimited EPs (while also keeping the room at CB). Even with a 1-day Epic EP on top, for four people this ended being up significantly cheaper than the multi-day EP for my dates!
So I’ve booked it for now (and we are toying with the idea of actually spending the night at RPR with a small day pack while leaving the rest of our stuff in the CB room). I know that EP prices won’t go further down (they’ve already started going up for my dates), but I’m still tracking resort room rates as often as I can as these change frequently. So let’s see what we end up with!
This is an interesting idea. Do you have the same name on both resort res? Years ago I remember reading the WDW checked for double res for the same night under the same name and there was a risk of one being cancelled. I haven’t heard that recently and I never heard it about UOR, but I wonder if that is a potential risk.
Yes, I have the same four names on both reservations - there was no problem booking them for the same night, so I would hope no problems later on. But I won’t be able to confirm until July
The recommendation to double-book for one night came from @Sophia818 on this thread so I wonder if they have personal experience with double booking?
It’ll be our first UOR trip. I’ve definitely double-booked WDW rooms (with the same names) in the planning phase when I wanted to keep my options open, but in these cases I always eventually cancelled the rooms that I didn’t want to keep. I’ve done this at WDW as recently as last year, without any problem.
I honestly don’t think Universal’s system is that sophisticated. You enter names but they aren’t linked to people’s profiles like at Disney. It’s just an open field. Besides, it’s actually Loewe’s system that gets the personal information at checkin, then they issue room keys with EP based on that.
We’ve done this several times with no issue. Typically we have a length of stay ressie at Cabana Bay then a 1 night reservation at one of the premiers for the 2 days of EP. Me as lead on both with my husband as the guest.
Usually I will rebook at a price drop and then cancel the higher priced booking but a few months back ran into an issue. It would not let me have two bookings at the same time, and did not recognize I cancelled the first one later. I called and got it all fixed but just a warning, it is rare, but it can block two reservations. I have doubled booked multiple times since then.
Yes, we did the double-booked thing. It was a few years ago. No one seemed to notice or care.
One thing I didn’t get but was hoping for and read that it can happen. When you check in, you tell them that you aren’t staying the night and just want the EP’s and maybe a place to lounge during the afternoon. I read that what they might do when there is a shortage of regular rooms and plenty of suites, is that they’ll rent you a ‘parlor’ room for cheaper than a regular room. It is the non-bedroom side of the suite. The bedroom side of the suite is a regular room.
