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Disney World Tips and Tricks

As others have said, two days is more than enough for both Universal parks. We usually do both in one day. The higher end hotels are well worth it for the fast pass. And they are considerably cheaper than the comparable Disney hotels. We love the Hard Rock hotel - it's a short walk to the parks and has its own security check area.
 
mako1331 said:
I always stay on site for Disney because of the convenience and early access time as well as the whole fun theming aspect, but last time my wife and I went to Universal, granted around 5 years ago, we Ubered pretty easily to the park from our hotel. Is it worth staying on property if I can stay for free relatively close for next to no Hilton points?
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That's probably a good plan unless you'd rather save your Hilton points and stay on property. The off-property hotels are close enough to Universal that Uber is pretty cheap.

This time of year won't be busy so I wouldn't worry about the express pass.
 
mako - when did you decide to go?

Still trying to figure it out with my family.

Everybody on here and elsewhere tells me it is cheaper than Disney, but when I dig into the planning it's just as expensive. What am I doing wrong?

Driving down from Atlanta with my family of 5. When I look at park tickets, it is insanely expensive to add the express pass (x5). When I look at hotels, they are expensive... But maybe I'm just looking at stuff that is on property when I don't need to.
 
We’ve always found that it is a lot cheaper, but not cheap, to stay at a hotel that gives you the express passes instead of buying the express passes separately.
 
BubbaJean said:
We’ve always found that it is a lot cheaper, but not cheap, to stay at a hotel that gives you the express passes instead of buying the express passes separately.
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Really only worth it if you have more than 2 people in the room.

IMO both universal and wdw are about the same cost now. And both are double what they were 5 years ago.
 
DeacsATS said:
mako - when did you decide to go?

Still trying to figure it out with my family.

Everybody on here and elsewhere tells me it is cheaper than Disney, but when I dig into the planning it's just as expensive. What am I doing wrong?

Driving down from Atlanta with my family of 5. When I look at park tickets, it is insanely expensive to add the express pass (x5). When I look at hotels, they are expensive... But maybe I'm just looking at stuff that is on property when I don't need to.
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I still haven’t decided. Looking at some different 3 day weekends that we have and seeing which ones correlate with low crowd times. Since it’s just gonna be me and the 8yo and a short time frame we’re going to fly. I’ve been able to do it pretty cheap for just two
 
mako1331 said:
I still haven’t decided. Looking at some different 3 day weekends that we have and seeing which ones correlate with low crowd times. Since it’s just gonna be me and the 8yo and a short time frame we’re going to fly. I’ve been able to do it pretty cheap for just two
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We're gonna do it this year, but have to take the whole family. 9yo kind of over Harry Potter at this point, but 7yo is in the middle of the books and loves it. So the window is probably closing later this year. Maybe it reopens with my 5yo in a couple of years, but I doubt he'll ever learn to read.

I'd love to just do a long weekend with the girls where we fly in and out, but no way would my wife stay home with the boy while the rest of us went to make memories somewhere fun.

Just gonna have to bite the bullet at some point.

How can you tell which weekends correlate with low crowd times? I've found the price of room + ticket doesn't vary that much (surprisingly).
 
DeacsATS said:
We're gonna do it this year, but have to take the whole family. 9yo kind of over Harry Potter at this point, but 7yo is in the middle of the books and loves it. So the window is probably closing later this year. Maybe it reopens with my 5yo in a couple of years, but I doubt he'll ever learn to read.

I'd love to just do a long weekend with the girls where we fly in and out, but no way would my wife stay home with the boy while the rest of us went to make memories somewhere fun.

Just gonna have to bite the bullet at some point.

How can you tell which weekends correlate with low crowd times? I've found the price of room + ticket doesn't vary that much (surprisingly).
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Checking out different crowd calendars online
 
Use the web sites but remember, perception of low crowd times are completely relative. You may want to look for average wait times for the rides you think are important. You'll see people posting on the same day -- One group this is saying crowds are nuts.. One group is saying they didn't wait long (and turns out it was over an hour wait). Or they only were there for character meet and greets.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
just avoid major holidays and go during the week instead of a weekend
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ImTheCaptain said:
well what do you want to hear? anything else is a bunch of byzantine bullshit

it's disney in a dynamic pricing era. you're gonna have to bite the crowd bullet
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I was mostly just being a dick, but my specific issue with planning this Universal trip is that the prices seem to be the same no matter which weeks/days I select (Jan-April). I've been looking at it for months.

There really aren't many weeks (except maybe late January) where there appears to be less demand. My takeaway from that is that there is always some school somewhere that is off for a given week (mid-winter break, spring break, etc).

And like Deacon92 said, people have strong opinions about crowds with nothing concrete to back it up beyond their own perception.
 
My perception is that Disney has mastered the art of scheduling random marathons, cheerleading competitions, mass booking international tours, etc to make up for what used to be dead spots in the calendar. Universal hasn't. Instead, they just close the parks early and schedule private events. So check the Universal hours to make sure one park isn't closing at 6 or something like that which would make that park busier during the day and make the other park really busy at night.
 
PhDeac said:
My perception is that Disney has mastered the art of scheduling random marathons, cheerleading competitions, mass booking international tours, etc to make up for what used to be dead spots in the calendar. Universal hasn't. Instead, they just close the parks early and schedule private events. So check the Universal hours to make sure one park isn't closing at 6 or something like that which would make that park busier during the day and make the other park really busy at night.
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Perception is reality, but the races are approximately the same time every year.
 
historically our family would go in January right after the xmas/NY break afte schools went back in session

on averafe the temps would be mild but not swimmable; some years you'd get lucky with some hot days and some years we'd get very unlucky and be wearing colder weather gear but that was like once or twice in 20 years
 
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