This was our second trip to Universal and part of a larger Florida vacation which included a Disney cruise (reviewed separately). The first time we stayed at the Portofino hotel, which was beautiful but felt a bit ‘stuffy’ to me. This time we opted for the Royal Pacific which, like the Portofino, comes with express passes which is a huge plus to avoid standing in long lines. The Hard Rock is the third hotel that comes with this perk.

We had my sister in law and her family and my mother in law with us on this trip so we were a large group of 9.

Pre-planning

Unlike Disney there’s not a lot to plan for Universal other than any dining reservations you want to make, and those can be done 30 days in advance. I called the central dining reservation number to get reservations for Vivo and Mythos. Cowfish, our final choice, does not officially accept reservations but I e-mailed the dining team and asked if there could be an exception given our large group, and they very nicely set us up with a 6 pm reservation. So my advice would be no harm in trying that route!

Check-in

I used Ultimate town car to get a Mercedes van for the 9 of us from the airport to the hotel. They were waiting for us near baggage claim, had multiple car seats if needed and it was a very clean and new van. It’s a pretty short 20 minute or so ride to Universal. Some people got plastic flower garlands as they entered the property but it was not very consistent as to whether you were ‘chosen’ or not, and we were not!

The lobby is open and large and check-in was quiet and quick. We arrived around 2.30 but our rooms were already ready. We were all given our room keys which also double as your express pass. I bought lanyards for everyone as you can also charge to your room in the parks and restaurants so there’s no need to carry anything else. We then headed over to the vacation planning desk where we picked up our physical park tickets. We had 2 park to park tickets (for Universal and Islands of Adventure) and at the time of booking Universal was offering 3 additional days for the price of 2 so doing this allowed us to go in the park the first day, which we had originally not intended to do.

My sister in law had a standard 2 Queen beds room plus a roll away bed for the mother in law. This was REALLY tight and if you can splurge a bit I would do some kind of a suite for 5 people. My 4 person family unit went with a Jurassic park room. It was very spacious and the kids area was super cute. Their room backed on to a janitorial room so was shielded from the corridor which made it very quiet, the adult room was not so fortunate being the first one in the corridor from the elevators in tower 3 on the ground floor, and so got a lot of foot traffic and no-one was very considerate at keeping their noise down, even late at night. The view was adequate over the gardens to the front of the hotel.

  • Kids room
  • adults area
  • adults area

Park day 1

We took the boat which departs from the back of the property behind the pool to the parks. It’s a short 5 minute ride (shorter than from Portofino). We headed for Universal Studios and decided to just start from the front with our express passes. It wasn’t the best starts as we got in the express line for Minions, only for it to go down! We bailed and then headed to Transformers. Megatron was outside doing meet and greets so we jumped in line for that and I picked up a 3 day photo pass given it wasn’t much more than a 1 day.

When we were last at Universal our youngest was under 40 inches so there wasn’t much he could ride. Now he’s 44 inches, he had more opportunities. A lot of the rides are virtual reality and have a 40 inch height requirement. We all enjoyed Transformers, which is very similar to the Spiderman ride. From there we headed up to Simpsons and then Men in black. Simpsons is another VR ride and did leave me slightly queasy. MIB is a shooting ride, but be warned it spins a lot!

Then it was time to head out for dinner at Vivo. It got very busy very quickly and service wasn’t the fastest. Food was typical Italian fare but nothing to write home about in my opinion.

We then headed back in to the park and were able to get on to Minions this time and then King and Kang before heading back to the hotel. We decided to walk as the line for the boat was pretty long and once we’d figured out to go the other side of Islands of Adventures (IOA) you just walk along the canal path back to the hotel (~15 mins walk).

Day 2

We had breakfast at Jake’s a quick service, help yourself style in the hotel. We got there for 7.45 and it started getting busy around 8. We decided to start at IOA on day 2, and as that didn’t open until 9 we took the boat around 8.45. One group headed to the back of the park to do the Forbidden journey while I took my youngest (too short to ride), one of the cousins and my mother in law, both who didn’t want to do Forbidden journey, to Seuss Land. We then headed up to Hogsmede and rode Flight of the Hippergriff. I then switched with my husband and rode Forbidden journey with my eldest son and then we worked our way around the park, starting with Jurassic park, which has a surprisingly big drop when you’re not expecting it! We also stopped for the Jurassic park photo pass opportunity. While it doesn’t make a huge difference when you have the express pass, if you head to the back of the park and then work your way anti-clockwise you tend to be going against the traffic who start from the front and work back.

  • Flight of Hippogriff

We were able to hit almost everything; Skull Island, Poseidon (while this was a walking attraction there are a few cool things visually), Bilge rat barges and the log floom (be warned you get totally soaked on these; we wore our bathing suits and then got changed afterwards in to dry clothes) and then Spiderman, . We didn’t do the pteradon fliers as we did that last time and there’s no express pass, it loads super slowly and it’s over in under a minute (plus you need a kid under 56 inches and we only had 3 between us, meaning some of the party would not get to ride).  I had wanted to do the rapter encounter too, but didn’t want to wait inline for 45 minutes for it. We chose not to do the Hulk as most of our party did not like upside down rides and my eldest wasn’t sure he was ready for it. We did lunch at the restaurant near the Bilge rate barges

We headed out around 3 to take a break. The weather was not as humid as it can be and there was no rain or thunderstorm, so the perfect day to do the water rides.

We came back to IOA for dinner to do Mythos. Really cool setting, seemed somewhat understaffed as service again was slower than ideal. Food was different/interesting.

We then split up as people wanted to do different things. We headed over to Universal to see Diagon Alley in the dark and rode Gringotts twice. Really cool ride that fast became one of our favorites from both the queue perspective and the ride itself.

Hagrid’s motorcycle ride had opened when we were there and we debated trying to do it, but the queue was 2 hours most of the day and we decided we didn’t want to queue for that amount of time. Now we have an excuse to go back when it can be express passed!

Day 3

We followed the same routine for breakfast. While we could have gone to Universal studios an hour early, sleep took priority and it’s less necessary when you have an express pass to get there early. We started on the left side of the park this time, doing the Jimmy Fallon ride. This was much more fun than I expected! We then split up again with the non coaster riders heading back over to Simpsons and the coaster riders heading to the Mummy. This was an awesome ride which we ended up doing 3 times as we waited for the others to come back over. We then tried to ride Fast and Furious but it went down. We came back to it later but there was a hefty queue and I was pretty disappointed by it. I expected it to feel really fast, akin to Disney’s test track, but it was just a motion ride.

We continued around, covering Gringott’s again and stopping for lunch at the Leaky Cauldron and then it started raining. We headed over to ET as that’s inside, and that ended up going down, although it did come back up after about 20 minutes (just as we were about to bail). We did the woody woodpecker coaster while we were there and then took a break before coming back for dinner at Cowfish. We didn’t get the chance to use the hotel pool but it was pretty lively in there with a ship splash pad area.

Cowfish was fun as there was cornhole outside to keep everyone entertained while we waited for our table. The menu was really fun and different with most of us going for a mix of mini-burgers and sushi. Of all the restaurants, the service was the most efficient.

We split up again for the evening with my sister in law heading back to the wet rides at IOA and the mother in law heading back to the hotel. We headed to our favorites, which was the Jimmy Fallon ride, Transformers (we were lucky enough to be there when Bumblebee was doing meet and greets) and then Gringotts again. My eldest Lauling wanted to ride Rip Ride Rocket in the dark, so we also did that as rider switch so both my husband and I could ride. We all loved it although getting on it as it’s a rolling access and picking music before you start heading up is quite stressful!

The boys were exhausted so we took a ripsaw bike back to the hotel.

Day 4

Our Universal experience ended with a Minion’s breakfast in the ballroom. It starts with pictures with Gru and a Minion before you’re seated. The buffet was hot and plentiful and we were visited by the girls, more minions, and Gru and a second Minion and it was well organized in terms of efficiency of the characters coming around and the time we got with them. We were done in less than an hour, giving us plenty of time to pack and get ready to depart for our cruise.