I went the freestyle cup route last week and there are a bunch of locations. However, there are huge lines at almost all of them, and from my observations only, about half of that line just got water. We quickly learned which locations had shorter lines than others, but we always used the water feature just to rinse out our cups if it had been sitting in a hot locker for an extended period of time.
The reasoning doesn't make sense. As stated, you need the water for the drinks. I am a Powerade Zero drinker in the heat, and you can literally see the water and the flavoring coming out at the same time. And, quite frankly, one of the ideas I had standing in a long line by MIB watching little kids hitting the screen to see EVERY OPTION AVAILABLE before selecting their choice, was to have one with ONLY WATER. It was actually quite efficient when there were 4 or 5 people who only wanted water - they could just follow each other, hit the pour button and move on. No having to navigate the screens, which shouldn't take long, but does. The waiting is really watching people who have trouble with the language or common sense figure out how to work the dang machines.
I really loved the Freestyle water. I have rarely waited in a line. In fact, I have always filled up in my hotel room with my own supply or the Freestyle machines. I have never gotten it from a QS or cart at Universal. I have tried the fountains at WDW. Once the water is no longer ice cold, or it never was, it has a horrible taste that actually makes me physically ill
I have a thing with bad tasting warm water from being traumatized as a child during day care in the hot Oklahoma summers
Anyway, and the QS at WDW often times have nasty tasting cold water too. I guess it's bottled water for us at Universal from now on. Luckily, we usually have a car and can buy cheap big bottles offsite. However, we don't really have the time to do that for our trip next month
I am not so upset at the cost of buying bottled water, but it's such a horribly, environmentally-unfriendly thing to do
, especially with all of the water that I drink. I liked the machines so much, that I complained to WDW guest services that they should provide cold, free, filtered water dispensers, not that garbage from the QS.
