Hi everyone! Universal newbie here. We are frequent disney visitors but want to do a universal trip in July. I've been pricing hotels for our family of 5 and I'm getting very discouraged at the universal prices. Everytime I've priced it out in the past, I've ended up discouraged and scrapped the whole idea and we went to disney instead. This year I'm determined to get there! However, I've never paid more than $145 at disney and that is for a moderate. We will probably only do 2 or 3 nights and get 3 day park to park tickets. I have found ticket discounts but can't seem to find any hotel discounts. Our cheapest option onsite seems to be cabana bay at $229, but then of course tax and from what I understand a $22 parking fee?!? Is there ANY way to get this cost down? Since this wouldn't even be getting us FOTL pass, is it worth the cost? The cheapest onsite hotel which includes FOTL is RPR for $344 which is totally out of the equation for us. I know it is a busy time of year and we could use the early entry but I'm seriously considering just staying offsite somewhere. We will be driving so we have a car. Does AAA offer a discount and can I price that out on universals site? Or does anyone have an offsite recommendation? Would it be really bad to miss out on the early entry?