Patience
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2011
Stay at Royal Pacific, Hard Rock, or Portofino Bay so you can have express passes. They are absolutely worth the expense of the room. As others have pointed out, you can book an annual pass rate for a discount even though you don't have an annual pass yet. When you are checking in, tell them you are planning to upgrade your ticket to an annual pass in the park and that you will show it to them later. There won't be any problems with that.
We went to Universal in February of last year and stayed at Royal Pacific. I upgraded the tickets we purchased from Undercover Tourist (buy two days, get one day free tickets) with no problems. The cost is minimal and we actually received money back when we upgraded because the seasonal pass was cheaper than our 3 day tickets. It's super easy to do but be sure to bring an ID with you to the park. They asked to see it when they were doing the upgrade. Because we had annual passes, we went back to Universal in December and again stayed at Royal Pacific. Our family of four stayed for $199 per night at the annual pass rate and that price included an extra charge for having 3 adults in a room since one of our daughters is over 18. We thought that was a real bargain and we all 4 had the unlimited express passes.
As to the express passes themselves, they are wonderful. Seriously wonderful. They give you very short lines, the ability to ride a ride multiple times, and (best of all to us at least), the ability to arrive at the parks whenever we want to and not worry about the lines being too long. We are early birds so we hit the parks pretty early and would do that even without express passes but it's lovely to go to the parks for a few hours, have lunch at CityWalk or the resort, hang out by the pool or take a nap, and then head back to the parks in the late afternoon for more rides and dinner. I absolutely love not having to schedule anything at Universal
We went to Universal in February of last year and stayed at Royal Pacific. I upgraded the tickets we purchased from Undercover Tourist (buy two days, get one day free tickets) with no problems. The cost is minimal and we actually received money back when we upgraded because the seasonal pass was cheaper than our 3 day tickets. It's super easy to do but be sure to bring an ID with you to the park. They asked to see it when they were doing the upgrade. Because we had annual passes, we went back to Universal in December and again stayed at Royal Pacific. Our family of four stayed for $199 per night at the annual pass rate and that price included an extra charge for having 3 adults in a room since one of our daughters is over 18. We thought that was a real bargain and we all 4 had the unlimited express passes.
As to the express passes themselves, they are wonderful. Seriously wonderful. They give you very short lines, the ability to ride a ride multiple times, and (best of all to us at least), the ability to arrive at the parks whenever we want to and not worry about the lines being too long. We are early birds so we hit the parks pretty early and would do that even without express passes but it's lovely to go to the parks for a few hours, have lunch at CityWalk or the resort, hang out by the pool or take a nap, and then head back to the parks in the late afternoon for more rides and dinner. I absolutely love not having to schedule anything at Universal
