Disney / universal Orlando tips

[Hopeful646]

Hi ,
We are planning a family holiday next year to Orlando . Our children will be 16 and 13 . Looking at tickets for days at Disney and universal is confusing . There are so many combinations and options for tickets . What do people recommend? We are going for 2 weeks but don't want to spends all the time at theme parks . Thanks in advance .

Have a look at the dibb website, it's been amazing helping with my Disney plans for next year.

Fantastic thank you

Plenty of Facebook pages too. As well as quite a few threads on here.

Have a look at the long threads on DisneyWorld holidays on here - lots of first hand experience.

I used Undercover Tourist for park tickets, 1 park one day which was fine for us. Less than 2k for 5 of us, the main 4 Disney parks and both Universal as opposed to the nearly 4K it would have cost for the 14 day tickets.

If you don't want to spend all your time in the parks it could be worth looking into.

Thanks everyone for your advice

We went to Orlando in June this year with our 2dc aged 16 and 20. We got 14 day passes for the 3 Universal parks. Didn't bother with Disney. We stayed at a Universal hotel so we got early entry to the parks and use of the water taxi service. We had a brilliant time.

Hi Skippy , sorry only just seen your reply . Pleased to hear you had a great holiday . Think we are only planning a day at Disney as our children are teenagers so they seem more interested in universal too. And the water parks of course .

One day at Disney? Do you realise there are 6 Disney parks over a 43 sq mile area????

Hi Tealdeal, I mean one day at Magic kingdom , May go to Hollywood studios as well though . Was going to leave out Epcot and Animal Kingdom . To do all of universal and Disney you’d have to spend the whole two weeks at a park everyday . Do you have any advice on what’s a must see? Thanks

For us, the only reason we would go to Orlando is to do the parks. So we are there pretty much every day.

When we go for a week we do all 4 Disney parks and 2 Universal ones - 7 nights, 6 full days.

For fortnight we do more days at each and, as its usually summer then, we do a half day at a water park or two, and a day at the Space Centre. These days, we'd possibly add a day at Busch Gardens.

BUT 15y DD is a huge theme park fan, a huge Disney fan and loves Harry Potter - so she can never choose between them!

Though next October we are considering doing 3 days Disney (as a lot of Hollywood Studios is currently closed and the new stuff not yet open) and 3 days Universal (inc a day at Volcano Bay water park) plus a night at the Universal's Horror nights and maybe a night at the Disney halloween party too.

Without knowing your DC's interests its hard to say which are the essentials for you.

"To do all of universal and Disney you’d have to spend the whole two weeks at a park everyday"

No you don't. DD and I went last year for 11 nights and spent 6 entire days at parks. She was 16 and neither of us were interested in the water parks. We did a day each in The Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Epcot and Hollywood Studios. If you want to drop any of them I would suggest Hollywood Studios.

We stayed at one of the hotels by Universal Studios as it appelas more to teens, and did several visits to Universal/Islands of Adventure as DD is a massive Harry Potter fan.

We also drove to Boggy Creek for an airboat ride to look for alligators and drove to Cape Canaveral to the Kennedy Space Centre.

We had free shuttle buses to Universal and often went back in the evenings for more rides and to eat.

We go next year. 2 weeks onsite Disney but I've also booked a nights stay at the Hard Rock Hotel at Universal to take advantage of the express passes. With them we should box off universal in 2 days.
The rest for us will be the Disney parks and water parks with a couple of shopping days thrown in.
There's sooo much else we want to do in Florida (Nasa/Kennedy/Clearwater/Discovery Cove and so on) but it's impossible to fit it all into one 2 weeks break.
So... we'll go back in a couple of years and stay offsite and explore more

Thanks for everyone’s replies. Squad - as you say you can’t do it all in 2 weeks . Just got to prioritise I suppose , then go back another time 😊

Don't leave out Animal Kingdom, it's a much better park than Hollywood Studios especially if you are already spending time at Universal who do super thrill rides and big coasters much better than Disney.

In particular the new Pandora ride (flight of passage) is great at AK.

Thanks Poly , was planning on over looking animal kingdom but will have another look. Is there lots to keep teenagers entertained there? There’s so much to choose from.

I’d also suggest dropping Hollywood studios over another it’s a bit meh, I wanted to drop Epcot as I thought it would be rubbish but that was one of my favourite places. We ended up buying the 14 day pass as by the time we had bought a couple of days passes there wasn’t much difference in price, plus DD who was 13 loved the water parks (as did DH) so we went there a few times so I could sunbath while they had fun! So financially it was worth the 14 day pass. We did do 3 weeks though but also did Miami and a trip to the Everglades.

Hi Fluffy, I was looking at the prices the other day and pricing up what we want to do . I agree it’s not much more expensive to get the 14 day pass.

I agree with fluffydogs. Epcot was much more interesting than Hollywood Studios. I think we spent half a day at Hollywood Studios, but didn't leave Epcot until after dark.

Hollywood studios is currently undergoing one of the biggest "re-imagineering" of all the parks for ages - there are very few actual rides left there at the moment.

Animal kingdom however has just undergone one and has the whole new Avatar area with brand new rides. But, for us out of the 3 non-magic kingdom parks, Epcot wins.

We bought the 14 day passes - because we wanted to dip in and out of the parks at will.
The 14 day passes allowed us to nip to Epcot, say, at opening, leave at 1, go off park for lunch, then go play mini-golf (included in the ticket) then nip to Magic kingdom for the fireworks - only 1 lot of parking to pay for the day, out of the parks when they are busiest, and a bit of fun too.

The 14 day passes also include the Disney waterparks - nip for a swim in the morning before going off shopping, then fireworks in the evening...

and Memory maker - so you can download all your ride/photopass photographer(all round the parks) photos for free.

The 14 day one just meant for us that we had that freedom - go where we wanted, when we wanted, and if a park got too busy, go elsewhere - didn't feel like we had to stick around to get our money's worth like we would have with a single park single day ticket.

Is there a 14 day pass that includes Disney and universal ?
Thanks

No. You have to buy separate passes.