Visiting Universal

[yourelosingme]

We're booked for 14 nights in Disney, but would like to also visit Universal. The option we're looking at is to stay overnight at Universal & having 2 days in the parks as this gives express tickets, but when I look to get the park tickets package it only gives me the option of a 14 day park ticket. Is there a way of booking hotel with a 2 day ticket at all?

You can buy the tickets separately from another website like orlandoattractions but when I went last month a 2 day Universal ticket was the same price as a 14 day ticket - crazy!

https://www.orlandoattractiontickets.co.uk/Ticket/Universal-3-Park-Explorer-Tickets

@roses2 that's crazy. Maybe we'll just have to go for the14 day ticket and be done with it. So wasteful though. Although if I book it for our first week we could perhaps go back for another day on the second week.
Thank you

Most uk sites only sell 14 day tickets. I got 2 days (plus 2 free) from orlandoattactions.com. They were in the ‘worldwide plus USA section’ of the website. If you only want a couple of days Undercovertourist also sell them but some of them are USA/canadians only so take care to select the right one! The only other place I could find was via the Universal app. If you are interested in going on the hogwarts express you will need the park to park tickets. It is worth comparing to the 14 days but the best priced site will depend on your dates. I would check them all!

@HazelReader thank you, I just looked on undercover tourist & could get hotel & 2 day tickets for half the cost of booking direct with universal. But all the prices were in dollars so I thought it was possibly only for US residents. I couldn't see it specified that it was US residents though, so will have a better look after work this evening. We really only want the 2 days as have so much else planned.

We just did the 14 day ticket (although we did 3 nights in order to do all 3 parks, so not quite as painful!) whilst I believe it's possible to get other types of tickets locally I don't think it makes much difference in price. Are you sure you only want to do 2 days in Universal? Even with express passes that will be quite a squeeze, although less of an issue if not fussed on Port Aventura.

Volcano Bay, god holidays from decades ago seeping into my brain to pull out Port Aventura 😂 I'm officially turning into my mum!

@keypoir you did have me thinking there another park....?! Haha! We don't plan on going to volcano bay as have the Disney water parks

Undercovertourist tickets are all in dollars. If it doesn’t specify USA/Canada resident deal then it is fine. Universal App tickets are all in dollars too- it will ask you if you are a Florida resident before it gives ticket options so all are ok. If you prefer to pay in £, orlandoattractions.com will let you select the currency. All of them let you select 2 or 3 parks and base or park hopping tickets. Depending on when you are going, there is another park opening 2025 (epic universe) but I don’t think they are doing tickets for that yet

I have done this and my favourite hotel is Hard Rock, it’s also closest to the parks.
Have fun

Thanks for all your suggestions. I've booked with travel republic, turns out I wasn't reading the undercover tourist site properly and although that was saving more money the tickets were limited to one park per day.

Same hotel and 14 day ticket with travel republic was over £200 cheaper than booking direct with universal. So that's what we've gone for & even though we're not expecting to return after the 2 days we do have the option to do so now if we change our mind.

Yes you definitely need the 2 park per day ticket. It's not actually that big and you can walk from one to the other in 15 min. We went for 3 days. First day we stuck to Island of Adventure only and 2nd & 3rd day we visited both parks each day.

The express pass through the hotel, which you have booked, is also worthwhile. We went on 60% capacity days and most queues were 45 min. With the express pass you would only wait ~10 min.

This website is very good at planning in advance which park to visit which day based on predicted crowd levels:

https://queue-times.com/parks

Once you are at the park this website was the most accurate in terms of live queue times:

https://www.thrill-data.com/waits/park/uor/islands-of-adventure/

Always head to the back of the park on arrival then work your way to the front. It results in shortest queue times!

@roses2 thank you, those websites are really helpful 🥰