Disney, Universal, and other theme parks that offer on-site hotel accommodations have have that question, and have plenty of options available to answer it. Want to eat free when you're at the Walt Disney World Resort? Disney is again offering its free Disney Dining perk for guests who book before July 10 for a visit this fall. Prefer free front-of-the-line access to attractions, instead? Head up the street to the Universal Orlando Resort, where Universal Express Unlimited passes are available to all guests at the park's three "deluxe" on-site hotels.
How about free days in the park? Universal offers ticket and vacation packages that will add an extra day on your visit. Prefer extra hours in the park? Stay with Disney, and you'll get Extra Magic Hours, before and after regular operating hours at selected parks each day of your stay. (Universal offers early entry to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter for its hotel guests, and guests at many other theme parks with on-site hotels also get early entry deals.)
Or are you someone for whom money talks loudest and are looking for a straight-up discount on room rates, instead?
Theme parks offer a wide variety of discount and extra-value options to entice potential visitors to become actual visitors. You can find the latest available deals for the top Orlando theme parks on Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando websites. We'd like to hear which of these popular discount offers is the one that is most likely to convince you to book a theme park vacation.
For the many frequent theme park visitors reading this, what has been the discount or added benefit that you found your family enjoyed most on your past vacations? What would you recommend that other families look for when booking an on-site vacation? Tell us your stories, in the comments.
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I can stay at Disney in an overpriced hotel room and still have to deal with scheduling fast passes and dinner reservations. Or I can stay at Universal in an overpriced hotel room and have a nice, relaxing vacation without having to plan ahead for when I want to experience a certain attraction. At least I'm getting a benefit out of the overpriced hotel room. At Disney, I'm still paying the price (probably more for a comparable room....), but getting nothing for it except a bed to sleep in.
Again, I understand the argument... But for folks who are choosing whether to stay onsite at Disney or Universal, it seems to me Universal provides better overall value and benefits.
I'm Holiday. I don't want to plan, I don't want to rush around the park to collect tickets, but I also don't want to waste time standing in a queue.
What I would like to see is Parks move to a Qbot-by-default system. Give everyone with a smart device No-Time-Reduction fastpass. That way I can be in two queues at a time (or eating and queing, or seeing a show and queueing), and leisurely stroll over when I'm ready.
If we all had that, then I don't think I'd object to parks selling a 50% or 90% time reduction upsell.
As far as front-of-line passes go, I'm a huge fan of virtual queues such as Fastpass or the Q-bot system. However, I don't really like the separate queue systems like Cedar Fair's Fast Lane, as those do actually make the regular line longer and tend to be really expensive (at Cedar Point last year, I spent more for one day of Fast Lane than I did on my two day admission ticket). I'll still use them if necessary, but I've always felt bad about it and try to avoid using it repetitively on any one attraction.
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