Things I wish I had Known Before Staying at Universal

1.   Complimentary transportation is very confusing.  When going off site (Sea World or Aquatica) you can only book transportation the day before, not sooner, so if you are out for long periods of time at the parks it is difficult to find time to do this. I would prefer to have all of that booked in advance. Also, they are very vague about where you need to go. Thankfully, they give you a ticket - do not lose this, and the bus drivers are helpful with telling you if you are in the right spot or not. This is a view of the parking lot at night when it is less crowded.

2.   Staff are not on par with Disney by a long shot.  Expect the staff do the bare minimum. They except you to already know how everything works and do not want to waste words explaining anything to you. If you ask them anything it is like you are inconveniencing them. Twice I saw staff being short with disabled people. At our hotel I saw the cleaning staff sweep the dirt to the rug and walk away.

3.   We were told early admission was happening at both parks but on different days but when we got there it was only at one park.  This was upsetting to a lot of people the week we were there. We overheard a lot of conversations between tourists and staff about this.

4.   Go at least a half an hour early, even for early admission because it will be lined up.  People will be there earlier than that and some people will actually run once they are through the turnstile. It is nice to be in the park when it is so quiet because you get to see everything in a lot more detail and it is less crowded in the stores and line ups. It is also great for taking pictures because later in the day it will be hard to get any without the crowd in it.

5.    They do not check for your hotel card when you go through the turnstile when gong for early admission (why I do not know!!!) but they do check it just before you enter the Harry Potter section of the park so you end up in two line ups.

6.   Early admission is only available in the Harry Potter section, the rest of the park is closed.

7.   You have to go through city walk to reach the parks.  There are interesting shops, photo opps and restaurants in this area as well as a movie theater and mini golf

8.   Security at these parks are scary looking.  They are dressed severely and they yell at people, go here, go there. And they expect you to have already been there a million times and know exactly what to do. It was very intimidating the first few times we went through. Also, I saw one security guard completely miss the rest of my family going through the metal detector because he was staring at a woman’s backside. Funny!

9.   The restaurants do not have the same hours as the park itself.  Some of the places we planned to have supper were no longer open when we wanted to eat and so we ended up eating either in City Walk or at our hotel. It was a little disappointing because some of them looked interesting theme wise and I wanted to be able to try as many as possible while we were there.

10. Some weeks the parks are open a lot longer than other weeks.  My friend went and she got an extra couple of hours every night compared to the week we went but we could not research that until after our trip was booked because it is not always up to date and can change. I figure we lost at least 6 hours of park time compared to her, because of this.

11. A Universal representative told me the Cinematastic Light show was every night a half hour before closing. This was not true. It was only playing one of the nights we were there and it did not start until closing – according to the closing time on their website. 

Cinematastic is boring and lame.  Someone compared Cinematastic to Disney’s Fantasmic which is kind of true in that it has lights and movie clips. I’m glad that I saw it just because if I didn’t I would have always wondered what I had missed. I wish I had gone and seen the Harry Potter section one last time at dusk instead because it was truly boring and even though we were seated near speakers we couldn’t hear what was being said as it was warbled. This is not an interesting show.

12. Staff do not know about Photo Connect.  I picked up my card from the service counter (make sure you do this before going to the park) and the woman gave me no information about it whatsoever. I tried to use it at the photo machines after a ride and it didn’t work, the woman at the desk told me this doesn’t work here, go to Gringots money exchange. The woman at Gringots did not know what the card even was. We wasted half our morning trying to figure out how to use the photo connect card and all along we had to take it to the photo store at the front of the park and have it exchanged for yet another card. This must be so that you only use them for the allotted amount of time (ours was for three days). I had assumed the timing would begin the first time you used it but I was wrong. Not knowing about this wasted a huge amount of time for us. (Please note that they have changed the name of this service to My universal photos)

13. You can have pizza delivered to your room.  We found this service really great as we are used to cooler temperatures and sometimes had little appetite during the high heat of the day but once it had cooled off some we would feel super hungry but not want to spend a lot of time going to a restaurant (or the restaurants we wanted to eat at were already closed). The pizza delivery was a great option for us.

Free things to do in Vegas

Before we went to Vegas I read all the tips and things to do for free and the things to do under $20 etc. There were lists and lists of things you could do for free and I tried to cram as many as possible in on this last trip. Some of them were better than others and I found that some of the attractions just didn’t add up in quality to other places but if you didn’t travel much and hadn’t seen anything like it before, you would think it was great.

1.    Awesome photo opps everywhere – loved.

2.    Wandering through the hotels and casinos – very interesting.

3.    Freemont street – awesome and exciting, go late in the evening. This is an absolute must do while in Vegas.

4.    Bellagio Fountains – saw this from the top of the Eiffel Tower one evening as well as during the day, worth seeing. (Eiffel Tower is not free but watching from the street is)

5.    Volcano at the Mirage – had supper at Denny’s and watched from above the crowd.

6.    Listening to the gondoliers sing while rowing the gondolas at the Venetian.

7.    Coyote Ugly has free admission when if first opens in the evening – this place is a lot of fun! We went there while waiting for our supper reservation and I didn’t want to leave. It is actually one of our favorite memories of Vegas.

8.    Indoor storm at the Planet Hollywood mall & their water feature – I wouldn’t go out of my way to see this but if you are shopping at the mall anyway, check it out. (I'm sorry  don't have a very good picture of this, basically there is wind and water falls out of this fake sky into some water below.)

9.    Bellagio Conservatory – if you have seen other gardens this isn’t a must see. I was a little disappointed after all the hype about it online. It is really small and I wasn’t that impressed but if you haven’t seen many gardens you might really enjoy it.

10. Jean-Philippe Patisserie’s chocolate waterfall – it looks so big in pictures but it is actually quite small.

11.  Flamingos Wildlife Habitat at the Flamingo – I was really disappointed with this. There were only a handful of flamingos but there is a nice waterfall and garden area to chill out for a while. If you have seen flamingos anywhere else in your life, don’t make a point of going to check these out unless you want to rest your feet for a while.

12.  Statues on the Aquarium come to life at the Forum shops – this was difficult to see as there was always a large crowd but if you are eating at the Cheesecake Factory you might see it anyway.  (This is obviously a picture of the Cheesecake Factory which is beside this attraction, I couldn't get a good picture of the Aquarium its self as it was always surrounded by a crowd).

13.  Carnevale di Venezia at the Venetian – interesting show with costumed opera singers. We caught this while visiting the shops and it was quite enjoyable while having gelato. I’ve never been to an opera so this was impressive to me. (I'm sorry the photo quality is so bad, we were quite far back)

14.  Circus acts at Circus Circus – if you are staying here, have children or are checking out the Adventuredome check it out. Otherwise it is quite a ways from everything else and if you have seen any circus acts before or a Cirque de Soleil show it’s not worth it.

15.  Palazzo – Gardens and Atriums – this is worth a walk through.

16.  Rainforest and waterfall inside the Mirage – if you’ve never been somewhere tropical check it out, otherwise I would only go if I was going to be eating there anyway. (I didn't get any photos of this either, I just wasn't interested enough at the time and didn't think about needed one for this)

One of the things I didn’t get to see was the show outside of Treasure Island. I missed that somehow and wanted to check that out – next time!

There are a few more but I think these are the most popular. If you have a short time in Vegas I wouldn’t go out of my way to find these things but it is good to know where things are so if you are waiting for a show to start or for dinner reservations you know where there are attractions to see for free. On my first trip to Vegas I wanted to see everything and I did waste some time looking for these and was disappointed with everything but the Volcano, Bellagio Fountains, Coyote Ugly and of course Freemont Street. If you are going to spend a day walking the strip and looking in all the resorts along the way, you are going to see most of these things.