Last week I was able to visit Universal Orlando’s resort for the first time in a very long time. After feverishly navigating through City Walk, 2 parks, and even a little bit of rain I reached a few very, very important conclusions. First, I am getting old. I love rides. I love them in all shapes and sizes. However, the days where I could ride certain attractions until I was sick have greatly decreased.  However now just hopping from ride to ride left me feeling uneasy after certain attractions. Secondly, both of those parks are Fantastic! Here are 3 things that jumped out to me that I think Universal is doing correctly to stand out among it’s competitors:

1. Free lockers– Initially I found the fact that the parks had so many rides that you had to empty out your pockets to be rather annoying. However in all of these rides Universal has a free locker system available as each park guest rides every one of these rides. The system is simple. Each park guest walks up to a kiosk near the ride’s entrance, the kiosk will provide the guest with a few different time options that the guest can pick from. The top option is free and always allows enough time to go through the line and enjoy the attraction. After the option is selected the guest will then place their index finger in a scanner, the finger is scanned and a locker is assigned. After riding the ride the guest comes back and follows the prompts on the screen. Lastly the guest re-scans their finger which the computer verifiess is the correct guest and then they retrieve their belongings. Now I know this does not sound like much but my family and I were recently in a park not that long ago and had to split up on a certain ride due to the fact that we did not have loose change handy to rent the lockers. Though this was small in the grand scheme of the day it was a mild annoyance to say the least.

2. Efficiency in loading and off loading rides– We were recently at Disney during one of their slower times of the year and both my wife and I noticed something rather odd. As I stated earlier it was a slower day in the parks and though the lines were not bad by any stretch of the imagination, I felt they could have moved a little bit quicker. It’s not a widely kept secret that theme parks often control the flow of people on each of their parks respective locations depending on the amount of people in the park. However on this day, and this may have been an anomaly both of us remarked that it seemed like the rides could have operated at more efficient pace. Conversely when I went to Universal, there were similar conditions and aside from the 40 minute wait time on Minion Mayhem, which was due to the fact that every body and their mother hit that attraction as they entered the park, the shortest wait time was 10 minutes tops. Now this is strictly my opinion. To be honest in neither park did I stop and actually count the cars that were launching per minute or use any other type of metric system. But there was a sense of urgency to get people on and off at each attraction at Universal. 

3. Ease of Commuting from Park to Park– Now the original Disney theme park in California is set up similar to Universal Studios Orlando. You have to the enter into a market place hub which then sort feeds off into each of the parks. Personally I found this set up a lot more convenient especially with us navigating though both parks in one day. Now Disney World Florida can not help this. They are a bigger property and occupy a significantly larger area than their California counter parts. But we found the ability to either walk from point a to b or catching a ride on the Hogwarts express from one park to the other to be key in maximizing our time in the parks to actually enjoy the various attractions.

Have you noticed an area where Universal is putting guests first? Please leave me a comment and tell me about it.