Disney's program offers steep prices for one-day and short visits, coupled with massive discounts for buying close to a week's worth of admissions. The effect, and intent, has been to get visitors to commit to spending their entire week in Orlando at Walt Disney theme parks, instead of taking a day or two, or more, for the Universal or SeaWorld parks.
The program's been a huge success for Disney, helping the Mouse drive attendance gains while Universal has remained flat. But now, Universal's fighting back. Universal has offer five consecutive days of admission for the price of a two-day park-hopper pass, but under its new "EarlyBird Exclusives" plan, visitors can get seven consecutive days' admission to Universal Studios Florida and Universal's Islands of Adventure for $85 - less than $20 more than the price of a one-day, one-park ticket.
Will that be enough to make Disney visitors consider a switch to the Universal Orlando Resort? You tell us....
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Make it worth people's time and money and they will come and stay!
Here's how you do it:
1) go on a light-crowd day (i.e. not July!). The two times I tried this were the week before Labor Day and early December (not on the weekends, either).
2) get there before park opening; they usually let people in early, even on a slow day.
3) go to IOA first; USF has more attractions that don't have long lines, so you can hit that later.
4) take advantage of the single-rider lines on a number of attractions.
5) time your meal break(s) for non-peak times (i.e. lunch before noon).
So, the cost may be $20 per day but in order to have a good time, you need to pay an extra $20 per person per day for the Express Pass. How do you like that racket?
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Suprised it too so long for them to do this!