Has anyone else booked a dummy room for the Express Pass Unlimited?

Biggen

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jan 13, 2015
I know this has been done for Disney at Ft. Wilderness for Fast Passes but I'm wondering if anyone has done it for Universal. Some background is as follows:

We will be down in Orlando for a trade show at the convention center in January for about a week. Staying at a 3 bedroom condo during the entire stay. We wanted to take 2 days out of the week and head to the parks Universal. I was pricing out Florida Resident (which we are) 2 day Park-to-Park tickets for 3 adults and 2 children with the Express Unlimited add-on and it comes out to about $1920 for all of us. I was a bit shocked at the price for tickets but the Express Unlimited really pushes the total up. It nearly doubles the price from the base tickets.

Anyway, I decided to see what the price would be if I booked the cheapest room at the Royal Pacific. The Express Unlimited passes are included in your room rate at select resorts at Universal and the Royal Pacific is usually the cheapest. So I plugged in the 1st day we want to go to the parks as the check-in day and then the next day is the last day we want to go to the parks which would be the check-out day. So basically its a one night stay. It comes out to about $330 for one night after all the taxes.

After I did that I then checked into what the cost is for base 2-day Park-to-Park tickets. Those are about $1100 for all 5 of us.

You don't have to be a math wizard here to figure out the better deal. $1100 (base tickets) + $330 (room) = $1400. That's a ~$500 difference from buying the stand alone base tickets + Express Pass unlimited.

I then called the Royal Pacific to ask when we could use the passes. They told me you are allowed to register at 7am the day of check-in and that gets you your passes (and all other resort amenities). The passes are good until the parks close on your day of checkout. So I'm basically getting two full days of express passes for all people in the room.

So I went ahead and booked the room. Our strategy will be to drive over to the Royal Pacific at 7am the day of check-in (our condo is at the Vista Cay which is only about a mile or two away) to get the passes and leave the car there at the Royal Pacific. We will probably even eat breakfast in the hotel or head over for early park hours and eat at the parks. Since we have a room, we can take advantage of the ferry or buses to get to the parks.

I don't see a downside to this plan so long as I can register at 7am and get the passes. Anyone done this before?
 
Goodness, many people do this very thing.

Folks check in around 6am and beyond, get the EP’s and head off to the park that has EE as soon as it’s open.

It’s a common thing to do, what is it you’re worried about?
 
I'm sure many people have done it. Depending on when in January you are going, you may not even need Express.
 
Ok perfect. I haven't seen it mentioned before but, admittedly, I hang out on the Disney forums more than the Universal ones so that is probably why.

Glad to see its a "thing".
 


we did this last December, booked RPR and didn't end up needing the express pass. :rotfl: :rotfl:
 
Since you are booking room only, you can cancel with no penalty up to I think 5 days in advance (it might be a week). Download the app, check with wait times for the week leading up to that cancel with no penalty point. Then if they are running at wait times you consider acceptable it might be worth your while to cancel the room at the drop dead point. You can always check to see if rooms are available at that point and see what the price is as well (you may also want to check the other premiere hotels, HRH was cheaper for me) that way you'll know if rooms might be available if the wait times go through the roof. ETA: I hope this makes sense, it's a little convoluted, I know.
 


I just did this last week. We booked a weeklong stay at Endless Summer, a value resort. mid week, we had a one night stay at Royal Pacific, just so we could get two days worth of express passes. i checked us in at 6am at Royal Pacific, and got the room keys for the four of us. Your entire party does NOT have to be with you at check in! They just need the names of everyone in your party so that they can print a room key with each person’s name on it. We did end up sleeping at Royal Pacific that night, with no one sleeping in our Endless Summer room, just to have the convenience of walking into the park the next morning for early entry!
 
We’ve done it before and will be doing it again in a couple of weeks. One additional benefit we realized - we can park the car at the hotel from check in until parks close the next day (day of check out) and only pay for one night of parking as opposed to two days of parking in the UO garage.
 
No worries and it seems that you can talk about it openly unlike the disney forums.
The room is nice to have mid day if you want to just kick back for a few, we always do.
 
Damn it. Wish I had thought of this before now. I am staying at Endless Summer 11/7-11/9 and a dummy room at one of the higher end resorts for 11/8 would have been perfect, but now none are available. I will have to stalk and see if anyone cancels.
 
Okay, I did find a portofino bay room. More expensive, but still cheaper than one day of adding express pass so still worth it.
To pick up the room keys with express pass, does everyone in your party need to show up, or can just one person get the keys for everyone?
 
Okay, I did find a portofino bay room. More expensive, but still cheaper than one day of adding express pass so still worth it.
To pick up the room keys with express pass, does everyone in your party need to show up, or can just one person get the keys for everyone?

One person can go pick up the room key for everyone.

You just need to give the names of everyone registered in the room and they’ll put the names on each card and off you go :thumbsup2
 
I just did this last week. We booked a weeklong stay at Endless Summer, a value resort. mid week, we had a one night stay at Royal Pacific, just so we could get two days worth of express passes. i checked us in at 6am at Royal Pacific, and got the room keys for the four of us. Your entire party does NOT have to be with you at check in! They just need the names of everyone in your party so that they can print a room key with each person’s name on it. We did end up sleeping at Royal Pacific that night, with no one sleeping in our Endless Summer room, just to have the convenience of walking into the park the next morning for early entry!
I thought they had to take a photo of each person in the room to use for EP? Ok I see this answered above too.....so if I booked a room, and went and 'checked in',I'd get the tickets for all of us,and any of us in group could use the EP,b/c there aren't photos attached? (I have my fam of 5,plus some friends we're traveling with that day)
 
No photos taken when you get the hotel room key when you check into the hotel

when in the ep line for a ride, the tm can do the photo of you for eye recognition

your ep will then be linked to that

this Keeps from sharing your hotel key to others in the ep lines
 
I thought they had to take a photo of each person in the room to use for EP? Ok I see this answered above too.....so if I booked a room, and went and 'checked in',I'd get the tickets for all of us,and any of us in group could use the EP,b/c there aren't photos attached? (I have my fam of 5,plus some friends we're traveling with that day)

Like macraven said, the Room Key is used as the EP and there is no photo - BUT - when it is used they have been using facial recognition scanners in the EP lines. Each room key will be tied to a specific person. Friends won't be able to use them - or members of your family won't be able to use them if your friends used their cards first.
 
Like macraven said, the Room Key is used as the EP and there is no photo - BUT - when it is used they have been using facial recognition scanners in the EP lines. Each room key will be tied to a specific person. Friends won't be able to use them - or members of your family won't be able to use them if your friends used their cards first.
Got it. That's a bummer (but I guess it makes sense for Uni) It's been a few years since I visited with EP.
 
We’re thinking of doing this Jan 4-5. It’s the first Saturday/Sunday after New Years. The crowd calendars I’ve seen look busy for those days so I’m thinking we would benefit from the EPs. Anyone have thoughts on how busy the parks would be that weekend? We’re staying at WDW the 3rd thru the 11th and we’re going to do this for one night during our stay, but it adds almost $600 because the room rate plus tax is right around $595, so really go back and forth whether it’s worth the extra expense.
 
We’re thinking of doing this Jan 4-5. It’s the first Saturday/Sunday after New Years. The crowd calendars I’ve seen look busy for those days so I’m thinking we would benefit from the EPs. Anyone have thoughts on how busy the parks would be that weekend? We’re staying at WDW the 3rd thru the 11th and we’re going to do this for one night during our stay, but it adds almost $600 because the room rate plus tax is right around $595, so really go back and forth whether it’s worth the extra expense.

We were there around the same time last year (from Jan 1 through the first weekend). It was busy. Not quite as busy as when we went over spring break, but definitely much busier than other times we've been to the parks (early Dec., September, early June). I can't tell you how much extra value you'd get out of the express passes because we didn't get them for that trip (we focused on Grinchmas and other Christmas stuff, opportunistically hitting whatever rides we thought would be fun).
 
Will the parks be busy the first few days of December to need Express Pass?
 

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