Universal package “unlimited” tickets vs UT tickets upgraded to an AP

i am having trouble wrapping my head around this. I’m hoping that a fellow Canadians has crunched the numbers and/or done this and has some perspective.

We are looking to do an Universal holiday in the last week of November first week of December.

We are looking at booking it through Universal Vacations (via CAA). As international visitors, if we took a package with Universal (hotel and tickets) we are offered the “unlimited” tickets (3 parks, park-to-park good for 14 days). These appear to be a great value compared to gate price and so-so value in terms of Universal’s AP price on their site. I’ve also seen some international visitors post they’ve been able to upgrade them to an AP at little cost at the end of their trip, if they so decided.

However, I’m seeing a lot of talk that people have success with buying discounted tickets on UT and then upgrading them at the park to Season APs at no charge. I’m unclear on how many days you need to buy to do this. But if it is a UT 3 day, 3 Park, Park-to-Park ticket, it looks like if this is true it’d be about a $400 CDN savings for our family versus booking the Universal “unlimited” package.

Am I understanding this properly? And doing the math right? Is it a 3 day ticket you need to buy to have the upgrade match available?

Has anyone had success with this? Or been denied this upgrade at the gate? Or had to cough up extra funds?

Your insight and experiences are appreciated. I feel like I must be missing something big time. And that I should likely go with the unlimited package and upgrade at the end if we think we might be back within a year. $400 savings feels like I must be misunderstanding or way off in my math.

Hi
If you are staying at a Universal Hotel such a Lowes Royal Pacific Resort/Lowes Hard Rock Cafe Resort /Lowes Portofino Bay Resort
you will get early admission into the Parks one hour before regular opening and you get the advantage of front of the line Express Passes included.

Maybe this is the difference in pricing although I could be wrong.
Regards
Mel

Either way we’d be staying on-site at Cabana Bay. We know we won’t get the Express Pass.

But just the price for three tickets on UT 3 Park, 3 day park to park seems to be about a $400 CDN difference between it and the “unlimited” ticket offered in the package. And it sounds like people are able to switch their UT 3 day tickets to a Seasonal AP without an upcharge.

It seems strange. But $400 savings is a lot of extra budget or savings to play with, if it’s true. It just seems like I must be understanding it all wrong.

We want maximum flexibility for our trip. So really an AP would do just as well as the unlimited, if it’s cheaper. Just seems strange they upgrade it without a fee as it also is cheaper than the Seasonal AP price listed on the Universal site. There the Seasonal AP works out as just slightly more than the “unlimited” ticket.

You need to be careful with the seasonal pass and concert dates. During your dates there are Mannheim Steamroller concerts that will prohibit you from going to the Studios that day.

Make sure you are comparing the three park annual passes and the three park tickets. Other than that, upgrading is easy. Just look at gate prices. Universal is really, really good at matching up their prices.

Find the 3 park ticket that matches up closest (using gate prices, not online prices....gate prices are $20 more than online prices) to the 3 park seasonal AP. Purchase that ticket at UT (often they have a buy 2 days get one day free that will actually give you a 3 day value).

The 3 park seasonal AP is $384. If you purchase a 3 park 3 day you will get a value of at $359(gate price) and have to pay $30 to upgrade. If you purchase a 3 park 4 day ticket you will get a value of $385...so basically a wash. At Undercover tourist, the 3 day 3 park ticket is $323 so adding on the $30 makes the AP actually cost you $353 instead of $384. 4 day at UT is $349 and that should not cost you anything to upgrade. So that is probably the best deal. Remember that nothing is guaranteed. I don't know how much they were charging you in the package for the unlimited ticket but if it more than $349 US and you don't care about the concert blackouts, then just go for the upgrade route and don't buy a package but do everything separately.

This question comes up ALL the time on the Universal forums if you want to venture over there.

Zombie said:

i am having trouble wrapping my head around this. I’m hoping that a fellow Canadians has crunched the numbers and/or done this and has some perspective.

We are looking to do an Universal holiday in the last week of November first week of December.

We are looking at booking it through Universal Vacations (via CAA). As international visitors, if we took a package with Universal (hotel and tickets) we are offered the “unlimited” tickets (3 parks, park-to-park good for 14 days). These appear to be a great value compared to gate price and so-so value in terms of Universal’s AP price on their site. I’ve also seen some international visitors post they’ve been able to upgrade them to an AP at little cost at the end of their trip, if they so decided.

However, I’m seeing a lot of talk that people have success with buying discounted tickets on UT and then upgrading them at the park to Season APs at no charge. I’m unclear on how many days you need to buy to do this. But if it is a UT 3 day, 3 Park, Park-to-Park ticket, it looks like if this is true it’d be about a $400 CDN savings for our family versus booking the Universal “unlimited” package.

Am I understanding this properly? And doing the math right? Is it a 3 day ticket you need to buy to have the upgrade match available?

Has anyone had success with this? Or been denied this upgrade at the gate? Or had to cough up extra funds?

Your insight and experiences are appreciated. I feel like I must be missing something big time. And that I should likely go with the unlimited package and upgrade at the end if we think we might be back within a year. $400 savings feels like I must be misunderstanding or way off in my math.

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Who offered you the unlimited 14 day ticket? Is it something thru Universal or CAA? They used to have these tickets years ago and could have add ons like Seaworld, etc.

Sue M said:

Who offered you the unlimited 14 day ticket? Is it something thru Universal or CAA? They used to have these tickets years ago and could have add ons like Seaworld, etc.

Click to expand...

You can purchase them with a package.

damo said:

You need to be careful with the seasonal pass and concert dates. During your dates there are Mannheim Steamroller concerts that will prohibit you from going to the Studios that day.

Click to expand...

@damo Thank you for all this information and the help with the math and understanding Gate Prices in the calculations.

You mention being careful about concert dates. I've seen some people on other forums/questions about AP seem to imply that if you buy a UT ticket you can upgrade it to an AP at any time before you use the last day. We have some interest in going to the MSroller concert when we'd be there on the Saturday. (No way of 100% knowing if we actually will). If we were to buy a UT ticket and use one of our 4 days to visit on the Saturday the concert happens, if we went and still tried to upgrade to an AP, do you know if we'd be allowed? Or would they see we'd been in the park on a concert day and disallow us (or make us upgrade to the Power Pass)?

Our thing is we really don't know how many days we'll be in the parks. We'll be down for 12 days (10 on ground, 2 travel). We will be at MVMCP one day and intend to be over at Disney Springs one day. We also intend to do at least one day at Volcano Bay, and we are hoping we enjoy it enough and it is close enough to the Cabana Bay resort that we might end up using it as pool alternative on breaks or down-days. We'd like to see the night show and castle lit up one night (but that won't likely be on a day we've spent the whole day in the park), and we'll probably be over at least two days during the day. I suspect more like three. We are dealing with a medical issue that makes predicting "good" days or "decent" days hard. So we really have to go with the flow on each particular day depending on how we're doing. We do end up taking a lot of "rest" days on our holidays. And when we are in the parks we often just go for about 3 hours in the morning and call that a day.

So we want/need flexibility. And try to do it at a 'good value; (which can be hard to decide when you're only spending 3 hours in the park and not a jammed packed day -- but it does let us all enjoy our vacation more without making the medical situation worse).

The "unlimited" pass gives that. But it does appear that the UT route and upgrade would be a savings for us. I suppose, really, if they did make us upgrade to the Power pass instead, that is almost the same price as the "unlimited" ticket they are quoting, so it'd sort of work out. It'd just be nice to budget those bucks elsewhere or just throw them back into the savings account for a future trip (or to have a bit more leeway at Christmas time gift buying/meal planning).

Sue M said:

Who offered you the unlimited 14 day ticket?

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@Sue M They appear to be offered to Canadians (and my impression is all international visitors) if booking a package directly through the Universal Vacation site (or if one of their authorized travel agents re-direct page, such as CAA's redirect -- it just gives you the same vacation packages Universal offers but throws in some CAA exclusive discounts that appear to be the same as what an Am Ex card holder/buyer or an Seasonal AP would get you, a coupon book and a $50 resort activity credit, both that I get the sense is kind of useless). (EDIT: I should add the it looks like depending on the time of year, it looks like the vacation packages sometimes include a $100 USD discount on booking or a Blue Man Group ticket, though it looks like it's just for one person not the whole party. Right now it looks like you have the choice of either or up until around American Thanksgiving and then it's just the discount option.)

When you're putting in your information to search packages it will show whatever ticket Universal is offering to its American patrons at the time. (I think right now it is a 5-day, 3 park, base ticket). But then when you hit search, it must detect through your IP that you're international and when the search is completed and your price is quoted it actually includes the "unlimited" ticket (for 3 parks, park-to-park, good for 14 days from first use). If you prefer to just have a 2-park ticket or a set number of days, etc. you have the option of downgrading and taking the savings as you complete the booking.

The unlimited ticket is listed as having a $432 USD (adult) value. So it is close to the value of a Power AP. I've seen UK travellers indicate that they were able to upgrade their unlimited ticket to an AP near the end of their 14 days for a small fee (I've seen people indicate as little as $12 to as much as about $60 and a few people indicating it was just upgraded without a fee or even a bit of a refund. So ... I don't know.) (AND DOUBLE EDIT -- I just realized -- with my very poor math skills -- that it looks like when you take the $100 USD package discount that Universal automatically applies that the 'unlimited' ticket on offer vs. the buy a 4-Day UT ticket and then upgrading to a Seasonal AP basically work out to the same amount. Though with the unlimited, if you did decide to upgrade you'd get to upgrade to the Power AP instead. So I guess it really becomes a question of if booking piecemeal is a better deal.)

To get offered the unlimited ticket, you do seem to need to be booking a minimum of 5 nights at one of their hotels too.

Definitely don't upgrade the tickets until after a concert if that works into your schedule. I think the best thing to do is just buy what saves you the most money without compromising your plans.