Refillable popcorn buckets and Coca Cola drink cups

[lebeau]

Orlando Informer has extensive info on the subject of refillable popcorn buckets and drink cups.

The popcorn buckets are pretty straight forward. The drink cups are more complicated because Universal has several different programs. There is a classic refillable drink cup, the Coke Freestyle cup and a hotel-specific program.

 

[Bethany10]

Do you have the top level AP to get the discount? I'm going with the lowest level as we're basically using it to get the better hotel rate.

 

[damo]

Orlando Informer has extensive info on the subject of refillable popcorn buckets and drink cups.

The popcorn buckets are pretty straight forward. The drink cups are more complicated because Universal has several different programs. There is a classic refillable drink cup, the Coke Freestyle cup and a hotel-specific program.

That article is a bit out of date. They don't sell the classic refillable sippy cups anymore. You can buy the souvenir themed cup at some souvenir places but the red cups no longer exist.

 

[CPanther95]

We never use the drink refills because of the hassle of toting multiple sticky cups back and forth. But my popcorn bucket is old enough to buy an adult park ticket if required. Gets thrown underneath the stroller every year.

 

[Princess_Lisa]

I believe the cups are $14.99 (includes first day of fills) and $7.99 to reactivate for an additional day. You can also do single fills at a deeply discounted price if for example you are only spending a couple hours in the park. There is a UOAP cup which I believe offers discounted reactivations (not sure about cost as I bought it on my last Universal trip). Very few places have them. I got mine outside Monsters Cafe if I remember correctly.

And - keep in mind the "black out" period. For the hotel cups, you have to wait another 2 minutes before getting another refill. In the park it's 10 minutes between refills.
Hope that helps

Word of caution on the blackout...one time I put my cup down, selected my drink and started to fill. It was putting out soda water (no syrup) so not thinking I grabbed the cup, poured it out and went to the machine next to it. It wouldn't let me fill until the timer expired for the empty syrup soda water. I probably could have switched to a different drink on the same machine, though not sure I could have poured it out as that would have broken contact with the RFID reader.

 

[SweetMimi]

FYI - if you still have the classic refillable mugs(tall, red w/white top/straw) you can still use them. We bought ours years ago and was able to use them on the last trip. Water refills are free and soda was around $2 I think.