Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Loews Resorts at Universal Orlando~Very disappointed


Last summer I won 2 day passes to Universal Orlando as part of a twitter party that was sponsored in part by Universal (remember the summer of winning?)

This coming spring break is the first chance that we have had a chance to even consider using these tickets.

While I have been looking into booking our trip, I have been exploring every option available for hotels. Which means Priceline, Kayak, Universal Loews Resorts, Disney Resorts, Hotels.com, etc.

Disney has Shades of Green, and even though they are full the dates we want, they can get us into one of the other Disney Resorts for under $130 a night. Which is an awesome rate for the week we can travel. Only thing is we are not planning on visiting WDW while we are down there, and I don't want DJ upset about not getting to go to WDW just because we are staying at one of the resorts. I "know" that I can explain it to him,  but I am not sure that once we are there he will really understand. Plus having to travel to and from Disney to Universal each day, isn't something I really want to do.

I also looked into Universal's on property resorts, thinking (crazy crazy crazy thought) that they would offer military discounts, that would be comparable to the ones on Disney, or other hotels in the area (most offer at least 20% off to military members and their families). Imagine my surprise when I discovered the Loews does not offer a year round military discount. To stay on Universal property it runs $340-$400 a night for the week of spring break, and $200-$400 a night for the week after school gets out (which I looked into at the suggestion of the helpful Universal Guest Services). From what I can tell, the only bonus that you gain by staying at one of these resorts is the Express Pass that your room key works as, (express passes for the days we are looking at visiting are $70 each, or if we wait until the week school gets out $50 each).

I contacted Universal Guest Services about this and while the young woman that I talked to was very friendly and very apologetic, Universal does not run the resorts, Loews does, so other than suggest that I call the vacation package group and see what partner hotel they can get me into, or to change our dates, there wasn't a whole lot she could help me with.

Basically I was told that because it is "peak" time, they have no reason to offer discounts to military members. 

What I can not understand is why or how on earth Disney can manage to offer military rate rooms for under $120 a night during the period of March 31-April 4th and Loews Universal Resorts are almost $400 a night. How is this possible?

I do not think that Loews cares at all for our military members and their families with these outrageous charges. I am highly disappointed in Loews Resorts and Universal for treating our military and their families this way.

I have contacted Lowes directly through the companies web page, about this, but I am honestly expecting that I will be told the exact same thing, "It's peak season, we will sell out without offering a military discount, so we won't offer one." If I hear different I will of course post about it. But essentially what I am saying to all of my fellow military families is this, if you want to visit Orlando, and stay on a theme park property and hope to have a military discount, don't count on it with Universal.

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