Universal just blew my mind.

Over my 30+ years visiting the major theme parks that call Central Florida home, I’ve stayed at countless kinds of hotels in the area — including Value, Moderate, and even Deluxe Tier at resorts. Recently, I stayed at a Universal Orlando Resort hotel for the first time, and was shocked

Now, I’ve been visiting the Universal Resort for nearly 30 years as well, but on each of those trips, I was either staying offsite or adding Universal days onto a Disney trip while staying on Disney World property. However, that changed this summer when I stayed at Universal Endless Summer Resort – Surfside Inn.

Endless Summer — made up of Surfside as well as its sister Dockside Resort — is one of Universal’s Value resorts, putting them on par (and up for comparison with) Disney’s Value Resorts: The All-Stars, Art of Animation, and my beloved Pop Century. I have to say, as big a fan as I am of Pop, Universal’s Value offerings are ahead of Disney’s right now.

For starters, the hotel itself has overall aesthetics more comparable to Disney’s Moderate Tier hotels than the Mouse House’s Value offerings, even though its prices are on par or sometimes cheaper than the latter.

The theming continues throughout the resort, with touches that are closer to Disney offerings like the Caribbean Beach Resort than they are to the brash, gigantic characters and sculptures that populate Disney’s Value Resorts.

This followed through to the food court area, the Beach Break Cafe, which had a cleaner, more upscale vibe than, say, Everything Pop!

Both my family and I found the food to be overall better as well, though, of course, that’s in the eye of the beholder. That said, offerings like this roast chicken dish…

… or the Shrimp Po’Boy sandwich was closer to table service restaurant quality and portion size than our most recent meals at Disney Value Resorts.

And finally, there are the rooms. While the accommodations were overall on par with Disney’s Value resorts…

… we found the bathroom layout — and large walk-in shower — at Surfside to be superior.

In addition, the fact that the hotel utilizes a traditional tower layout as opposed to the Value Resort’s spread-out, motel-style building design made maneuvering around the hotel and catching transportation to the parks in the morning much easier.

I’ve long proclaimed my fandom for Disney’s Pop Century Resort, and it remains one of my favorite places on Walt Disney World property, but a recent stay at Universal’s Endless Summer: Surfside Inn & Suites has me a bit angry about just how far behind Universal Disney’s value hotel experience is. Stay tuned to DFB for more takes on Disney and Universal.

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Have you ever stayed at a Universal hotel? How did it compare to Disney in your mind?

The post I Just Stayed at a Universal Value Hotel for the First Time…and I’m Suddenly Mad at Disney first appeared on the disney food blog.