Loews Royal Pacific Resort at Universal Orlando

Overall this is a great hotel experience. The staff were all very genuinely friendly. The common areas were clean and beautiful. Good onsite grab and go snack shop. The main reason we book this hotel is for the generally good housekeeping, water taxi to parks, and unlimited express. This time, we found that the rooms need a facelift. The mattresses were somewhat saggy, the curtains needed a cleaning, and shower could use a re-grout. However, it's as clean or better than any average hotel room you may get these days. I just expected better based on past experience here feeling more luxurious. I have learned I need to lower hotel room expectations post-pandemic, even at nicer hotels like this. We really liked the scent of the shower products and the showerhead choices are great. I did find that the blackout curtains didn't come together fully so I used my traveling chip clip to hold them together. Recommended to pack one if you like a dark room (a couple of bobby pins can work too). Good variety of pillows to choose from - a life saver for different necks and preferences. The overall feel through the whole hotel is definitely upscale. We would stay here again but would really appreciate a deep cleaning and refresh on the rooms.

We loved this resort. We stayed four nights Nov 2025. We had a basic room with king bed. The room was very quiet and great for us. The only gripe was the TV. It was old school cable or satellite. No streaming and you cannot mirror your phone of laptop to stream. We thought it was kind for lane for a place at this price point. We have stayed at Aventura many times, and thought Royal Pacific would be like that. Nope. No big deal really, we didn’t come to watch TV anyway. The grounds are beautiful. Made us think of Hawaii. The gym was great, used it multiple times. The pool was great as well. We used the water taxi to get to the parks and we loved it. We didn’t eat at any onsite restaurants, though they looked nice.

Wow wow wow where to begin. We booked a Club Level room for two adults and a 17 year old for one night. On arrival the beautiful smell of the lobby hits you as you walk across the bridge to the reception. Staff were superbly professional and welcoming from the moment we arrived to the moment we sadly left. We were checked in early and allocated a room which was very helpful and of course only due to the fact they had one available. The room was spacious and clean with a coffee maker, fridge and aircon that worked nicely. The bathroom had gorgeous products and top end ones that you'd expect from a premium hotel. Now to the club lounge my goodness it was worth the price simply for the service we received in there. From the early morning on our arrival day to the evening reception and food to breakfast the last day your staff took every interaction as if it was the most important chat of their day each and every time. Aspen made our entire holiday with how she took care of us. She always passed by offering us any more and to let her know if we did indeed any thing else. She took the time to create a mocktail for my Niece who was celebrating her 18th birthday we all cried at her kindess and haven't stopped talking about her since we left please ensure she receives some praise from us and let her know about this review. The evening reception had really good quality food and drinks. With two whites, red a rose and sparkling. There was plentiful beer and cider options with an array of soft/fizzy drinks also. Breakfast was much the same with top quality food which filled us up for the day. The express passes are of course what brought us to the hotel and they speak for themselves but the staff and little touches are what will ensure we have to visit on every trip from here on in. Thank you Aspen and your team for creating life long memories for us.

Just a heads up for anyone considering a 1-night stay at Loews Royal Pacific while visiting Universal: apparently the hotel’s procedure is to put 1-night reservations in Tower 1, directly under active construction. Ask me how I know. 🙃 My sisters and I were in Orlando for a longer trip (13 days between Disney + Universal + Orlando Informer), and after 3 nights at Endless Summer - Dockside, I booked one night at Royal Pacific since we’d never stayed at a Universal premium hotel before. I got what I thought was a decent AP rate and figured it’d be fun to experience it and maybe consider it for future trips. To be fair: all of the staff were great, Express Passes were awesome, boat transportation was helpful, and the quick walk to the parks was so nice. Overall vibe? Excellent…until 8:00am the next morning. We had been up late the night before hanging out together and planned to sleep in a bit before our 11am checkout and one last park day before our flight that afternoon. Instead, we were woken up by tapping sounds above us that quickly turned into very obvious hammering, followed by a literal saw. This wasn’t faint background noise - this was full-on construction happening directly above our room. While my sisters stayed in bed in disbelief, I got dressed and went upstairs. Turns out our room was right below the lobby floor, where half the elevators were now blocked off with caution tape and construction crews were actively working. In the elevator, another guest from our floor confirmed he’d been woken up too. We both went to the Concierge desk and spoke with a manager. He was polite and apologetic, so I tried my best to not be a full on Karen even with the situation being so frustrating. He said we should have been told about the construction at check-in (we weren’t). If we had been, we would’ve immediately requested a different room. When I pressed further, he admitted this is standard procedure: 1-night reservations are placed there on purpose!! He said it wasn’t his decision and that they’ve had a lot of prior complaints. I was honestly floored that this was openly acknowledged as policy - knowingly giving short stays a worse experience. I requested a full refund because the situation was ridiculous. He refunded half the stay, saying the other half couldn’t be refunded since we’d already used Express Passes. I get that we used the passes, but I also would not have purchased them on my own. That was one of the reasons why we even decided to stay at that hotel. To try and make up for that, he gave us 3 breakfast buffet vouchers. Minor cherry on top: he didn’t mention the restaurant closes at 11am. We checked out and showed up at 11:25am…closed. Thankfully, the restaurant manager was an absolute MVP and let us quickly grab plates before shutting everything down. That part was genuinely appreciated. This stay was the night of December 14, 2025, so construction may be done by now. But I wanted to put this out there for anyone considering Royal Pacific - especially for just one night. It could be amazing…or you could wake up to a Home Depot demo soundtrack at 8am.

Universal Express Passes! That was the biggest perk in staying at this hotel. We skipped the long lines at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure for every day we were staying at the hotel. Average wait times for the express was about 20 mins, but most of them were walk-ons. Regular lines were up to 300 mins! Our kids rode Velocicoaster 14 times with the passes. Can't forget the one hour early entry. Take advantage of it and go on those open rides. Don't worry about the other rides. You can use your express passes for them. Epic early entry is available. Highly suggest getting the express pass, so you're not burdened to wait for Harry Potter ride or Super Mario rides. Another perk to the stay is the location. You can easily walk to CityWalk, which is right next to Universal Studios and Islands. There's also a water taxi, which is a nice ride, but it did take a while between boats. Access to Epic was shuttle only. Since you have early entry, be sure to get in line for the shuttle 1.5 hrs. For example, if the park early entry is 9 am, shuttles will start 8 am and run every 30 minutes. But get in line at 7:30 or 7:45. Line gets long and you might miss the first bus. Rooms were decent. A bit run down. Some paint chips and showers need recaulking. But overall, it's still a nice stay. Prices at the hotel for food is expensive! As expected, but we didn't anticipate how expensive. To give you an idea, one coffee and breakfast sandwich was about $20 with tax. Restaurants were also expensive. We Doordashed. That saved us a bit but not a big difference. As for customer service, great!! We mentioned this was our first trip to Universal. The front desk lady gave us a complimentary snack basket! You also get a free lei and hot cocoas on the weekend. Most everyone was very friendly. We only had a rude encounter at the vacation planning desk. Overall, book this place! We'd definitely come back again.