Universal Studios Florida (The Aventura)

We’ve stayed at The Aventura Hotel twice now and it is by far our favorite place to book in Orlando. Built in 2018, it’s sleek and modern and has become our home away from home when visiting both Disney and Universal.

First and foremost, the views from the rooms are incredible. The floor to ceiling glass windows make it feel like you’re staying in a luxury hotel in Vegas. As you can see in the video below, our room overlooked Volcano Bay and the pool. Make sure to ask for a room on one of the upper floors… we were actually placed on a lower level this last trip and requested to be moved up. It’s truly just not as magical when you’re closer to the ground.

The above video was taken from our room after returning from an evening at the parks. And the image below was taken during sunrise the next morning. Stunning…

For us, The Aventura is the perfect place to call home after a day of running around. The rooms have the best layouts out of any hotel we’ve ever booked. You can see in the below photos how there are two queen beds, but they aren’t next to one another and have quite a bit of space in between.

The floor to ceiling glass windows encompass the entire wall so no matter where you are sitting or reclining you have a gorgeous view. And of course there are blackout shades. I appreciate how clean everything is. Most hotels in Orlando are carpeted and I love how the Aventura has actual floors. Everything is new and streamlined. There’s an iPad that controls the flatscreen TV (which is mounted in front of the windows). We were even able to check out through the iPad.

The lobby has a Starbucks and several quick serve restaurants where you can grab a burger or pizza or bottle of wine. To be honest, the burger wasn’t great. But staying somewhere with a Starbucks in the lobby saves significant time when you’re trying to make rope drop at 8am. There is also a cute clothing boutique that sells Universal merch. We ended up buying Shane a shirt from there when we stayed during Halloween time and it’s now his go-to shirt when we visit the parks!

In the above video we are all sitting in the Aventura lobby waiting for our room to be cleaned. The kids are a bit delirious… and Miller’s hair is crazy from it being up in a pony all day.

Things we don’t love about staying here?

If you’re looking to spend significant time by the pool, I would recommend Sapphire Falls. It’s actually next door to The Aventura and costs the same amount. That being said, you are trading off the awesome room with a view for an awesome pool (and stunning restaurant). The Aventura has a restaurant on the roof but it’s more of a bar atmosphere. Because we live in Florida, we try to really focus on spending our time in the parks instead of lounging by the pool, so we prefer the more modern, spacious, relaxing room at The Aventura over the pool at Sapphire Falls.

Another thing… The Aventura and Sapphire Falls are both considered “budget” hotels. This is misleading. The reason they cost significantly less than Royal Pacific or Portofino Bay is because they do not come with the free express passes. You’ll be paying around $200 a night instead of $400 a night. That being said, the price of the Express Passes are built into the higher priced hotels so you pay significantly more when you stay there. They aren’t actually more luxurious. The only hotel we’ve stayed at that has been significantly more luxurious was The Four Seasons Orlando and they are now charging upwards of $700 a night during the off-season. You can read about our experience staying there by clicking here. If it’s in your budget (and you’re doing Disney and planning on spending significant time at the resort), it’s worth the hefty price tag…

In general though, if you choose to stay at a Disney property, you will pay a lot more for a room that is much older and not nearly as nice as the Universal Hotels (other than The Four Seasons). There are exceptions to this but you really need to dig around quite a bit and definitely read the reviews.

We usually stay at The Aventura when going to Universal or Disney. And we loved staying at Sapphire Falls during our first trip to Universal because we flew in from Connecticut and the stunning pool area was a huge draw. We also loved taking the free boat from Sapphire Falls to the Universal Parks. (To read about our experience at Sapphire Falls, click here.)

Also worth mentioning, because the complementary boat shuttle is such a magical way to travel between the hotel and the parks… it is worth taking an extra walk from The Aventura to Sapphire Falls (they share the same parking lot). You literally just walk across the parking lot, through the Sapphire Falls lobby, down the winding stone staircase, and hop onto the boat. The Aventura does offer a complementary bus to the parks but we will be exclusively using the Sapphire Falls boat from now on, even if it means a little extra walking.