We Did Not Enjoy Universal's Food Scene: Here's Why
We're back to our regularly scheduled programming, and, as we said before, we've come back to say more about our experiences with dining at Universal.
For a little background, we are admittedly Disney people, as you might have noticed from the name of the blog. We've been to Disney more times than we now count, and we've only been to Universal Orlando twice. So it is fair to say we know the dining scene inside and out at Disney and are unfamiliar with it at Universal. But we research, and months before our Universal trip in November 2022, we had browsed all of the quick service food menus Universal made available on its app, so we felt we had a pretty good sense of where we might find food.
Our extra diligence in browsing menus ahead of time was because we follow a ketogenic diet, and we know theme parks are home of sugary temptations. We weren't so worried about being tempted as we were about choosing a place to eat where there just wasn't anything on the menu for us at all. Grains were out of the question, as were sugars. But we're happy to take something off a bun it came in if that's what we have to do.
What we found immediately upon browsing menus at both Universal and Disney before arriving was that Disney has put in significant effort over the past decade to provide healthy and tasty options at most of its eateries. In contrast, I was disappointed in what was available at Universal. Very few salads were to be found, for example, when Disney usually has one on the every menu. My options felt like they were quickly reduced to burger and hot dog type places. There were a few other places that held interest like the Leaky Cauldron and Thunder Falls Terrace, so I also marked those as possibilities.
And here's how this played out:
Day 1 at Universal
Lines at entrance were chaos causing an hour long delay because the self-serve ticket Will Call ticket kiosks were all broken. Nobody was telling anyone they were broken. There was no sign posted. So every guest stood in one line to get to a kiosk that then failed to work, so they could stand in another line to talk to a person and get their tickets. Not a great first impression. No time for breakfast, so we ate breakfast bars I had brought along and did some rides and shows.
At lunch time, we found ourselves in Diagon Alley, so I looked into Leaky Cauldron. Diagon Alley was packed at about this time, and the line for Leaky Cauldron went out the door and down an alley between buildings. We got in line and I asked the person a few groups ahead of us how long they'd been waiting so far. I was told 40 minutes. And this was 3/4 of the way down the line from the front. It was time to find another option.
We moved on to the nearest place that had anything on the menu I could eat, which was Richter's Burgers. We encountered another line going out the door, and a staff member loudly proclaiming that credit card machines were down so they were only taking cash. Feeling like Universal needed to invest in IT at this point, I asked the staff member if mobile order was still an option using a card and was told yes that was a good idea and in fact it would likely save me an hour in line. An hour! So, we happily found a table and put in our mobile order.
I felt pretty confident in how mobile order would work. I've been doing it at Disney for 5 years anywhere they allow it. In my opinion, it is the best thing since sliced bread. You preload your payment information, then when you want food, you find your restaurant, select a return window from available options, put in your choices and order. When you approach the restaurant during your window, you press a button to tell them you're near, and the order is ready very shortly after. Then, you bypass all lines and go to one of the marked pick up windows and grab your eats. So easy. Quite often at Disney I've been surprised at how fast the order is actually ready. The longest I waited on our November 2022 trip was about 20 minutes.
At Universal, mobile order does not work like that. Some steps are the same, like I preloaded my payment information, selected the restaurant, and selected our items. But there was no pick up window to select, nor any indication of how long the order might take (at Disney, you get status bars telling you the order is in progress). Nevertheless, I thought, that's fine. It can't be that bad. I put in an order for two burgers and some fries, and we waited at our table. And waited. And waited. Once again, I asked the people next to me who were also waiting at a table for their food how long they'd been waiting. An hour, they said. Shortly after, they got their food.
And it was true, even mobile ordering, we waited over an hour for our food at Richter's. But once we got food, all was good, right? Well, a burger is a burger, but there are good burgers and there are bad burgers. For a place that has "burgers" in its name, this was not a good burger. In fact, even for a place that doesn't have 'burgers" in its name, this was not good. Even for a burger I could make at home.... anyway, you get the point. It was a very thin patty, and it was overcooked to the point where it was a little bit rubbery. I can't really compare it to a quick service burger I had at Disney because Disney has so many quick service options, I never was stuck with a burger (I ate kebabs, cheese plates, salads, rotisserie chicken, stir fries, etc. at Disney). I did have a burger at The Plaza restaurant which is table service at Disney, and I had expressed my disappointment in that burger too (it was under-seasoned and just not the best burger), but that burger beat the heck out of the burger at Richter's.
After about a two hour chunk was taken out of our day between finding lunch, waiting for lunch, and eating lunch, we moved on. The next stop was several candy shops. We went to a candy shop near Springfield (the Simpson's area) and I was delighted by the cute minion cake pops and cupcakes. Adorable. I couldn't eat them, but I wanted to. I bought some dark chocolate covered nuts, which was borderline allowed on my diet, because I was still hungry. And I treated my daughter to a bag of jelly bellies, and we moved on to Islands of Adventure while we snacked on our treats. Even for an uninspired candy shop stuck in the corner of a gift shop, we were happy. My chocolate covered nuts saved the day.
Minion candy apples at a small candy shop at Universal Studios
At Islands of Adventure, we also hopped into Honeyduke's in Hogsmeade. Now, this was an inspired candy shop! I adored it. Shelves full of a variety of treats ranging from pretty standard to extremely unique and themed. It reminded me of the candy shop I liked so much at Disney Hollywood Studios called Sweet Spells. I had always thought Sweet Spells was a million times better than the Main Street Confectionary, which sold out to Starbucks and has good but somewhat uninspired treats. But Honeydukes was even better than Sweet Spells. From the incredibly themed decor to the massive variety of treats, I was in heaven. Even though I can't eat sweets. We came out of there with a bag full of various treats from fizzy chocolates to spicy chocolates and everything in between.
I include the stories of the candy shops to be fair. These weren't meals, but they are part of the "food scene". And treats are a very important part of the food scene at Universal. In fact, they are where Universal excels. Universal has outstanding treats (and drinks) and is on par with if not better than Disney in that arena. If only that were the only food that mattered.
Just a tiny part of the seriousness that is Honeydukes. There were also shelves and shelves of less perishable treats. And there was ice cream.
At dinnertime, we decided to leave the parks and get takeout from our rental rather than repeat the lunch situation, so that's what we did.
Day 2 at Universal
Again, we breakfasted on bars on the way to the parks so that once in Universal, we were able to enjoy rides, and enjoy rides we did, knocking off several rides in just the first two hours the park was open. Will Call kiosks were AGAIN down, by the way, but this time I knew the signs to look for (not literal signs... that would have been helpful, but no) and joined the other line much earlier in the process. As crowds began to pick up we caught what we believed to be the last train from Hogsmeade to Diagon Alley that would post a less than 70 minute wait for the rest of the day (I believe we were correct, checking wait times later in the day). In Diagon Alley, husband decided he required butterbeer. Some experts on the train with us told us that the "warm" was better than the frozen, but that we should try both and decide for ourselves. This is how we ended up with three butterbeers between two people (who could drink them. I mostly abstained.) Now, although I was not going to have a whole butterbeer to myself, I did want a sip. And that sip was glorious. Seriously the best non-alcoholic sweet drink I think I'd ever tasted in a theme park, and I do love a Lefou's Brew and a Blooming Nightflower at Disney. So once again, serious props to Universal in the sweets and treats realm. They really knock it out of the park there.
But a while later came lunch. And while not quite the same theme played out this time, a similar theme did. This time, husband chose the lunch spot. He really wanted a Flaming Moe, so we ended up at Moe's Tavern/ Cletus's Chicken Shack. It looks small from the outside, but on the inside, there's an entire hidden food court in there! Once again, I mobile ordered. There was a caprese salad on the menu! So I mobile ordered some pizza for the others and the caprese salad for me. Oh, and a Flaming Moe.
This mobile order pick up was ready in about 15 minutes so that wasn't bad at all. What was confusing was that inside this particular eatery there were several mobile order pick up points because again, it was one building that was sort of like a food court, but with apparently several eateries inside of it. But whatever, we found the pick up window and the food was ready.
Let's start with the positives. Husband, who hates orange soda and yet insisted on a Flaming Moe (whose basis is orange soda), quite liked the Flaming Moe. It's fun, it looks cool, and it's quite a bit more syrupy than a regular orange soda (if you can even imagine that). So once again, Universal knows what they are doing with sweets and drinks.
But my "salad" made me want to cry. I got a plastic container (think school lunch container) with some lettuce topped with two slices of tomato and two sliced of mozzarella. And no dressing (they forgot to give it to me). Much less than a caprese salad, it was like lettuce with some garnish. It was not filling, and it was not worth whatever I paid for it which was over $5.
I was still hungry, so I ordered a foot long hot dog from another place within this food court. I was surprised when I was summoned to pick it up within a minute. Again, different pick up window, but whatever, I found my pick up spot and.... no food was ready. Instead, there was a crowd milling in a tiny corral, all looking at their phones. Again, I asked someone in this crowd if they were mobile pick up too. They told me yes, and they'd been summoned, but no food was actually ready, and that every 10 minutes or so, someone working there would come out of the door by the kitchen and yell out the order and give the food to someone. Great. I watched the kitchen for a while. Literally the wheel of orders was overflowing. Two staff members were rushing around. The other three or so were standing around doing, at least to the observer, basically nothing. Sometimes they'd look at the order slips and then choose a different one. Since they did hot dogs, I'm not sure what was up with that, but the impression I got was that there was chaos in the kitchen. After 25 minutes of standing in the corral, since now that was the only way to know if my food was ready rather than mobile ordering working like it should and summoning you WHEN the food is ready, I got my hot dog, which I stripped off the bun and ate. It was fine. It was a hot dog. It was the chaos in the kitchen and the stupidity of the mobile ordering system not actually working in any way that was helpful that annoyed me.
Dinner was Margaritaville. This was our only table service dining on or near Universal, and it's not run by Universal, so I can't really pass judgement for or against Universal based on our experience there. It was fine. The service was slower than usual, but that was fine. We weren't in a hurry.
Why Universal can only serve burgers, pizza, and hot dogs for actual food, and yet can do THIS amazingness for beverages is beyond me. Dear Universal, make your food game match your beverage game, please.
Here are my take-aways:
Is mobile ordering new to Universal? It seems inconsistent and to not actually work like it should. Universal needs to add return windows so you know when you can expect your food and so they can distribute their work during the lunch rush, and they need to add a status indicator. Also, they need to not summon people before food is actually ready as that defeats the whole purpose.
Kitchen chaos. Maybe I came at a time they were training people? But it's really disheartening for a guest to see people just standing around in an open kitchen when we've been waiting a while for our food. I feel like Universal was not only short-staffed in some areas, but also that the staff they did have weren't working in an organized fashion. I see that pretty rarely at Disney.
Universal needs to up their healthy food game. That salad was an insult. Universal is clearly excelling in sweets and treats, but people watching their weight, diabetics, or people who just want a healthy option need to eat too. There needs to be a healthy option at every eatery. And it needs to be AS GOOD as the less healthy options and not just some lettuce with a few garnishes thrown on. I came away from these two days feeling like I'd might as well just not try to eat meals at Universal because the healthy options were few and far between and didn't even taste good. Next time I would probably just pack a cooler, especially since lockers are available if you're going to ride something.
Disney, on the other hand, needs to increase the variety of sweets they serve. Get a little more inspired Disney, and find something to really compete with the butterbeer. Blue and green milk are yummy, but they don't compete. We need something amazing.
What do you think? Am I being unfair to Universal? Tell us about what we got wrong, what we should have done, or whether you agree with us by commenting on our Facebook page, where you can follow us to see when new posts are available each week. Until next time...
Comentarios