25 Sep Loews Royal Pacific Resort Review: Is It Worth It for Families?
If you’re weighing whether to pay the premium for an on-site Universal Orlando hotel, this one’s for you. We stayed at Loews Royal Pacific Resort for our recent trip, and I want to give you the honest, no-fluff version: what the room is actually like, what the perks actually get you, and whether it’s worth the price tag for a family.
Short answer: yes. But let me walk you through why.
Check-In & Lobby
The first thing that struck us walking in was the theming. Loews Royal Pacific leans into a Balinese-inspired design, and it’s genuinely distinctive rather than generic resort décor, thatched-look ceilings, dark wood beams, and incredible tall bamboo lantern fixtures hanging throughout the open-air lobby. It sets a completely different tone than a standard hotel check-in, and the boys were taking it all in too.
The lobby itself is multi-level, with balcony walkways overlooking the space below, and it’s an easy, comfortable spot to linger if you’re waiting on anything, checking in, waiting for an available room, or just letting the kids explore a little before heading to the room.
The Room
Rooms are clean, comfortable, and a bit larger than we expected going in. The bathroom has a nice amount of counter space (genuinely useful for me… yes, I wear make-up even for 90 degree park days!), good lighting, and the kind of thick towels that make a hotel bathroom feel like a step up. The room itself has a cozy little desk by the window, which ended up being a corner for you guessed it… more stuff!
No complaints about the room, it’s comfortable, well-maintained, and does exactly what you need it to do after a long park day.
Pool
The pool is on-site, family-friendly, and honestly one of the better hotel pools we’ve been to. But here’s the detail that surprised us: Universal’s on-site resorts allow pool hopping between several of the connected hotels, with an actual walkway linking the properties. So if you want a change of scenery on a rest day, you’re not stuck at just your own hotel’s pool, you can walk over and try another, we did the Hard Rock on our rest day, which was really fun, with a live DJ. It might be a small thing, but it turned our one rest day into something that felt like its own mini adventure instead of “just staying at the hotel.”
Getting to the Parks
This is what I’ve gotten asked about the most, so here’s the real breakdown:
- Islands of Adventure & Universal Studios: both are reachable by a short water taxi ride or an easy walk. We used both the water taxi and the walking path, and they’re both genuinely quick, which is exactly what you want when you’re rushing to the park early in the morning and dying to get back to a shower 12 hours later! Is that just us?! No long wait, no complicated transfer, just a short, scenic ride or walk that the kids never complained about.
- CityWalk: also an easy walk or water taxi ride (in fact, the same exact walk or ride), so dinner options and evening plans are simple to get to without needing a car.
- Epic Universe: this one requires the shuttle bus, since it’s Universal’s newest park and located separately from the original two. The shuttle is easy and reliable, it just takes a little longer than the walk/water taxi to the classic parks. Plan for a bit more transit time on Epic Universe days. And by a little more time, I mean 20 minutes, instead of 10.
Early Park Admission (The Real Kicker)
Here’s the perk that actually makes the price tag worth it: Early Park Admission. Staying on-site gets you into the parks before general admission opens, and if you’ve ever done a theme park with kids, you know that extra hour before the crowds arrive is worth more than almost anything else you can pay for. At least if you’ve got morning birdies, like we do.
But the detail that really sealed it for us: Express Passes for Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios are included with your stay at Loews Royal Pacific. That is a significant perk, Express Passes are expensive to buy separately, and having them built into your hotel stay really does change how much of the parks you can actually experience in a day. I’d call this the single best reason to book this hotel over an off-site option.
The one caveat: those included Express Passes do not extend to Epic Universe. If unlimited-ride access to the newest park matters to you, that’s something to budget for separately. And it’ll cost you!
One thing that made all of this easy: we didn’t have to figure out the booking logistics ourselves. Our trip was planned by Theresa at Storybound Journeys (@storyboundjourneys) if you’d rather have someone else handle making sure you get the right room category, the included Express Passes, and all the on-site perks set up correctly, she’s who we used and who I’d recommend. She’s an absolute wealth of information, incredibly attentive, and sends tons of tips and tricks leading up to your trip, definitely the kind of planning help that actually makes a difference once you’re there.
The Verdict
Yes — worth it for our family, and here’s the short version of why:
- On-site dining options
- The pool (and pool-hopping between resorts) made our rest day feel like it’s own experience, not a letdown
- Getting to Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios, and CityWalk was so, so easy, water taxi or a short walk, no car needed
- The shuttle to Epic Universe works fine, just budget a little extra transit time
- Early Park Admission plus included Express Passes for IOA and USF is the real winner, that combination alone justifies the on-site price tag for us
If you’re trying to decide whether an on-site Universal hotel is worth the splurge, Loews Royal Pacific Resort gets a genuine yes from our family. Just go in knowing Epic Universe is a slightly different logistical experience than the original two parks.
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