For my sons 13th birthday we went to Orlando, a place I've always loved and wanted him to experience the same. We stayed at 3 hotels for our two week vacation, and Aventura was by far our favourite. First impressions are being very open spaced, floor to ceiling windows with lots of light in both lobby and the rooms. There are 6 lifts, so you won't have to wait long for one becoming available, all operated inside by a touchscreen keypad. A very helpful lady named "Genesis" checked us in, perfectly well explained to us about the hotel and the shuttle transfers etc. We were a little early for checking in, but safely left our bags with the attendant and was updated perfectly well via text message when the room was ready.
The food options at their named "urban pantry" are great, we had breakfast there every morning, be it an all American breakfast, or simply croissants and cereal. When ordering freshly cooked food, you're given both a receipt and a buzzer which will go off once your food is ready to collect (place the tracker with it's silver pins face down on the table so you can see/hear it buzz more easily). The main dinner meals were excellent, so much so that one evening after enjoying the "Steak plate" I had to walk back to the cashier desk, and give compliments to the team of chefs. Absolutely delicious. Note that there are 2 drink stations available, either for your purchased soda cups, or simply free water. These same machines can be found inside the Universal theme parks with water available all the time. I would suggest bringing an insulated flask with you, as that's one thing I missed not having to keep water cold and would have been extremely useful, instead of re-using standard plastic bottles which obviously got warm in no time.
Late evenings when coming back from the theme parks we sometimes opted for one of their pizzas from their flamed grill, again really nice, and sometimes used their gelato (ice cream). Note when you ask for one scoop, it's the UK version of getting two scoops. Portions are nice and big! We had two scoops each the first time, and took a while to finish it but of course we weren't complaining. The rooms all have a tablet which operates the lighting and TV, amongst other useful information provided to you. Which takes a day to get used to but still works well, pressing "BRIGHT" to turn all lights on, and pressing again to turn them all off. The A/C can also be controlled using the tablet, but just use the standard wall controller above it for quicker use. We had an issue with 2 lights not working, when reported they were fixed that same day when we came back from the parks. On the roof on the top floor 17, is a bar named "bar 17 bistro", we never are or drank there but did take in the night time views one evening where you can see all the firework displays in the distance of Disney.
There are a few shuttles going to City walk for universal and islands of adventure, and also a shuttle to epic. We used the epic shuttle, which was perfectly fine. We opted to either walk along the garden walk which takes around 15mins, or you can walk across to Sapphire Falls which is what we did the majority of the time using their water taxi service. It takes 5mins from Aventuras hotel doors to reaching the water taxi station, which is literally turning right out of Aventura, following one of two paths over to Sapphire Falls, walking down this grand staircase to the ground floor, straight passed their restaurant and out some doors where you'll then find the water taxi station on your left. It's not exclusive for hotel guests, it's pretty much used by anyone who needs to go to/from citywalk and whichever hotel you want to be dropped off to on the return. This was by far the best way to travel into citywalk for universal and islands of adventure, the drop off/collection point is opposite the NBC sports bar and grill. If you use the bus shuttle, it'll drop you off at the car park at the far end of the walkway into citywalk. Note that if there's a thunderstorm within 5 miles I think it was, then the water taxi service shuts down for safety precautions.
Checking out on the day as sad as it was after such a great time, was extremely easy with an email sent to us enabling you to checkout online. The only one negative thing I can think of to improve is the outdoor games near the pool. There is a free table tennis game with bats and balls, but everything else has a card payment machine. However we had no idea how much those games cost with no prices on them, so didn't bother swiping a card for an unknown fee.
Overall, I have no doubt we will check the room prices for Aventura first before any other hotel in the universal Orlando area. There isn't much of a theme at this hotel, if any, it's simply a modern clean feel with little robots cleaning floors which can even deliver items to your room (which we never did), and thinking about it there was not many families with children staying here at all from what we saw because of this perhaps modern clean feel. Some people may moan about these facts and want to be in imagination land, but for me this was perfect after being out all day. I loved how chilled and calm the whole place was after a busy day at the parks, there were plenty of dining tables available at all times. If you have no interest in colourful vibrant theming, and are pretty much using this simply as a sleepover to get to places, this is the perfect location, and taxi services are way cheaper than London (tip ensure you have LYFT also downloaded along with the UBER app, as I found both have differing prices, with moreso LYFT being cheaper). Volcano Bay is literally a few minutes walk away also which is extremely convenient, where busses are dropping off guests you can see from the dining area, with a tunnel that goes underneath and into the entrance of Volcano.
Maybe we came at a perfect time, or our floor was great with other guests as there was ZERO NOISE during our 7 days here. Therefore we absolutely loved our stay and miss it already, hope to be back soon.
