Universal Endless Summer Resort - Dockside Inn and Suites

Stayed at Endless summer Dockside inn. The hotel is right by International drive and is great for visiting the parks universal studios Valcano bay and the new universal park Epic. The hotel provides a regular shuttle service to the parks which is great and the drivers are so nice and friendly. A nice hotel and centrally located for restaurants and has cseven eleven store which bakes fresh pizza and sells all supermarket essentials. The variety is great and is so much better than Wallgreens which is more expensive. Hotel staff are nice and friendly and the restaurant in hotel area is spacious and has lots of choice. Food is made fresh and is nice. The dockside is ideal for families visiting the universal parks. A great stay by far 🇺🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧 Read less

Mostly here to balance out the "The Key change was the worst thing in the world and all the employees sucked" reviews. I was there during key-pocalypse with my family. On check-in, we were told that they were working on changing some of the locks, and we may need to swap out our keys at some point during our stay, and that they would text us if that was the case. I will also note that according to some of the folks in line, not everyone got this notice, so I'm assuming they only gave it out to the rooms they were planning on changing over and not the entire hotel, which makes sense, as from my understanding, it was not planned for the whole hotel to lose key access and there was an error made by a third party. After our first day in the parks, we, like the rest of the hotel, were unable to get into our room (note - we did not receive the text we were promised, which was slightly disappointing). Security came and let my family into the room while I waited for the key exchange. Now. It was not a pleasant experience in that line (minus the very chill people I chatted with for awhile). I was there for an hour. Which was the longest I had waited in a line all day (yay for express passes). HOWEVER. The line was made significantly longer because guests were arguing with staff (who were truly just doing their best) so much, and taking their frustration at the situation out at the desk staff (at one point, someone tried to start some sort of chant I couldn't understand). I saw people standing there arguing with staff (probably closer to verbally abusing the staff, if we're being honest) for upwards of 15 minutes - when I finally got up to the front of the line, it maybe took 3 minutes, max, and that included the very nice staff person explaining the situation to me on my request. I then emailed customer service expressing my disappointment with the lack of communication surrounding the mass lock out, and within the week, I received an email saying they would process a refund for that night (which I had not asked for, I will add!) which was great to see. Overall, the staff was very nice, and was doing their best to get everyone into their rooms as quickly as possible, and was trying to rectify a third party's mistake as best they could, and pretty much handed out a refund without a second glance. Onto the actual hotel itself: It worked well for what me and my family needed: A place to crash between parks. The beds were pretty comfy. Beds were made, garbage taken out, and towels replaced daily. The suite room gave us some privacy when needed, and we didn't really have any issues with noise, though this may be dependent on where you are in the hotel and who shares walls with you. The shuttles to and from the parks and the early park entry were a MAJOR win, and we probably won't go with out them again. Dockside and Surfside are situated pretty much halfway between epic and the main campus, which is great for getting to epic quickly. We didn't take advantage of the pool, or the onsite restaurant at all, but it seemed pretty much like what you'd expect. According to my sister, the on-site starbucks was actually about 20 cents more expensive for her go-to drink than the ones in the parks. The delivery for purchases made in park was great! We didn't make too many big purchases because we were all flying with limited luggage space, but if we had to do it again, we probably would take advantage of it. Check-in, park pass pick up, and check-out were painless and fast, and the folks at the desks were great at laying out everything we needed to know and answering our questions. TL;DR: very kind staff, neat space, easy check-in/out, a very unfortunate key situation, and park perks made for a quite successful stay with a few hiccups that would have been smoothed over with just a tad more communication than we actually got. We would stay here again (though we are looking into some of the fancier hotels purely for the included express passes) but its not going to knock your socks off with themeing or amenities if that's what you're looking for. Read less

As I write this review I am standing in a long queue of people who are locked out of their rooms. The reason? The hotel reset all room keys at one time, in a planned action, without telling anyone when it would happen. When we checked in a week ago the front desk mentioned in passing that we might need to have a key reset and made nothing of it. Now , I have been in line for over an hour and probably still an hour from the desk. I contacted Tui, not interested !! Totally shocking customer service and nobody, hotel or Tui, seems to care ! Read less

This was our first time staying at a universal resort property and I really enjoyed my stay. The pros were that this hotel is really nice and it has a walgreens,Ihop, and 7-11 station within walking distance. Upon check-in, the front desk representatives were extremely nice and hospitable they even let us check in early which was a plus for us. Because we were celebrating my birthday, they gave me a birthday badge to wear, and I received a free treat at the food court, which I thought was a very kind gesture. The hotel has food on site, it kinda reminded me of cafeteria setting so that was very convenient because we could grab breakfast before we left for the parks and grab dinner at the hotel with out having to leave the resort. We didn't move our car at all the entire stay, which was awesome for us. The resort is pretty big, and the pool area was very nice, and there were on duty lifeguards , they even have a bar at the pool. The hotel also offers early park admission and shuttles to and from all the universal parks, but the line gets long very quickly, so you need to be in line for the shuttle early. Now for the cons- the rooms are nice but we had a connecting room which we did not like and the walls are very thin , I actually awoke to the alarm clock in the next guest room because the walls are paper thin and we could hear everything that was going on in their room. the beds are decent, but our shower water was barely lukewarm I am not sure if the hotel keeps their shower temps turned down to prevent children from getting scolded in the shower, but I think the water should be warmer. Our a/c in our room never really got cold it remained cool, which was fine with us, but it may be a problem to others after spending a day at the hot parks. The floors in the room do not have carpet, which we didn't like, but I think many modern hotels are doing away with carpeted hotel rooms. The food court in the hotel offered a variety of different foods but it sort of tasted like cafeteria food and it was not the best but it was convenient and the food court also gets very crowded. Overall the resort was very nice and budget friendly especially for families and I would recommend Dockside and the next time I visit Universal I plan to stay at one of the Endless Resort properties. Read less