Disappointing for the price point
Jun 2022
| Maver17
My biggest issue with this hotel is the lack of personnel. It’s like ghosts are in charge. We would walk across the courtyard to/from the water taxi, and not ONE time was there anyone stationed in the area that could answer a question. This hotel is huge and we often found ourselves lost between buildings, but there is no one to even ask for directions. When we would finally locate an employee, the lack of training (or perhaps, lack of interest in helping) showed immediately, as the response would be “not sure” or they would point us vaguely in a direction. On one occasion, when the weather forced the water taxis to shut down, we were directed to “take the bus” by the concierge. Again, no directions as to where the bus was located. We walked outside and found the area where guests wait for the bus, but there are no personnel stationed there, and there are no posted instructions. With buses going to various places, we weren’t even sure we were getting on the right bus. Once on the bus, it was confusing with no directions from the bus driver and a complete lack of interest from him in answering questions about where we should get off to find our destination (I understand this is a Universal bus and not a Portofino specific bus, but it just proves my later point about staffing at Universal). During a very heavy rainstorm, this proved very problematic with our young kids and resulted in us almost getting off at the wrong stop. I understand the staffing shortages occurring globally, but if you are asking guests to pay high prices for a hotel like Portofino, you have to station at least ONE person in a key area to answer basic questions. The issue of lack of staff/untrained staff seems to be a problem through all of Universal’s parks and hotels, as we chatted with other guests that had similar feedback. However, this deficiency was most notable when we compared it to our visit to the Magic Kingdom. During that park visit, there were many personnel walking around and at least pretending they are happy to speak to you and helping with questions. While not across the board, the Universal staff (hotel and otherwise) seemed disinterested and unhelpful.
A few tips/thoughts:
⁃ Bring a lanyard with a plastic insert so you can put your express pass (which doubles as your room key) around your neck instead of getting it in and out of your pocket at the rides. They probably should give one to guests at check in but they do not. However, everyone besides us somehow knew to bring them (or they bought the lanyard somewhere along the way).
⁃ If your kids have been spoiled at water parks in the past, don’t assume that the water slide at the Portofino pool will get you very far. My kids got bored very quickly and what I thought would eat up an afternoon only lasted two hours. There is a VERY small arcade (and they blew through $40 in video games in a half hour), so that helped a bit.
⁃ Not all the rides at Universal parks take express passes. For example, we visited on a day that there was early admission for Islands of Adventure for those guests staying at Universal hotels. We got there early, we were in the park at 8:00am exactly when it opened, and by the time we got to Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure at 8:08am, the wait was 100 minutes long. There is no option for express passes on that ride. So if you want to ride Hagrid’s, go there first before anything else (although if you have small children or ones easily scared, you may want to skip it…it’s a pretty fast/scary ride).
⁃ Bring a Fanny pack, not a backpack to the parks. You can’t bring a backpack on many of the rides so you have to secure a locker to store your backpack. It’s a real pain in the neck to find a locker with a million other people and half the time I couldn’t get the locker back open so we had to find a non existent employee and try to remember our locker number. When you are on your fourth locker of the day, trying to remember your most recent locker number is no easy feat. I didn’t even understand how the locker pricing worked as it was so crowded and difficult to even maneuver to the machine.
⁃ I debate whether the club level at Portfino is really worth it. I think if you are doing the evening service with drinks, dinner, etc it is worth the additional cost but if you will just be coming for the breakfast, I don’t think it is worth it. You can get similar food at Starbucks downstairs and save yourself the extra money. If you are trying to do early park admission, it’s not like you are going to have a leisurely breakfast anyway, so just grab something at the Starbucks and go.
⁃ With the exception of one or two employees, I have never seen more disengaged employees in a club level at a hotel. One gentlemen handling the afternoon snacks couldn’t even muster up a “hello.” We have stayed in club levels at all different hotels and have at least gotten a smile from the majority of them. Don’t expect many “hot tips” or pleasantries from the club level staff (although there was one gentleman in the morning who very nice and personable). More problematic however, the hotel makes it confusing about whether you need to use a separate card to enter the club lounge. Sometimes they didn’t check any card at all. Sometimes they wouldn’t let you use your club card but made you give your room number and look up your name (so what is the point of the card?). In fact, no one even told us the club requires a separate card until we couldn’t get into the club with our room key. It really should not be as difficult as they make it.
⁃ If you are expecting personalized service from the hotel, you shouldn’t. It’s a big hotel, almost like one you would find in Vegas. They gave us a card to acknowledge a birthday along with a pin which was a nice touch. In totality however, the whole experience felt incredibly impersonal.
⁃ Texting with the hotel staff was a useful feature, especially given that it is impossible to find anyone in person that works there unless you go to the lobby and wait in a line. They were quick to respond via text and I thought that was one of the best parts of the hotel.
⁃ We ate at Trattoria and Mama Della’s. Trattoria was good for our picky young children because of the kids menu and make your own pasta bar. MD’s was good because our waiter was so nice and helpful, and even sent us with food to go when our child didn’t feel well during the meal (unrelated to dinner, too much sun that day). Note that if you have a picky eater, the MD macaroni and cheese does not look like the boxed version (just a different shape noodle and tastes a bit different). The only time we ate dinner off property was at Toothsome’s Chocolate Emporium which was a total zoo but our kids LOVED the milkshakes (make a reservation!).
⁃ Rooms at Portofino were nice. Not mind blowing but nice. WiFi was AWFUL at the hotel, at least in our room.
I don’t know if I would stay at the Portofino again. Probably not. And honestly it doesn’t seem like the staff cares if you return. The only real benefits of staying at Portofino were the included express passes and the convenience of the water taxi to the parks (although again, going back to my comments about staff, the “captains” of the water taxis were generally unpleasant). The latter of the two benefits was questionable most days as the water taxi shuts down due to inclement weather (and the weather was poor many of the days we visited). Totally understand the need to be safe so I was fine with shutting down for safety reasons, but just know one of the two reasons you may have chosen this hotel may not always be available.
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