TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

We have a great experience at this hotel.Ambience is very good and the staff is very coperative. Shenoy and Suraj are the best . Thank u for ur coperation .

Always have a great time here. The rooms, pool, restaurant, bar, proximity to the parks, and staff are all excellent.

We stayed at the Hard Rock way back in 2022 on our first visit to Universal. What a change since then! The carpets have been updated, the artwork, the chairs, the bedding - all new, very pretty, and very comfortable. Francesca checked us in, and gave us a voucher for a free dessert at the Kitchen for my husband’s birthday. She also assigned a very quiet room overlooking the garden path. So appreciated! We heard NOTHING from outside the room the three days we were there. Included express passes and a 5 minute walk to the park make this hotel worth it, but I so appreciate the updates. This time it felt luxurious in a way that the old decor did not.

We stayed at the hotel February 2026 and were pretty underwhelmed. First, the hotel is pretty complicated to navigate and feels a bit dated. The pool was closed because it was a little windy.. but the worst part was that they locked all the gates around the pool, so it was an absolute pain in the butt to walk back from the park and not be able to cut through the pool. There weren’t very many signs and a lot of unmarked/hidden walkways that we had to guess as to where we should go only to find out it, led to another locked gate that would not even open up with our room key. The lady in the tiny food shop seemed miserable and we felt like we were inconveniencing her by placing our simple order of one coffee and one ice cream- where she proceeded to tell me at least seven times that they are not a full Starbucks when I asked for creamer. For what it’s worth, I’ve stayed at hotels that were half the price and half the hype, but they had a full Starbucks. We spent a good deal of time after returning to our room late at night trying to figure out why the light the TV and the fridge were not working. Before we left for the park, we put some sandwiches that we had just purchased in the mini fridge so we would have a snack when we got back late only to find out that the fridge was notso we would have a snack when we got back late only to find out that the fridge was not working and we can no longer eat those sandwiches because they were room temperature all day. .. what a waste of $40 in prepackaged sandwiches. We call for maintenance very nice where the breaker was so we could continuously reset it all night to keep our TV, lights and fridge working. What a pain! If I knew that was gonna continue throughout the evening, I would’ve asked to move room rooms before the kids fell asleep, but I also feel like the staff should’ve moved us to a new room proactively because they didn’t seem surprised by this ongoing issue. Also, we like the South Park because we don’t wanna have to wait for ballet every time the kids forget something in the car or we want to throw our luggage in there before we head to the park.. but there’s only one way to get to the ground floor South parking lot and that’s by going to the third floor and then walking up and down several flights of stairs with all our luggage and kids in tow (perhaps there was an elevator somewhere, but we looked and did not see one). And finally, the room I’m parking fees are absurdly astronomical and unnecessary, especially considering we got a resort fee, but literally nothing came with that resort fee. The water in the room was $8 dollars, the pool was closed, and everything was inconvenient. I have no idea how they justify charging people so much for literally nothing. And I know they like to say oh but you got Wi-Fi; however, many don’t connect to public Wi-Fi anymore. I could see charging people who are from out of the country and use Wi-Fi but those of us who live in the US can easily justuse our cell service. We should definitely get the option to pay for resort fees. Overall, the room mostly served its purpose, but we will probably stay at the Portofino again next time. I just think we learned too many lessons the hard way and they shouldn’t make it so complicated - it left us feeling like we were taken advantage of.

We didn't stay, but I want to give a shout out to the valet staff: Orlando and Gabriel took care of us. I needed to go into the Rock Shop to get my pin. I've been to 112 around the world and have been supporting the brand since they opened early 80's. I have approx. 350 pins. They were amazing with taking care of us and providing information.