Universal Helios Grand Hotel, a Loews Hotel

“Helios Grand Makes Your Visit Truly Epic”

We booked the cheapest room, but arrived to a complimentary upgrade to a deluxe Park View room. The huge curved window gave us a truly Epic view of the park, water fountain show, and night lights. Helios has a grand vista from the park side, but surprisingly has a more ordinary view from the stre… more

We booked the cheapest room, but arrived to a complimentary upgrade to a deluxe Park View room. The huge curved window gave us a truly Epic view of the park, water fountain show, and night lights. Helios has a grand vista from the park side, but surprisingly has a more ordinary view from the street side…something that could easily be upgraded in a future renovation. In contrast, when you pull up to Portofino Bay, you truly know you have arrived somewhere special. Helios has a much more compact footprint than Portofino Bay, so nothing is more than a few minutes walk, which is a nice surprise. The central lobby has an awe-inspiring view of the park. The gift shop is open until a convenient 11 pm, so it was easy to purchase the Nintendo wristbands desired for the next day’s adventure without taking precious time in the park at opening to locate and purchase them. Flora Taverna is also just off the lobby and had many open tables…I booked a reservation for lunch less than an hour prior. The candied bacon, arugula, and brioche bun really elevated the Wagu burger…my son would have preferred the fries were not wedges, but I enjoyed them. The marketplace has grab and go options including Starbucks..which you are allowed to take into the park to eat as you wait for rope drop. Best of all, the Epic security park entrance is only 1 minute off the lobby…truly everything is ultra convenient…no long walks to anything, including your hotel room. You are closer to the rides than the rope drop at the front gate, so you probably gain one extra ride before the lines form. We were thru the line and security and the facial recognition (which we uploaded in seconds the day before at home) recognized us as being matched to our park tickets easily. Folks who didn’t heed directions to remove sunglasses, etc had to struggle at each entrance spot. Typically most lines recognized us as we walked thru…no pausing required. Additionally, we felt the extra fee for the Epic express passes was 100% worthwhile. Universal needs to make locating the Epic Express passes easier…one set of dates we considered had Epic tickets sold out, but lots of express passes left, which is unexpected…but you have to manually click to switch to express passes for 1 day (not the default) to find them. We actually had to switch dates twice in order to find both Epic tickets and Epic express passes available. (Universal, feel free to reach out to me for a comped stay for this invaluable advice to increase your revenue stream!) If you are a person who likes convenience, maximizing ride time, minimizing travel time and just only has one day to experience the park, then the Helios and express pass combo may be for you. Our only regret was that we arrived too late to see the fountain show the first night due to work restraints we couldn’t get a flight early enough to do so…and only booked one night at Helios. We awoke early for work, arrived late on a flight, and then awoke early for rope drop at early entrance for the park so were super tired…if we had stayed at Helios two nights, a quick nap in the room would have been lovely. We had a split stay at Portofino Bay the second night to be close to the waterpark, Volcano Bay, so around 4 pm we had ridden every ride at least once and Ubered over to PB. You can take a bus to City Walk and then take a bus or water taxi to PB, but a 10 minute $15 Uber seemed easier with all our luggage. We took a two hour nap, grabbed a pizza at Sal’s Marketplace, and then Ubered back for one last Nintendo World adventure before catching a great view of the fountain show from the steps in front of Helios. If you don’t have the budget for a park view room, no worries…there are ample places to have a fantastic view on the sidewalks. How was Epic? A Brit family called it “rubbish” and said the old parks are better. We actually enjoyed it quite a bit, and found more tamer rides that may appeal to younger families…a population not well served by the US and IoA parks. The Harry Potter ride was meh (though the theming of the waiting line was exceptional…very true to what we saw in the movie studio in the UK, but of course, on a larger scale). We didn’t return for our express ride on HP ans the ride itself is not interesting…and the water ride in How to Train Your Dragon we skipped due to cooler temps. The Celestial Star Racers was closed, but we rode everything else at least once. We really enjoyed collecting the keys with the wristband ($45 ouch) and the interactive challenge was quite fun. Hiccups and Minekart and the Curse of the Werewolves were excellent. We played Mario Cart multiple times and enjoyed it. I definitely would return in a year or so…hopefully they will have fastpasses included with Helios by then…or at least unlimited fast passes available.

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“Convenient if visiting Epic Universe”

The hotel is next to the theme park which is very convenient. Splurge on a park view room and you could watch the nightly fireworks from the comfort of your room. However the hotel is far from the rest of the theme parks. Extra travel time needed if you are visiting the other parks.

“Great Hotel”

We had a lovely stay, rooms are modern, comfortable and immaculate. Service overall is good, restaurant at times lacking staff. ‘Grab & Go’ busy, not always well stocked and staff struggle to keep on top of demand but they are friendly & pleasant. Pool area and bar are lovely as is the roof top … more

We had a lovely stay, rooms are modern, comfortable and immaculate. Service overall is good, restaurant at times lacking staff. ‘Grab & Go’ busy, not always well stocked and staff struggle to keep on top of demand but they are friendly & pleasant. Pool area and bar are lovely as is the roof top bar & food really good. Would happily return.

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“Helios restaurants can do better”

Really cool hotel with great service but very limited food for kids and families. Long waits, no food after long waits, tossed from restaurant to market and room service. Basically cannot keep up with the demand. The restaurant had about 4 tables with a 30 minute wait, just really not impressed w… more

Really cool hotel with great service but very limited food for kids and families. Long waits, no food after long waits, tossed from restaurant to market and room service. Basically cannot keep up with the demand. The restaurant had about 4 tables with a 30 minute wait, just really not impressed with the restaurant services here. Pool was cold and no slides, game room kiosk didn’t work. The best part was the 10th floor restaurant and epic universal views.

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