Hotel Review: Universal Studios Orlando’s Endless Summer Resort – Dockside Inn and Suites

For Christmas break in December 2022/January 2023, James and I (Valerie) were visiting family down in Florida. My parents and brother live near Orlando, and my brother and I grew up as Harry Potter fans, so I thought it would be nice as a Christmas present (for him as well as myself) to spend a day together at the Universal Studios parks in Orlando, which includes The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (aka Harry Potter World). We have both been there before, but never with each other, and so I thought it would be fun to finally go together since we had the opportunity (James was not invited LOL, actually he didn’t want to come with so he went back home instead).

My brother and I decided to stay onsite at a Universal Studios Resort hotel, and in this post I will get into the reasons why it could be worth staying at a Universal hotel, and dive into a review of the one we chose: Universal’s Endless Summer Resort – Dockside Inn and Suites.

Why Should You Stay At A Universal Hotel?

Since we were planning to go to Universal Studios Orlando the weekend after New Year’s Day, we thought it might be crowded so we looked into staying overnight on Universal property since there are some hotels that give you a free Universal Express Pass (which used to be called Fast Pass) per person for each night of your stay. Unfortunately, the only hotels that have this feature these days (there used to be more…) were either extremely expensive (at the time prices were $700+ per night) or totally booked (and also probably extremely expensive this time of year).

However, there are other perks to staying onsite at a Universal Studios Resort hotel in even the cheapest hotel they have. If you stay at any Universal Studios Resort hotel, you get Early Access to the parks, allowing you to get in a full hour before everyone else. This is great if you want to try and get on some of the more popular and new attractions like Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure or Jurassic World VelociCoaster, which we were hoping to do. So, we decided to stay at Universal’s Endless Summer Resort which would get us this early access at an affordable price (about $130/night at the time of booking).

The photo below is Universal CityWalk around 7:30am, right before our early access began at 8am (only to enter Islands of Adventure – the park normally opened at 9am while we were there, but opening times may change depending on the date. The original Universal Studios Florida park did not have early access on that date). CityWalk is the main entrance to all of the parks, and also has a bunch of restaurants and shopping options, and at night it turns into a bar/club scene as well. CityWalk is always free to enter, you just have to pay for parking.

Parking is much easier at the hotels and can be cheaper as well. At the Endless Summer Resort hotels, parking is $15 per night, and parking at the main parking garage in CityWalk (where you park to visit any of the parks) is $30 per day. If you are only staying for one night, hotel parking is cheaper (yes, you are still technically paying more to stay the night but that comes with the perk of being there early!).

Also, the parking shuttle at the hotels make it really easy, and you get dropped off right at the entrance to CityWalk. If you park in the main garage, you still have a good amount of walking to get to the entrance of CityWalk, depending on where you are directed to park.

Universal’s Endless Summer Resort Location

The Universal Studios Orlando Endless Summer Resort includes both the Surfside Inn and Suites and the Dockside Inn and Suites. These are two separate hotels that share a “campus” and are wrapped up as one “resort”. The hotels are technically considered Universal Studios property, but are across the interstate I-4 from the main property where the parks, CityWalk, and other Universal hotels are located.

Here is where the Surfside Inn and Suites is located (zoom out to see where it is located compared to the main Universal Studios property):

And here is where the Dockside Inn and Suites is located:

The following images are from an interactive map on Universal’s website when you look for the onsite hotels.

The two icons at the bottom right of the map are where the Endless Summer Resort hotels are located. You can see it is across the interstate (I-4) and is not really walk-able to the main part of Universal (unless you want to walk along a busy multi-lane road and cross over an interstate bridge). The parks and CityWalk are noted with green circle icons – CityWalk being central on the map – and you can see the other hotel icons that are closer to the parks. The Endless Summer Resort hotels have a shuttle that take you to the parks via CityWalk, and I will go into detail on that shortly.

Zooming in a little closer on Universal’s interactive map, you can see the two hotel sites are separated by a road with a median (and are right off of International Drive, the road going horizontally at the top). The building on the left is the Surfside Inn and Suites, and the property on the right with 2 separate buildings is the Dockside Inn and Suites. Each hotel has its own parking areas, and onsite restaurants and shops, and pools. They each also have their own shuttle stop outside of each of the hotel entrances for the shuttle to CityWalk/the parks. I will explain in another section of this post what is involved when you need to take the shuttle to and from the parks.

Universal’s Endless Summer Resort – Surfside Inn and Suites

We didn’t stay at the Surfside Inn and Suites, so I can’t go too much into detail but I do know that it was the first of the Endless Summer Resort buildings to be built back in 2019. It is circled below in red.

It has its own parking garage and shuttle stop for the shuttle to the main Universal property. Also, the theme of the hotel is coastal/beach-y/surfer and it has a fish shaped pool that overlooks a small lake/pond. It has an onsite food court, poolside bar, and a Starbucks.

Both the Surfside Inn and Suites and The Dockside Inn and Suites have standard rooms with 2 double-beds, and 2-bedroom suites, and are typically around the same price for each room type between the two hotels.

The standard rooms can be decently inexpensive, advertised “starting at $96/night” currently on their website (of course, that depends on the date in which you book). The 2-bedroom suites are currently advertised “starting at $144/night”, which is pretty inexpensive for what you get if you have a larger family since it looks to have 2 double beds in the main room, and another double bed in a separate bedroom, and the ability to add a rollaway bed if needed per the website.

They also have Florida Resident pricing, so check that box if this applies to you (they will require a Florida address for booking with a credit card, and will check your Florida driver’s license upon check-in).

Universal’s Endless Summer Resort – Dockside Inn and Suites

We decided to stay at the Dockside Inn and Suites over the Surfside Inn and Suites partly because it was the slightly newer of the hotels, being completed in 2020 vs 2019 (not that this makes a huge difference though). The prices were exactly the same for that night and they offer the same Early Access benefit.

When looking at the Surfside, I did think the hotel was a bit long from end to end, and the parking garage was really only on one side of the hotel with only a smaller lot on the other side, so that was another reason why I thought staying at the Dockside would be a bit better for more parking options and potentially a shorter walk from the several parking lots/garages to the rooms. I didn’t want to have to park too far away from where our room would be to save time and energy! The Dockside Inn and Suites is circled in red below:

Also, the Dockside has one more dining/bar option than the Surfside, and I thought this bar could be nice to hang out in since we were getting in toward the evening. We didn’t end up going down to the bar since we decided to get food offsite, but the option was there. The Dockside also has its own food court, Starbucks, and 2 poolside bars.

The Dockside Inn and Suites is more of a boat/lake themed hotel than the Surfside as a surf/beach themed hotel, although I thought the Dockside rooms were more surf/beach-themed than boat/lake-themed than I would have expected.

Universal’s Endless Summer Resort – Dockside Inn and Suites – Lobby, Check-in, and Parking

We arrived to Universal’s Endless Summer Resort – Dockside Inn and Suites in the evening, around 7pm. We pulled up to the main entrance and were greeted by a hotel employee.

The employee made a friendly “Dad” joke about us not being allowed in (Employee – “What are you doing here?”, Us – “Uhh, checking in?”, Employee – “Oh, that’s not allowed…just kidding!”), and then told us that we needed to pull through the entrance driveway and then off to a short-term parking lot where we could park and walk into the lobby to check in at the front desk.

He also explained that after checking in, we would then get a parking pass to the main parking lots and garages, and be able to move our car from the short-term lot to whatever garage or lot made sense to park in for where our room was assigned.

I took a photo the next day of a sign outside of the lobby showing where to go for the lobby, the resort shuttle, and a pickup area for Ride Apps (like Uber, Lyft, etc.). There was no sign showing where to go for the short-term check-in parking lot, or at least I didn’t see one.

The entrance driveway of the hotel has different lanes if you are dropping off/picking up, and a thru-lane.

I took a better shot the next day also showing a bus lane. These are the shuttle buses to the parks but not the area where you would get onto the bus. You can kind of see a covered area toward the left where they have a queue to wait for the buses. This is the pick up and drop off area for these shuttles. I’ll go into more detail later in this post.

In front of the entrance to the lobby, you can see the short-term check-in parking lot off to the left. In the background next to the lobby in the center of the photo is Tower 1. There are 2 towers at this hotel, separated by the lobby as a separate building in the middle. Tower 2, the other tower, is off to the right side of the lobby, out of the photo. You can also see the Surfside Inn and Suites building off to the far left, which is across the street.

This is looking out from the lobby toward the street (where you would exit the property), and also where you can drive over to Tower 1 on the one side of the property. You can also see the short-term check-in parking lot off to the left.

Here is another shot of the short-term parking area for check-in. There was a gate that automatically lets you in, and parking on the left and right of a one-way lane. There is another gate at the exit where you can scan your parking pass/hotel key to get out. The gate let us out without even scanning it, which I think is best in case you need to get out without a key (not sure why they even have the gates there in the first place…)

Here is the entrance to the lobby once you park in the short-term parking.

The lobby was a large space with very high ceilings and great boat/lake themed decor. Off to the left was one of the bar/lounge areas and a Starbucks.

Off to the right in the lobby were the front desks and the queue to wait for an open desk. This photo was taken the next morning, but the night we checked in it was super busy and we waited a good 20 minutes to check in.

This photo was taken the night we checked in, there were people everywhere! There was a separate line for mobile check-in, which we found out was an option while we were standing in line. That line wasn’t too short either, so we said we’d just wait in the normal line instead of trying to figure out the mobile check-in system. They also had a ticket counter where you could buy your Universal tickets if you hadn’t already purchased them online.

We were impressed by the large ceiling beams that kind of looked like you were beneath a ship.

The Starbucks was packed both night and day, and in the morning before going to the parks I was banking on getting a coffee and some breakfast at the Starbucks but the line was super long. We decided instead to see what the options were at the food court, called the Pier 8 Market, accessible via a hallway next to the Starbucks at the back of the lobby. I didn’t take any pictures unfortunately (we were in a rush), but they had a nice grab-and-go selection of drinks and snacks, as well as some hot items. I grabbed a bottled iced coffee and some PopTarts, and my brother grabbed an energy drink (the breakfast of champions).

At the back of the lobby, there was a Universal gift shop where you can get all of your Universal branded merchandise. Off to the left of center, hidden behind some of these large driftwood tree decorations, is the hallway to get to the food court.

After checking in, you get your room keys (each person gets their own with their name on it) which also acts as a parking pass to get in and out of the parking areas. There are a few surface lots surrounding each of the towers, and a parking garage near each tower as well. Each person will also have to show their separate room key to gain Early Access to the parks, so make sure you don’t forget all of them!

There didn’t seem to be any spots open in the surface lots right outside the towers, so we just went straight for the garage near Tower 2, which was where our room was located.

This is the Tower 2 building from one side as seen from the parking lots.

We parked our car, walked into Tower 2, and went to the elevators in the center of the building to get up to the 5th floor where our room was located. I can’t remember which side of the tower we were on, but it was split when you got off of the elevator into two sides, one with an ice machine.

The hotel was quite large, and the hallways were pleasantly decorated and clean.

Universal’s Endless Summer Resort – Dockside Inn and Suites – Double Room Review

We booked a standard 2-bed double room for about $130/night, which was perfect for our single night stay. It was great to have 2 beds considering we are siblings and fortunately haven’t had to share a bed since we were kids on vacation with our parents! Unfortunately we did have to put up with each other snoring!

The room was nicely decorated in a surf/beach theme as opposed to what I expected to be more boat/lake themed, with the exception of the art above the beds, but was nice and clean. There was a nightstand in the middle of the beds, a chair off to the side, and a desk across from the beds. There was also an adjoining door, which I imagine would be pretty common to find in a hotel like this, so that you could get 2 rooms if needed.

The desk was odd because there was no official desk chair, but an ottoman that was stuffed under the desk that you could pull out and sit on. It made for a cleaner look but the ottoman wasn’t the best desk chair.

If you wanted you could pull this corner chair up to the desk but I’m not sure how comfortable that would be with the height of the chair vs desk.

Right after checking in, since we had to go back to our car anyway to move it to the parking garage, we decided to go offsite first and around the block to get some Taco Bell for dinner. We ate at the desk, my brother sat in the nice chair and I sat on the ottoman. It was perfectly fine for a quick meal, but I wouldn’t want to sit and try to work from this desk (but, like, why are you working on vacation anyway?!)

The room had this closet that was covered only by a sheer curtain. I’m not sure I would have made that design choice because it wasn’t the nicest looking arrangement and had “cheap college dorm” vibes to it.

I noticed at the desk there was a conveniently placed outlet right above it, with standard outlets and an USB outlet. I love when hotels have lots of outlets, including ones with USB!

I loved this little mural off to the side of the TV and above the coffee station, it really captured the “Endless Summer” vibes. If you don’t already know, “Endless Summer” was a documentary about surfers made in the 60’s, you should check it out if you’re into surfing or at least beaches and surf culture. I assume this is where they got the name for the resort. Also probably because Florida is pretty much summer almost all year round…

Universal’s Endless Summer Resort – Dockside Inn and Suites – Bathroom Review

The bathroom was nice and clean, except that the shower was a little dingy. It was one of those plastic insert showers, which I don’t think are the nicest type of shower.

The bathroom had a sink open to the rest of the room, although it was tucked away with a wall separating it from the beds. I really hate these open bathrooms though, it’s always a pain at night to use the bathroom and wash your hands without disturbing others in your room. I do like having the toilet and shower separate from the sink, since it’s always nice to be able to get ready while someone else is in the shower or on the toilet. I’d much rather have a door leading into a sink area and then another door into the toilet/shower room, but I understand this is an added construction cost so it’s not always feasible if you’re designing a budget hotel.

Here’s the toilet/shower room. The shower was a little curved out, which was quite nice since it gave some extra room and didn’t seem to eat into the rest of the bathroom too much. The doors also slid back and forth rather than opening up into the room, helping to keep the floors dry. This was a good design choice, but would have liked a different shower type rather than the dingy plastic insert (again, not always feasible for a budget hotel).

Universal’s Endless Summer Resort – Dockside Inn and Suites – Amenities

We didn’t spend much time at the hotel except to sleep, so we unfortunately didn’t have a chance to experience the amenities, but I wanted to point them out anyway.

In the center of each tower, there is a nice pool area with lots of lounge chairs and umbrellas. It is nice that each tower has its own pool, considering how many people the hotel can accommodate. I’m sure it gets crowded regardless!

Each of the tower pools has its own beach bar as well. There is the Oasis Beach Bar, and the Wave Maker’s Pool Bar. I’m not sure which bar is at which pool.

There is also another bar inside the lobby called the Sunset Lounge, which is in front next to the Starbucks. The Starbucks also has its own seating area in the main part of the lobby.

As I mentioned earlier in the post, there is a Universal Studios Store in the lobby where you can get some Universal merch.

Off to the right of the front desk and the store, I believe this is where you can find the onsite gym, and this would also be the path you could take that would lead you outside to get to Tower 2. I believe the path to get from the lobby towards Tower 1 is on the opposite side of the store, near the Pier 8 Market food court.

Universal’s Endless Summer Resort – Dockside Inn and Suites – Transportation to Universal Studios

As I mentioned previously, the Universal’s Endless Summer Resort hotels each have their own stop for the shuttle bus that takes you to CityWalk where you will enter each of the parks (Universal Studios Florida, Universal Island of Adventure, and Universal Volcano Bay water park are all accessed via CityWalk).

The shuttle stop at the Dockside Inn and Suites is off to the left of the lobby if you are looking at the entrance head on. In this photo you can see the buses lining up in the bus lane, heading toward the stop location.

There is a covered queue area with chains forming the back and forth lines, just like in the parks. If you want to get on the bus without waiting, make sure to get here early. There were plenty of buses waiting, but we were unable to board the first bus in the line since the line was just a bit too long. We only waited about 5 minutes though.

Here is the bus with the Universal Orlando Resort logo and advertising for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (everyone really just calls this Harry Potter World).

The shuttle bus takes about 5 minutes to drive over to CityWalk, and you are dropped off right at the entrance. You will have to walk just a little bit to get from there to security (similar to airport TSA, there is a metal detector and an X-ray machine for bags), and then you walk from there through CityWalk to whatever park you want to access first. This photo is showing the lagoon in CityWalk with the Hard Rock Cafe in the background (the colusseum looking structure) and the new Chocolate Emporium that is NOT Willy Wonka but definitely has that sort of vibe.

When you need to find your way back to the hotel at the end of the day, you will just walk through CityWalk back to the shuttle pickup/drop off area and look for signs to where the queue will be for your particular hotel. The Surfside Inn and Suites and the Dockside Inn and Suites had two different shuttle pickup points, so you will be directed exactly to your hotel entrance, which is really convenient.

Final Thoughts

There are definite advantages to staying onsite at a Universal Studios Resort hotel. If you can afford it, the option to stay at one of the hotels with a free Universal Express Pass (the 2-park Unlimited one too!) could easily be worth it, especially if you are traveling with a lot of people in your group/family and you are going during peak seasons. Each person in the room gets their own Universal Express Unlimited Pass for each night of stay (this includes having a pass on the day you check out as well), so it may be worth the price of the hotel, since Universal Express Passes can be anywhere from $90+ each (for the 1-park basic pass that only gives you Universal Express Pass access to eligible rides in a single park once per day – not all of the rides have Universal Express Pass lanes, just fyi!) up to $200+ each (for the 2-park Unlimited pass where you can go on each Universal Express Pass eligible ride as many times as you want in a single day at both main parks, not including the water park).

If you cannot afford the more expensive hotels that include a Universal Express Pass, the other hotel options that just have Early Access are also worth a stay. For just $130/night (for us at the time of booking), the Dockside Inn and Suites hotel at Universal’s Endless Summer Resort was worth the price to get to the park an hour earlier than most people.

There was still a huge line to get into the parks early however, so you may not be able to get on the rides you want unless you get there super early to get in the front of the line (probably at least an hour or more before rope drop), so keep that in mind as well. We only got there about 15 minutes before rope drop for early access so we were toward the back of the lines, and we did go straight to Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure but so did everyone else (some people were running, that’s a no for me)! We waited in line for about a half an hour before getting to a sign that said the line was about 300 minutes long (That’s 5 hours!!! This is not currently one of the rides eligible for the Universal Express Pass, fyi!), so we jumped out of line and went to a different ride. We ended up getting lucky later in the day and got on Hagrid’s in only 90 minutes, so watch the Universal app’s wait times if the wait time is atrocious in the morning!

If you don’t think any of this is worth the cost of staying onsite at a Universal Studios Resort hotel, there are other great affordable options in the area that are also very close to the parks, and are very close to the Endless Summer Resort hotels. James has stayed at a number of these offsite non-Universal hotels for work, and he has several hotel reviews you should check out to weigh your options!

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We hope you enjoy your trip to Universal Studios Orlando Resort!