Daryl Austin
The food at both parks wowed us.
Disneyland had great options for character dining — as parents of a 5-year-old and 8-year-old, it’s hard to beat Minnie & Friends – Breakfast in the Park.
The all-you-can-eat Plaza Inn buffet is full of breakfast staples our kids love, and we got to meet characters like Minnie, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and Pluto.
We weren’t thrilled with the meal’s $256 price tag, though, especially because no one in our family visited the buffet more than once.
At Disney, we also loved visiting Tiana’s Palace for lunch and dinner at Cafe Orleans for dinner. We shared entrées at both restaurants, so these meals cost us $175 total.
At Universal, we started our day at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, sharing two frozen Butterbeers, breakfast pastries, and candy under the towering pillars of Hogwarts castle — all of which cost us $44.
We ate lunch at Toadstool Cafe in Super Nintendo World for $83. For dinner, we spent $90 at the Three Broomsticks to share the Great Feast, a platter with chicken and ribs.
Both parks provided top-notch service and high-quality food — although our character dining at Disney was a bit of a splurge, we still found Universal to give us more value overall.
Both parks provide great entertainment, but Universal has one show Disney can’t compete with
Daryl Austin
We recommend Universal Studios Hollywood more highly than Disneyland, especially to cost-conscious families.
In addition to the reasons above, Universal had significantly better-managed crowds and was about $700 cheaper overall.
I hear pushback from friends who say that Universal doesn’t offer the same level of “magic” as Disney or as many premium rides, but it doesn’t matter how many rides Disney has if guests can’t go on the majority of them in a single visit — even when paying extra.
The premium price tag associated with both theme parks should grant guests access to all (or at least most) premium attractions. From my family’s experience, that’s something only Universal provides.