Disney vs. Universal Resort Christmas Decorations

Have you ever wondered how the Christmas decorations at the Universal Resort hotels stack up to the ones at Disney World? Probably not, but I’m going to write about it anyway.

I found myself last week in the Florida Disney area, trying to get some work done, and feeling lonely for that special tingly Christmas feeling. I spent an evening walking around the Universal Resort hotels, then the next day tried to see as many Disney Resort hotels as I could.

The final verdict? The Universal Resort is much easier to visit, but the decorations are only ho-hum. While the Disney Resort’s decorations are infinitely more interesting, it is exhausting to get around using only Disney transportation.

Universal Resort Christmas Decorations

First of all, parking at Universal’s City Walk is free after 6 pm, so I recommend starting there. My method of attack is to walk from City Walk to the resort hotels on either side, then take the complimentary boat ride back. For instance, if you walk toward Universal Studios, there’s a small path just to the right of the park entrance. (There’s a security checkpoint where the path starts.) Walk down this and you come first to the Hard Rock Hotel, then at the end, the beautiful Portofino Bay Resort. From Portofino Bay, you can take complimentary boat transportation back to City Walk.

In the other direction, before you cross the bridge towards Islands of Adventure, sort of tucked beside Margaritaville is the other path. Walking in this direction, you first come to the Royal Pacific Resort. Then much farther down, the sidewalk ends behind the Cabana Bay Resort. In this area are Cabana Bay, Adventura hotel, and Sapphire Falls Resort. From Sapphire Falls, you can take a boat back to City Walk. (And this plan isn’t just for Christmastime – it works anytime you want to walk around these beautiful hotels. It can’t be just me who enjoys hospitality design.)

Hard Rock Hotel

Our first tree is in Hard Rock Hotel. This one has the most theming of any of the Universal trees with a few musical instruments and records as ornaments. But mostly, it is a color scheme that fits within the clubby atmosphere of the hotel.

Portofino Bay Hotel

At Portofino Bay, there is a huge LIVE tree in the spacious bay area of this Italian village-themed hotel. It’s decorated with white lights, red poinsettias, and classic round ornaments in silver and gold.

Inside the hotel, there’s a smaller (fake) tree in the check-in lobby, this one decorated in reds, greens, white, and gold.

Royal Pacific Resort

At the Asian-themed Royal Pacific Resort, the tree is adorned in red, green, gold, and silver. There’s nothing even remotely thematic about this one.

Cabana Bay Beach Resort

At the retro-styled Cabana Bay Beach Resort is a nice big silver tree with simple red, blue, green, purple, and gold ornaments. Even though it’s simple, it’s at least in keeping with the theme of the resort.

Aventura Hotel

The ultra-modern style of the Aventura Hotel calls for a similarly stark Christmas representation. Here, they wrap groups of silver trees in white lights and call it a day.

Sapphire Falls Resort

The huge Sapphire Falls Resort has an upscale beachy theme and it’s decorated with a large tree that kinda leans beachy – there are some hibiscus flowers in there, at least. Mostly, we have a color scheme of varying blues, greens, reds, golds, purples, and oranges. It’s really very pretty.

Walt Disney World Resort Christmas Decorations

While the Universal Resort can easily be covered in a single evening, the Walt Disney World Resort is much more involved. It’s HUGE, and while there are plenty of transportation options – busses, boats, monorails, and the Skyliner – it’s still a lot of walking and a lot of hassle.

And you can’t quite drive to each resort, either. They only let you in if you have a reservation for a room or a restaurant. You can kind of get around it by ordering food using mobile order in the My Disney Experience app, so maybe if you do a progressive, all-day meal around the Disney property, it might work a little better than what I did.

My plan was to park at Disney Springs and take a bus to the monorail resorts, ride the monorail around, then another bus from the Ticket & Transportation Center to a Skyliner resort, ride the Skyliner around, then back to Disney Springs. This mostly worked, except that first, a bus for a monorail resort wasn’t leaving for another hour after my 9:30 am arrival at Disney Springs. I assume they do this to keep folks from parking at Disney Springs for a day at the park. Second, the monorail went down the day of my visit, which made lines for boats and busses extremely long and increased my walking time by a lot. I ended up taking a lot of boats.

I won’t torture you with details about my difficult Disney day, but it did rather cement in my mind just how exhausting Disney can be in general.

Polynesian Village Resort

To illustrate just how much more detail Disney puts into their Christmas decorations than Universal, let’s start with the Polynesian Village Resort. And while the Poly has a soaring lobby, due to the tiki welcome statue in the middle, the Christmas tree is around the back.

The Polynesian Christmas tree is housed in a bamboo planter and festooned with TONS of tropical flowers. There’s also pineapples, fish, tin ornaments, gourds, drums, and some wooden pieces. Sprays of bamboo shoot out the top.

Grand Floridian Resort

For a more massive tree, check out the one at the Grand Floridian. The grand lobby accommodates this 40-foot tree easily. In keeping with the resort, it’s decorated in victorian-style ornaments, from classic glass drops to velvet bows, birdcages, and wooden figures. Look closely, and you’ll find large medalions featuring each of the 12 days of Christmas.

Not only is there a huge tree, the Grand Floridian features the largest gingerbread house of all the Disney resorts. This one is actually a shop where you can buy gingerbread cookies and other sweets. And it’s very popular – during my visit, there was quite a line!

Wilderness Lodge

The three biggest indoor Christmas trees on Disney property are in the Grand Floridian, the Animal Kingdom Lodge, and this one in the Wilderness Lodge. (I could be wrong about that, but I’m pretty sure that’s true.) The internet says the Wilderness Lodge tree is 60 feet tall! And it’s decorated with wooden ornaments, canoes, drums, antlers, bows, and large tepees with flickering lights inside them. On top is a beautiful lighted star.

Contemporary Resort

I was surprised to learn that the Contemporary Resort doesn’t have an indoor Christmas tree. The only Christmas tree you’ll find is a huge tree out outside the resort. The coolest thing about this tree is that each huge ornament and the star at the top light up at night. (You can see it really well from the monorail. I saw it but was not close enough to the window to take a picture.)

There used to be a Mary Blair-inspired gingerbread display inside as well, but that isn’t up either. I’m not sure if that’s a Covid thing or not. I did find this super-cute Contemporary gingerbread house with it’s own white chocolate monorail that you can purchase.

Beach Club Resort

Around the Epcot/Cresent Lake resorts you find the Beach Club has an appropriately beachy-themed tree. Two of them, actually, but they are kind of jammed between pillars and a bit harder to take pictures of (at least, without stepping on other people.) The Beach Club tree features starfish, netting, coral, knotted balls, and most notably, huge portions of a ship’s wheel.

One reason the Beach Club’s trees are crammed into corners is that taking up the middle of the lobby is a fantastical gingerbread carousel. This year, it’s themed to The Little Mermaid with chocolate horses representing Ariel, King Triton, Ursula, and Prince Eric. An off-carousel horse represents Flounder & Sebastian. Nearby, a storefront sells gingerbread cookies and other treats, similar to what you’d get at the Grand Floridian gingerbread house.

Yacht Club Resort

Immediatly adjacent to the Beach Club is the Yacht Club, with an appropriately boat-themed tree.

On the Yacht Club side, instead of more gingerbread, there is a huge model train display.

Boardwalk Inn

Across the lake is the Boardwalk Inn. They have a larger tree outside in a faux-grass play area, with big swaths of garland and colorful ornaments, bells, and toys. Inside the lobby are twin trees featuring whimsical red & white ornaments and ribbons, victorian animals cards, and crazy peppermint curlicues.

Riviera Resort

The vaguely French-themed Riviera Resort features a small tree but I think it’s really pretty. It features oversized metal ornaments, and I especially like the spangly tree topper.

Art of Animation Resort

The tree at Art of Animation is white with a spiral of ornaments that shift colors as the garland winds up the tree. The rest is filled in with drawings and oversized paint tubes, and I swear there are pens that stick out the top. I am surprised at how pretty it looks!

Pop Century Resort

I am surprised at how much I like the Pop Century Christmas tree. I think it’s probably because it’s the most nostalgic and really triggers that childhood Christmas feeling I was looking for. And it’s one the few trees that features colored lights. Otherwise, it’s crammed full of classic ornaments, bows, toys, records, gingerbread, classic Santas, music notes, and more.

Port Orleans Resort – French Quarter

My last stop of the night took me through the Frech Quarter section of the Port Orleans Resort. (Y’all, if I catch Covid, it was from a crowded Disney bus.) Here there are two Christmas trees in the glass lobby of the resort. Predictably, these are festooned with all sorts of mardi gras-style ornaments like beads, masks, sprays, and fleur-de-lis galore. Both trees are topped off with a grand top hat.

Animal Kingdom Lodge

The next day, I couldn’t resist going to visit the third of the really huge Disney trees, the 45-foot one at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. This tree features African-inspired ornaments like large Ankara fabric bows, animal masks, basket-woven ornaments, and natural materials.

Also at the Animal Kingdom Lodge is a gingerbread giraffe (a “gingeraffe”) which might be new this year. He’s backlit by the large window at the rear of the lodge, so he’s a little hard to take pictures of, but it’s awfully cute.

There are a few more Disney resort hotels I didn’t make it to this trip. I’m not sure it’s even feasible to visit all in one day. It’s certainly not wise.

I missed Caribbean Beach, Saratoga Springs, the Riverside portion of Port Orleans, All Star Music, Movies, or Sports, Coronado Springs, Dolphin, or the Swan. I did visit Old Key West, but I couldn’t find a tree! Several of those I was very close to, but I got so tired, I had to make some choices. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to do a more comprehensive post on each one. This day, I was just trying to get out and walk around.