“Stay in Simplified Style” is the Universal Orlando website’s slogan to attract guests to its Aventura Hotel.

I have a different description of his style: kind of boring.

Placed next to Cabana Bay Beach Resort in the Prime Value category, Aventura’s style is the exact opposite. Instead of retro nostalgia, it emphasizes a clean, sleek design, as you’ll immediately notice the curved, wriggling, spinner-shaped exterior covered by floor-to-ceiling windows.

The exterior of Aventura (theme park grandstand)

But like a midsize convention hotel, it feels functional in some places compared to busier theme park accommodations, on top of sacrificing when it comes to the pool and food court. Still, it may still have a place for a specific audience visiting Universal Orlando.

The room

The 600 rooms at the Aventura somehow manage to clearly differentiate themselves from other theme park hotels – and a bit boring.

A standard room in the Aventura (Theme Park Tribune)

The difference is in the emphasis on technology. The Luddites among you have to come to terms with controlling many of the functions of the room via a tablet, which acts as everything from a light switch to a remote control. I appreciate how easy it is to enter my streaming service passwords on my tablet versus clicking through a cumbersome keyboard with a regular remote control.

The “smart” room looks a bit futuristic if you are not used to similar features at home. I just wish the future had a more interesting design. And carpet.

My standard room was 314 square feet and could sleep four in its two queen beds. Other options include slightly larger “deluxe” rooms with two queen-size beds, standard and deluxe rooms with a single king-size bed, and 591-square-foot children’s suites for five people.

Furnishing

When you take up the smallest footprint of a universal resort, you get one of its smaller pools.

The Aventura Pool (theme park grandstand)

The pool is wrapped around the building and doesn’t have a slide (unlike its prime neighbor Cabana Bay), but the area has a splash area, fire pot, and plenty of lounge chairs. However, space is scarce here. So expect crowds to be seen on hot nights after the parks close.

One of the smaller Universal Studios stores can also be found in the lobby. This merchandise location is rich in Harry Potter merchandise but relatively light at everything else and likely won’t be your savior on check out day if you find you forgot a souvenir in the park. There is a small selection of Aventura-specific merch, but this store is most useful in case you’ve forgotten swimwear or toiletries and don’t want to venture outside the property.

(Theme park grandstand)

(Theme park grandstand)

Aventura’s best equipment comes from its location. An exclusive entrance near the pool area (key card required) allows guests to quickly walk over to Volcano Bay. When heading to the two theme parks, you have a choice of the 1.5 mile garden path or the shuttle bus service shared with Cabana Bay. Buses usually run every 10 minutes, so avoid the garden walk unless you want a scenic route.

You can get some additional benefits from Aventura by taking a short walk to the Ritzier Sapphire Falls Resort. Not only will you find more restaurants and a much larger pool, but you can also use the resort’s boat service to get to and from the CityWalk.

Technically, the resort boats are only for the guests of these resorts, but no one checks the room keys. You’ll save time and steps by using the boats on Aventura’s own bus service as the buses depart near the main security checkpoint and force you to traverse CityWalk before getting to the parks. However, the boats drop you off much closer to the park entrances. Your feet will thank you later.

What was (and can it still be?) The VR playroom from Nov. 2021 (Theme Park Tribune)

Aventura had a virtual reality room when it opened in 2018. However, at the time of my visit in November 2021, the game room had yet to reopen after its initial closure from COVID-19 and its signs were obscured.

The food and drink

The Food Hall Urban Pantry has four stations: pizza, burger, roast and a wok with customizable bowls and sushi. While it gets some points for originality with the wok station, the menu choices at the stations feel more limited than their counterparts at the Endless Summer or Cabana Bay resorts. Personally, I’d go for the pizza station because the pies can feed at least two people for $ 15, and the perfectly charred taste impressed even this Chicago pizza snob.

Urban Pantry (theme park grandstand)

The food hall had one downside during my stay: spotty night service. While Urban Pantry is supposed to stay open until 11 p.m., with the pizza station until midnight, only the burger and pizza stations were open at 8 p.m. during my visit – and an employee had to move from one station to the other to reopen the pizza counter. I’ve never experienced this type of partial closure in other Universal Food Courts, and it seems like an odd choice when guests come back from the parks looking for dinner.

Bar 17 Bistro at Universal’s Aventura Hotel (Universal Orlando)

What Aventura lacks in dining options it makes up for in bar hopping. Guests can choose between the large, shady pool bar Bar Sol, the limited BarVentura lobby spot or straight to the star of the resort, the Bar 17 Bistro.

A view of Cabana Bay from Bar 17 Bistro (Theme Park Tribune)

The open-air rooftop bar offers fantastic views of the Universal Orlando Resort and the surrounding area with plenty of comfortable seating for large and small parties. There’s a limited menu – some starters, like spicy Korean-style fried chicken wings and a burger – but what will stop you here is the custom cocktails. We recommend the Orlandos & Don’t, with Seagram’s gin, sake, lemon, cucumber and raspberry. Well worth a visit even if you are staying at another Universal hotel.

The hotel offers an express elevator to Bar 17 Bistro from the lobby. Be warned that the bar is sometimes closed due to cold or bad weather.

The judgment

I was a little confused about the audience that Universal’s Aventura Hotel should serve.

If you’re traveling with kids, Cabana Bay offers more for a similar price. If you’re on a budget, Endless Summer has better prices, especially for family suites, as well as better pool areas and food courts. Those looking for better places to eat can pay a small surcharge to stay at Sapphire Falls, although you can easily walk there from Aventura as well.

So who should stay in Aventura? I do see some pull for childless adults, especially couples who aren’t looking to break the bank, gravitate toward this brand of streamlined designs, want to spend most of their time in the parks but maybe take a dip in the pool at night less screaming kids running around. Or maybe you just want the rooftop bar to be a little closer to your room.

For me, Aventura is the weakest of Universal’s on-site hotels. Some of this is my personal dislike for the overall aesthetic, but the smaller pool and food hall are real weaknesses. If hotels in the same price range or lower feel like they are giving me more bang for my buck, why should I stay here?

It’s nowhere near a bad hotel; it’s just the worst of a pretty great lineup at Universal Orlando.

Grade B-