Universal Studios Photo Connect

Last week I talked about how much we loved the PhotoPass package that Disney offered, and when we heard that Universal Studios had their own photo pass package, Universal Photo Connect, we decided to buy one of those too. We bought the 3 day unlimited download pass, which ran $60. We thought if it was anything like Disney, we were getting a great deal. Sadly, where Disney beyond excels at what they offer, the Photo Connect completely lacks.

We were used to V.I.P. treatment at Disney, finding photographers all throughout the park to take our photo. Universal had no photographers to take photos throughout the park, with the exception of one that we found near Hogwarts. What you do get is photos on each of the rides (only those that have cameras to take your photo while you are on the ride) and a few special opps that you can only get when you buy the package, like E.T. and The Simpsons.

 

 

I am clearly not enjoying myself as much as the rest of my family on this ride ;)

While Jason doesn't look thrilled here, this is our most favorite ride at Universal Studios.

Honestly, we don't care much about ride photos, but since my daughter loves Harry Potter, we were happy that we were able to get a family photo and a ride photo of the new Escape From Gringotts ride.

The photos that we did get, we loved. But I paid $60 for roughly 40 photos over a 2 day Universal Studios trip. I paid $150 for a Disney PhotoPass and got over 600 Disney photos over a 3 day period. At Disney you scan your magic band and your photos automatically load to your account. With the Universal Photo Connect, you have to have your photo ticket scanned, then you have to hunt down a kiosk to edit and load your photos to your account, which was very time consuming, and not every kiosk employee was knowledgeable on how to load or edit the photos, so we would have to hunt down another kiosk to find someone who knew what they were doing.

If the price were cut in half, at $30 or so, I would recommend Universal's Photo Connect. However, if we return to Universal Studios, we won't be shelling out another $60 for the Photo Connect package. To us, the limited photos, lack of photographers, and time wasted did not make it worth the cost.

Have you tried Photo Connect? Did you have a better experience than we did?