In November 2023, I was lucky enough to go on a VIP Tour for Walt Disney World and one for Universal Studios Florida in the same week with a group of about six of us. These are NOT equal, so I wanted to hit a few bullet points on the differences that maybe aren’t so obvious just from perusing their web pages.
Cost
Cost on these varies a lot based on the day. I’m not going to include specific numbers here since they change wildly.
But Disney’s is based on the group. It doesn’t matter if you have 1 person or 10. You pay for a minimum of 8 hours. You can also pay extra and do 9 or 10 hours.
Universal’s is priced per person. But they aren’t all private. You can get put in with random people, that want to do different things. So I recommend paying extra and get a private group. The cost in a private group is still per person. Universal’s is only 8 hours with no option to extend.
Neither of them include your park tickets, you still have to purchase park hoppers for each member of your group.
Food
Disney’s includes no food except occasionally when you go to a park, there will be a small snack basket with like crackers and rice Krispie treats.
Universal’s includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Breakfast is a small buffet and does not cut into your time. Lunch does cut into your time, and dinner can be after your 8 hours. You can do quick service or table service. Although some restaurants are funny about what’s included. We had dinner at Margaritaville and they wouldn’t give us the key lime pie for dessert.
Transportation
Disney has your guide driving a vehicle around. They will pick you up or drive you anywhere on property. They can pick you up from your resort, go to Disney Springs, and also backstage areas in the parks. You don’t have to walk alllll the way from the bus stops. They’ll drop you off as close as they can to where the things are in the park that you want. But they won’t pick you up and drop you off at multiple places in the same park.
Universal parks aren’t all spread out, so you just meet them at the breakfast location, which is just before Universal Studios park, and walk between the two parks.
Line skipping
This is another huge difference between the two. Disney does not actually skip the lines. They just take you through the Lightning Lanes. There’s a few rides that have their own secret entrance that can take you behind the scenes to skip a chunk of it, like Haunted Mansion, but they never just take you straight to the loading platform. Also, for the very new rides, there’s a limit to how many times you can do them. For Tower of Terror, you can go through as much as you want through your 8 hours. But Guardians of the Galaxy and Tron, we could only do once. You don’t have to fight for virtual queues, though.
Not the case with Universal! They take you through the ride exit, straight to the loading platform. For every ride, as much as you want. Even for Hagrid’s Magical Creature Motorbike Adventure, which does not have Express Pass, you can just do that over and over if you want. No lines.
As far as bang for your buck, Universal’s VIP Tour is way better by like every unit of measure.