You don’t have to be paying very close attention to understand what is going on at Universal Orlando Resort. It is blossoming under the stewardship of NBCUniversal whose parent company Comcast saw the potential for the resort and has the resources and intellectual property to flesh out theme park destinations. Everywhere you look advances are being made whether it be with the newly opened and incredible attraction Skull Island: Reign of Kong or even just the construction walls that tell of future rides, restaurants, a water park and more still to come. That list doesn’t even include the property acquisition that will almost double the available land Universal Orlando will have to work with and use to compete to gain market share versus the nearby Walt Disney World Resort. This piece is about the fruits of that hard work on the business end to make the guest experience at Universal Orlando better. It’s about Universal’s latest opening amongst a sea of openings that have catapulted the trajectory for the resort in a relatively short period. But most of all its about forgetting all of the latter and just enjoying for a moment just how incredible life can be when you leave your worries behind because everything around you feels right. So just as we were welcomed, we must welcome you now. My friends,
Welcome to Paradise.
The Loews Sapphire Falls Resort has exported some of the charm of the Caribbean to its latest Universal Orlando resort. It has done this by capturing the Caribbean spirit not only through the resort’s architecture and the decor inside or even the lush grounds but rather by capturing that innate sense of calm, serenity and peace that one associates with island life. In fact one of the most lasting memories that I shall forever cherish from my opening weekend experience at The Loews Sapphire Falls Resort was the incredible nature and good will of the staff working for the resort, attending to our every need with the utmost respect and joy and truly welcoming us into paradise by making us feel at home. Being Cuban-American myself, I believe it’s the culture and soul of the Caribbean people that should be honored and celebrated and if this resort can keep up the absolutely exemplary service that they put on display for us, then indeed they will have gone a long way towards that. We have so many wonderful experiences and people to thank from our first visit to the resort but will do that in earnest in another article. For now I’ll just let you know that we had so many wonderful staff members who themselves were from or their families originated in the Caribbean that lent to an amazingly authentic and fun experience at Sapphire Falls. But truly the entire staff, including one of our servers at Amatista born in the Philippines carried on the Caribbean tradition just by carrying a smile everywhere he went. Smiles are infectious and there was literally no time when I wasn’t wearing one on this trip. This isn’t our review of the resort because we won’t publish that until we’ve made multiple visits and truly experienced everything several times through to give you the best comprehensive review of the resort that you’ll find anywhere but I can’t think of higher praise than my previous statement. That is a testament to Loews to Universal Orlando and to every staff member at Sapphire Falls. To all may I convey our deepest gratitude for an unbelievable time.
There is so much to share about Sapphire Falls but in order to give each section of the new resort the love and praise they deserve we are going to create a continuing series of posts covering every inch of the hotel. We will link all these posts together so its easy to keep track of them and we hope you’ll keep checking for our latest updates. Of course we wouldn’t welcome you to paradise without giving you a glimpse into it. So enjoy this magnificent sampling of photos from Universal Orlando’s newest resort and welcome to Theme Park TV!
