Universal CityWalk, December 2024

Universal CityWalk is the dining and entertainment spot in the Universal Studios Resort. There’s loads to see and do here. We’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s available, and with 2 young kids in tow, we can’t always enjoy much of the nightlife. But over our 4 trips here, we have eaten at a few places, drank at a few bars and spent a lot in the gift shops.

CityWalk is fed by the main transport hub and car parks at the end. Most resort guests arrive using the Universal Bus direct from their hotels and dropped off at the terminal before going through security, zipping down the moving walkways and into CityWalk.

Guests of the closer hotels, like the Hard Rock can quickly walk into CityWalk at the back of the park or use the Water Taxi service which runs to and from the Sapphire Falls Resort, Royal Pacific Resort, Hard Rock Hotel, and Portofino Bay Hotel. There is also a walkway from the Cabana Bay hotel on the opposite side.

There are a few stalls and such outside selling random merchandise items, but for most of your Universal souvenirs, there are 2 main shops:

The big Universal store where you’ll find merchandise, sweets, clothing, ornaments, wands, toys and more from across the Universal parks.

The Epic Universe Preview Store is fantastic. The shop has different sections to mirror the new parks portal worlds: Super Nintendo World, Dark Universe, Wizarding World: Ministry of Magic, How to Train Your Dragon: Isle of Berk and Epic Universe as a whole. Theres a giant scale interactive model of the new park that you can walk fully around so you can see the details of each area from all angles. And you can pick up some early souvenirs and merch too. I may have bought a magnet.

There’s so much to choose from in CityWalk for food and drinks. Here’s a few of the ones we’ve visited… or want to visit.

The doughnuts from Voodoo Doughnut look amazing, but the queue is always massive when we’re passing. You can always preorder your doughnuts to avoid the queue, but we keep forgetting it’s there until we walk past! One day, we’ll get one. We do take photos on the doughnut throne outside though!

We didn’t get to experience Toothsomes in 2023, so it was a ‘must do’ for our December trip. It is awesome. The food was great, portions were massive, staff friendly and the building and decor are stunning.

We arrived at our table and were greeted by Penelope Toothsome and her robot sidekick Jacques. We loved the interaction with the characters, it made eating at Toothsomes a much more fun experience. Jacques did warn us to start with dessert, and we should have listened, as we were too full for milkshakes – and they do look amazing. Its not a cheap dining experience, but definitely worth doing.

If you’ve eaten at one Hard Rock, then you’ve eaten at them all, and we’ve eaten at several over the years, including this one. The food is good, and the walls are covered in guitars and costumes from rockstars from all generations. Its also has it’s own ‘Rock Shop’ gift shop where you can get t-shirts, shot glasses, keyrings and the classic Hard Rock drumsticks.

Only eaten here the once back in 2012 but the food was lovely. It’s somewhere we always want to go back to, but there’s so much choice around its hard not to try everything. We did take a look around the gift shop and grabbed a few drinks from the outside bar. Small portions, big prices.

We stopped for lunch here once when we were waiting to leave for the airport. Big screen inside and out showing sporting events. Food was good, prices fair.

Great if you’ve got fussy kids. The BK Whopper Bar was showing only large meals on the app, but when we went in, they had kid’s meals with toys, so they were happy. Prices were reasonable too.

We ate at Bend the Bao in 2023 and enjoyed what we had Service was very slow, and it wasn’t cheap. We tried several different Bao buns and enjoyed them all. Wirth a visit for something a little different.

e stopped at Red Oven for a breakfast pizza, which was great. Not sure they still do the breakfast one, but the other pizzas look good.

Only eaten at this Forrest Gump themed restaurant once on our first visit. Serves southern inspired foods.

There are loads if food options in CityWalk that I haven’t tried, like Cowfish Burger, Hot Dog Hall of Fam, Bigfire Grill & more. You need to make a food plan when you visit, as well as a park plan!

If you’re child free you can get out of an evening and try some of the bars. CityWalk has the Red Coconut Club, Bob Marleys’ Tribute to Freedom (restaurant and club), Rising Star (Karaoke bar), Pat O’Brien’s (restaurant and bar), plus a few outdoor stalls and bars like the Lonely Palm Airport opposite Margaritaville (RIP to the plane).

Aside from karaoke at Rising Star, CityWalk has the new(ish) there are a few entertainment options available:

• Universal Great Movie Escape: 2 escape room attractions themed to Jurassic World and Back to the Future. We’d like to give these a try, but the kids aren’t interested. One day, maybe…
• Hollywood Drive-In Golf: Two 18-hole crazy golf courses. One spooky themed, the other alien themed. They look amazing lit up at night!
• Cinemark: A massive 20-screen Cinema complex. We watched Skyfall here back in 2012.
• Hard Rock Live: I’ve been lucky enough to catch a few shows at Hard Rock Live. We caught Weezer back in 2012 and last year I met up with a friend and watched Bullet for my Valentine. A man from Wales travels all the way to Orlando to meet a friend from Wales to watch a band from Wales. Mad.

CityWalk is awesome if you can find the time to explore it properly We’re always passing through on our way into the parks, or during the chaos at the end of a park day on our way out, so we’re usually just nipping in and out of shops and investigating, unless we’ve made a plan to be there.

There are so many places we’re yet to try and things we haven’t done. You could easily find enough things to do to just spend a day in CityWalk, and a lot of money!

You can find a full list of all the dining and entertainment at CityWalk on the official Universal Orlando website.