The Hotel Universal Port Osaka is the official hotel of Universal Studios in Osaka. It’s located about 5 minutes walk to the entrance of Universal Studios so if you or your kids are in love with Minions and/or theme parks, then this is probably the place to stay.
Hotel Universal Port Osaka gets really high ratings on Google, TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Hotels.com and pretty much every travel site out there, but I’m not really sure why. The rooms are tiny, smell a little bit and quite old. We had two rooms as we stayed there a couple of nights with my Mum and Dad and they weren’t anything to rave about. They weren’t bad, but I’ve seen much, much better rooms and hotels for much less money and you’re going to paying for being so close to Universal Studios.
The reviews on Hotel Universal Port Osaka demonstrate why I no longer pay much attention to reviews sites like TripAdvisor. They’re full of reviews from people who typically don’t do much traveling and think that because a hotel ahs cotton tips, toothbrushes, combs and things that you find at pretty much any hotel in Asia, that it deserves a 5 star rating. One reviewer was absolutely “blown away” by the fact that they checked in early and after coming back to the hotel in the afternoon, their suitcases were in the room. Other people were “totally awestruck” by the Japanese toilets (which have dials and nobs and controls you can control) in the hotel, but you can find these in public toilets in Japan and are standard at most hotels in Japan regardless of the amount of stars it has.
Anyway, the breakfast at Hotel Universal Port Osaka is good, large selection and everything available, didn’t eat dinner there so can’t comment on that. Apparently they now have Minion rooms, so I think that’s part of the reason why people love it, which to be fair, I can understand if your kids are into them. Nothing much to complain about here, it’s fine if you want to stay near Universal Studios but there are better hotels in Osaka in better locations if your main purpose of visiting Osaka is NOT Universal Studios.
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