Loews Portofino Bay Hotel at Universal Orlando

Without a doubt, the worst value for money of any hotel I have ever visited. This is a long review so I want to summarise here. This was a stressful experience from pre-arrival all the way through to after leaving. There were multiple issues with the room, the service and the amenities. Worst of all, we were mistakenly charged thousands of dollars and after checking out and being assured we had settled all balances, we were subsequently charged a further £11,200. Please, if you are considering a trip to Orlando, do not stay here. I have never left a 1* review before, and I seriously considered not leaving this review as I don't like complaining, but I want to save another family from wasting their money on this hotel. Visiting Disney and Universal should be an amazing experience, and we still had a wonderful time in the parks, but this hotel made it really challenging. Detailed review below: We stayed at Loews Portofino Bay Hotel for two weeks, arriving in late October 2024. We stayed in 2x 2-bedroom suites. I'll start with the positives - the location was excellent as it is walking distance to CityWalk and Universal's parks. The rooms were large. The breakfast food was good. Pre-arrival: The pre-arrival process is truly bizarre. In March, we booked the two suites and received two booking confirmations, so all fine there. In October, the week before we travelled, we received 3 booking confirmations with completely different confirmation numbers, quantity of rooms, type of rooms and number of travellers. When I called the hotel to query this, they said it was just the way they do it - they split every 2-bedroom suite into three rooms (the bedrooms and living room) and therefore we should have received 6 confirmation emails. When I explained we had only received 3, they said it was a system error and it would be fine when we arrived. Checking in: Checking in took 45 minutes because of the splitting up of the rooms. We were asked to authorise our card payment 6 separate times, apparently for $50 each (so $300 in total). After authorising the first card payment, we received a notification from our bank to say we had been charged $15,000 dollars (instead of $50). The Loews team apologised and refunded our payment. Our credit card limit is $12,000, so we were unable to use our credit card for the rest of our two week holiday. Rooms: When we tried to enter our room, we were only able to get into the living room. The doors to both bedrooms were sealed shut and so we phoned the front desk. A maintenance engineer was sent up an hour later, and he spent over an hour unlocking the doors, including completely replacing one of the locks. Not a relaxing start to our trip. Our shower was cold, so we asked the front desk if they could please send someone to look at it. This was after I had explained that we were having a stressful start to our holiday. They assured me someone would be up straight away. Four hours later, nobody had arrived, so we called again. An engineer came, said it was a plumbing issue in that part of the building, said he would go and fix it, and disappeared. A day later we still had no hot water, so we asked again. In total we asked 5 times for hot water over the first 3-4 days of our trip, and eventually we gave up. We had cold water for 14 days, so we showered in a different room every day. We were really fortunate to have multiple showers, but if we had booked a room rather than a suite, I am confident we would have had cold showers for 14 days. Also - worth noting - the maintenance man didn't knock before he entered our room, which I always find concerning. We intentionally booked this hotel because the suites are advertised as having kitchens. The first thing to flag is that these kitchens are not usable for cooking at all - there is no oven, no microwave and no stove. The kitchens are also completely empty. When we arrived we had no kettle, no glasses/cups, no cutlery, no knives, no bottle opener, no corkscrew, no rags/tea towels for washing and drying. We asked for these and eventually they delivered a few things to one suite and not the other. Service: After we complained (very politely) about the issues so far, we were introduced to a manager who said she would sort everything for us and provided me with her email. Nothing was sorted for us, and when I emailed her, I got no reply. Construction work: Before booking, we did understand that the hotel would be undergoing some light repair work, but the website says this will involve minimal disruption. This is completely untrue. Every external part of the hotel was affected. The pool area was covered in scaffolding and incredibly noisy, multiple restaurants were affected by it, entire blocks of rooms were covered in scaffolding and tarp. We booked a room with a balcony and were unable to open the doors. Breakfast: At breakfast, it takes 15-20 minutes to be seated every morning regardless of whether you have made a booking, and even when the restaurant has multiple available tables. It's a buffet, so it doesn't make sense you would need to wait to eat. Amenities: It's not possible to access amenities like the swimming pools unless you have a specific amenities key, which nobody explained or gave us at check-in. It took us several days to figure this out and we got one once we specifically asked for it. When we came to check out, we asked for the final bill and they printed off three separate bills. Again, I queried why it was three bills for three rooms - and specifically questioned whether it should be six bills (as our booking had been split into six) or two (as we had booked two rooms). They assured me multiple times that these were all of the bills, and that the strange breakdown was just a quirk of their system. They promised me that once we paid them, we would be completely settled up. I asked them to print copies to prove that we had paid everything. It was genuinely difficult to know because they broke our bill down into so many different bits of paper during our stay that it became challenging to make any sense of the final amounts. A few days after we left, we were charged an additional £11,200 on our credit card. I emailed to query this and asked for a refund as this must be a mistaken charge given that the team promised me we had no outstanding sums to pay. Again, I was met with a truly confusing response detailing random breakdowns of money across random selections of rooms, with a line at the bottom "No further compensation or refunds will be provided to the account". The hotel provided us with a few free breakfasts to apologise which we appreciated. The hotel also claims to have provided us with a small amount of compensation which I believe was around £700. I'm genuinely unclear on the end compensation because they explained it in such a complicated way and charged us so many different times that I can no longer make sense of the values. My advice is to avoid Loews and/or Universal - I can't comment on whether the issues are a result of Loews or Universal's poor management. Orlando should be an amazing family experience, so please do not stay in this hotel as it will ruin your trip. Read less

Absolutely horrible and unacceptable service. The place pretends to be of high-end but doesn't care for their guests' needs at all. It all started from the check-in. I had requested a room on a higher floor 3 months prior to the arrival when I was making the reservation. I also received a call from the booking department a month before our to arrival to confirm the booking ang was promised a room on a higher floor. I also specified that it was going to be our wedding anniversary and it was really important for my wife and me to have a nice room with a beautiful view. Upon our arrival, we were told that the room would be on the 2nd floor (!) and there were no available rooms on higher floors. I immediately asked to check again because there must have been a mistake. In response I only heard that there were no other rooms and the place was fully booked. Trying to be nice, I politely requested to put us on the waiting list to change the room as soon as some room on a higher floor becomes available. I think it goes without saying that no one ever got back to us to offer a different room. Nobody even said 'sorry'. The only apology I received from the staff of the hotel was via a text message. When we came to our room, we found out that the hotel was under construction. Nobody thought it necessary to mention it prior to our arrival or at least during the check-in. Not only our view was of the scaffolding, the sliding door wouldn't open, and on top of that there was a lot of construction waste and garbage outside the door. The bathroom was designed by absolute morons who thought it wise to have a drain in the middle of the room so that all the water would flow from the shower along the whole bathroom floor to the drain. As a result, each time we would use a shower (even for a few minutes), the floor would be flooded and it was impossible to walk into the bathroom without stepping into a puddle. I wish I could say that was it. Not even close. Every request for room service went nowhere unless you called back once or twice to remind them about the request and most of the time they responded in a way that it was my fault that I didn't remind them about the things I needed. This level of service and treatment of guests is unacceptable in any type of establishment, to say nothing of a hotel that bares the name Loews. Old-fashioned decorations, bad smells on the premises, rude employees, no apologies, poor communication, lack of desire to be understanding and sensitive to guests' requests and/or comments... These are just a few things that are entirely wrong with this place. My advice is to stay away from this overpriced h/motel with horrific service. At least until they change the management and finish the renovation. Shame on you, Loews Portofino Bay Hotel. You ruined our wedding anniversary and didn't even care about it. Read less

The hotel is very good in many ways, but with some significant drawbacks. First and foremost the building works - the result was that our room had scaffolding outside all the windows with sheets pasted up so no natural light and no view. Villa Pool was significantly impacted by it, with access being much more roundabout/lengthy and the area being disturbed by building noise. Would strongly recommend avoiding a visit until this work is completed. Service is automatically added to all bills (food, coffee etc) but the bill is printed with an optional tip line where you can select one of three percentage amounts so we unintentionally tipped twice before we realised this and that left a rather bad taste in the mouth as it's not a cheap place. That being said, service was excellent and rooms were generously proportioned and well appointed. Italian restaurant was lovely. Read less

We have just returned from 10 nights at Portofino Bay and have had the best time. The hotel is in a beautiful location and only a 15 minute walk to Universal. The Disney parks are around a 25 minute drive away and Kennedy Space Center 60 minutes. Our room was clean and comfortable and had a beautiful bay view. All staff were friendly and couldn’t do enough to help. We upgraded at check in to club level and are so glad we did as having access to the club lounge throughout the day, even just for drinks and snacks, was helpful. We were aware of the construction work but this didn’t affect our holiday at all. Work to the bay area is pretty much done and much of our day was spent around this area, walking to the parks or catching the water taxi. Overall we had a fantastic holiday at Portofino Bay and would love to return one day. Read less