Actually I have stayed at the onsite hotels a lot. The annual pass holder discount is by far the best deal(My last stay was $260 down to $160/night). They don't always check if you have one, but I'm sure if you get caught its bad. The code is APH. Loews Hotels will have limited time sales but they almost always exclude the Universal onsite hotels. The only other discount is the more you stay the more you save, and by staying off peak or whatever they call it. I think once you stay like 4-7 days you save more but I've seen where that still did not knock it down as much as the annual pass.

Also for the person who said that you can have up to five people to a room. They charge something like $60/person/night for over 2 people in the rooms. Maybe they won't catch you if you don't put it in when booking, but its always killed my ideas of saving money by splitting the trip with friends. Of course, you would have to ask for an express pass for each person so they may catch you then and change your rate.

The preferred annual pass is easily worth it since the multi-day tickets cost $150 and the annual pass is less than twice that. You may want to get one premier pass which gives you preferred parking and valet parking for free, but the express after 4PM is kind of useless if everyone doesn't have it. Its not really worth buying everyone that when you can just stay at the hotels for the convenience and the express pass. As one other person said, you get the check-in through the checkout days for your express pass. So to maximize that, you can get to the hotel at 9AM on checkin day, get your express pass, and use it until the parks close on the day you check out. I would use this by booking one or two nights at the hotels so I get two to three days express and then staying at way cheaper hotel before or after usually visiting other parks like BG Tampa or Sea World. Disney is way overpriced because of all the Europeans and British that go there with the favorable currency conversion.