My apologies for those who have heard this story before---
A few years ago (4 maybe?), my friend and I did a super low budget/super short trip to Universal. She and I were flying in from different cities and meeting up at the airport, but I was going home on a completely different day than she was (she was staying in Florida to see family). On our previous trip, we had used a private car service (not Tony), but we wanted to save money on this trip so we booked the Universal shuttle.
The trip to the hotel was okay. There was a relatively short wait at the airport and then one stop at another Universal hotel before ours. Not a huge deal!
My trip to the airport was a nightmare. We got to the hotel in plenty of time for my pickup. I said goodbye to my friend, who left with her family, and waited and waited and WAITED for the shuttle. When it was about 15-20 minutes passed my pickup time, I asked some of the bell services staff nearby and they knew nothing. This is where you have to understand that the shuttle is a third-party service and the hotel is run by Lowes NOT Universal so there is no communication between the three parties. After another few minutes, I dug through my stuff to find the paperwork that I got at the airport when we got the shuttle information, finally finding a phone number. So I called the dispatcher who said someone would be there in 10-15 minutes. And I waited. I called again, similar answer. No shuttle! I called a third time, now freaking out as my flight time got closer and closer (to add insult to injury, I was on the last possible flight home and HAD to be at work in the morning). Finally a shuttle shows up. And the driver proceeds to search the hotel for another couple that he's supposed to be picking up for 5+ minutes. After a slight meltdown on my part because I now had 45 minutes before my flight was due to board, the driver finally understood my problem and broke all sorts of speed records (and probably a number of traffic laws) to get me there in time. Combining curbside baggage check, pre-Check through security and forgoing the dinner I had planned on picking up before my flight, I made it, but I was an absolute mess. Not exactly the best way to end a vacation!
The most disappointing thing was that the next day I called both Universal and the shuttle service and, while the customer service rep at Universal was appalled, no one followed up with me about what happened. I wanted nothing more than a sincere apology, but that didn't happen. I wound up following up with them a few weeks later and got my shuttle fee returned (wow, it was like $15), but no one (besides me) was disturbed by what happened. THEN I looked up the shuttle service's reviews and realized that the company as a whole was a hot mess and that things like this happened quite a bit. I know that I saw a while ago that I think I heard that the original company declared bankruptcy so I'm not sure who is running the shuttle now, but know that it is NOT Universal.
For our next trip (and every trip thereafter), we've used Tony and have never looked back. It is just worth the extra money for me.
(P.S. You might ask why I didn't ditch the shuttle and take an Uber. Well, this was a few years when Uber wasn't quite as common place, I had never used it before so I was nervous about it, and the shuttle kept saying that it was coming)