Florida Vacation Packages

Hi C.,
I'm jealous! I wish I we were going to Florida this year. We are waiting a few more years, my son is only 2 right now.
Try this website www.marketamerica.com/2bewell across the top click on MA travel, there are packages to Florida that I've heard can be more affordable.
Good luck and have fun in May!

V.

My advice for Disney World is to stay on site at one of the resorts. They have resort hotels from budget to luxury. We stayed at the budget Disney Pop Century and loved it. They also have an option for a dining plan which I'd highly recommend. Your room key, park ticket, meal plan is all on one plastic card for you to use throughout the park. You can even register a credit card to be used with that so you don't have to bring any extra credit cards along with you for purchasing those must-have Mickey ears.

As for airfare, you can go online and get pretty cheap fights to Orlando. I went on Southwest non-stop flight.

You might be able to get cheaper rooms off the Disney site in other areas of Orlando but once I figured in a rental car, gasoline, paying to park at the Disney parks, time travelling etc. It just wasn't worth the savings. Plus, no messing with maps and wrong turns and heated arguements about stopping to ask for directions. ;) Some of the offsite hotels offer "free shuttles" but you have to be careful about that. I booked at an offsite hotel at first and canceled when I found out the "free shuttles" meant one shuttle and 11:30am and another coming back at 6pm or 10pm. The disney shuttles onsite run every 15-20 minutes or so from 7am to midnight. This offers so much more flexibility when you want to go back to the hotel and rest and maybe take a swim before heading back out to the parks at night.

You can also probably do all of this through a travel agent. But I can't stress enough how convenient, clean, fun and efficient and hassle-free everything about Disney was from the point I got off the plane to the point I got back on it. I was really able to relax and enjoy the vacation.

Perfect ages to do Disney! They will love it.

We booked our entire vacation through the Disney webite and had a great time. They took care of everything and we were very happy with the service. We did not need to rent a car because we stayed at a Disney Resort. Disney had a nice shuttle waiting for us and we did not have to pick up our bags at the airport because they had a service that did it for us and delivered them to our room. (At no extra charge!)

For a more economical plan, you may want to try VRBO.com, which stands for vacation rentals by owner. You can get a house with a pool for very reasonable rates. If you don't mind cooking a meal or two, you can really save on the food costs by doing breakfast and dinner at the house.

The only other advice that I have is to get the autograph books the minute you walk into the park!! Splurge and get the ones with a page for the autograph and a slip for the picture. It was a great keepsake for our kids.

Bottom line, there is an overwhelming number of places and choices for you. If anything, check the Disney website just to get ideas of what the hotels look like and if any of them fit into your budget. Then you can take that info and use another service to book or look for cheaper prices.

Good luck and have a fabulous time!

We just planned our 1st family trip for this summer and used expedia.com. We were able to get hotel, car, and airfare and tickets for various attractions. We checked other websites such as travelocity and one other (sorry, can't think of the name right off) but found expedia to be less.

C., I just did my families vacation in July last year and I found out it was way more cheaper doing everything seperatly, now sometimes it is cheaper doing it as a package but you would have to do research and compare pricing. When I did our trip I got us a vacation home instead of a hotel first because they are more cozy and more private than a hotel, you have a kitchen, stove, refrigerator, washer/dryer, I mean its a reall good deal well at least for me. I ended up getting my tickets throu travelation.com but any of those websites like expedia, cheaptickets, ect. On the parks take in mind if you want to go to every single park it can get pretty pricy, there's stands just about on every corner in Florida where you can buy retail tickets which sometimes work and sometimes they don't I recommend you get your tickets online way more secure that you will actually get in the parks, yes I will say that when we went thats what we used the retail tickets, we got in universal & adventure land (something like that) but when we got our tickets to wet-n-wild they didn't work so thats just something if you want to go cheaper than you might want to do the retail, if you want something secure buy your tickets online. Car rental its always better to get a car to move around there's so many places to go but they're not all in the same area, um another thing southwest airlines will be your most cheapest way to travel they are pretty reasonable in price, so you might want to check that out. Have fun!!! And i hoped i've helped. :)If you need more info you can email me and i'll give you more details.

HI! I know that my sister went last May and she said that she would highly recommend the food package, if nothing else. She said it saved them a ton of money! Sorry, that is all I know, but hope it helps! have fun!!

When we went a few years ago, we booked through a Travel agent. She was able to package, flight, rental car, hotel, and Disney tickets. I think we got a good deal. We used Kansas City Travel, in Shawnee. You might check. Sue

I would check out all options before just checking out a package deal. We went to florida several times and ended up being our cheapest vacations as the hotels are very reasonable there especially in Kissimee and out near the airport with online bookings. Check out travelocity.com, orbitz.com, and hotels.com.. Those are the 3 sites I use most to book hotels. If you are flying and need a rental car sometimes the package deal may be better. Also check out the park websites that you plan to go to. sometimes they have discounted tickets for online purchases and you would print out your purchase and show them at the gate. One trip we stayed in Kissimee at a Ramada with nice pool and jacuzi for 29.99 a night. Another time we stayed near the airport in a brand new hotel with pool for 49.99 a night. When you reserve hotels on these online sites they are a lot cheaper than if you call and book one or drive to a hotel and book one that day. Good luck with Disney World during the peak times of year. They are very crowded and can be disappointing. We went to Disney World Magic Kingdom in April one year. Stood in most lines for 2-3 hours and rode 5 rides all day. didn't see the parade because we were in line for space mountain for 2 hours and were the next 5 people at the front of the line and took 45 more min to finally get on the ride so we missed the parade. Make sure you get the fast passes even if a ride says the reg wait is 30 min and the fast pass is 2 hours away. We tried the reg waits and waited over 2 hours for some of them and the fast pass people got to go ahead of us even though the reg wait line was supposed to be less than an hour. Needless to say it was so crowded that none of us enjoyed it and the kids don't have a good memory of that day as we stood in lines more than they rode rides and most of the rides they did get to ride were babyish rides that they had ridden in carnivals because they had the smaller lines at 2 hour waits. You can go on the disney site and it will show what days are best and not as crowded. We went on a Thursday and it was crowded and the weather was even chilly that day.
We went to Universal Studios the next year and loved it especially with little kids, they have a lot of rides that 2 year olds can ride and not doing the baby swap so much. We plan to do that park again when we go to Florida. We also went to Busch Gardens in Tampa a week before Christmas. There were no lines and the theme park is also a zoo so if there are lines you can just walk around and see the animals. We went to Sea World too and enjoyed that as well. If you are into Gators, there is gatorland which has a lot of huge gators and has gator shows. It is a lot cheaper than the amusement parks and might be something you want to check out. AS for the Disney parks I would suggest getting a park hopper ticket so if the park you choose is really crowded you can hop to another one that may not be as crowded. We did not do this and wished we would have as I would not have stayed at Magic Kingdom with that many people there. Even the outside show was so crowded that the characters looked really small because we were so far away and couldn't see that well. The kids didn't even get pictures taken with the characters because there were so many people and didn't want to wait hours to get that close to them. Hope you have better luck and have a great time in Florida.