Help with Orlando holiday

[WickedGirl]

I would love to go to America. I think Orlando would be the best place for the touristy bits (please correct me if I'm wrong!)

There will be me and DH and the children 16,14,11 and 1

We are thinking 22/03/2015 until 18/04/2015. This coincides with the school Easter holidays.

Budget is an absolute maximum of £10,000 for flights and accommodation but if we can get lower than would be fantastic! We are allowing £2000-£3000 spending for all of us for the three weeks.

When we went-group of 6- we stayed in a rented villa with a pool in Kissimmee, Orlando. This was a good base for all the attractions.

We got a package deal for entry into multiple parks before we went too and got around in a hired people carrier. The package covered Disney, Universal, Epcot, Kennedy Space Centre and Wet 'n' Wild.

Can't remember who we booked with though, sorry!

What do you mean by "touristy bits"? America is huge. Orlando is definitely the place if you like theme parks, it just depends what you want to do and what you like

theme parks, water parks, studios, shopping.

I need plenty of things to keep the older ones entertained but also bits for the baby to find interesting

I have just booked for next May with Virgin, they have a sale at the moment and are cheaper than Thompson. The most expensive part of the holiday will probably be the theme park tickets if you want to do all the parks. Cheapest place for us was orlandoattractions.com, we are doing all the parks and water parks and our tickets have cost £1200. I kept thinking I must be able to get them cheaper somewhere but honestly after looking around for a whole week this was the cheapest I found.

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Have a look at The Dibb (disney with a British accent) for advice, it's a brilliant forum with loads of good advice. There's a section there where you can rent villas and they seem really cheap. I didn't use them as there's only 3 of us but a villa would probably be better value for you.

thank you very much!

Thats really helpful

We are in Disney Orlando at the moment

We used Florida for less on a recommendation and it cost £5.5k. That's for a villa with private pool, flights with BA, all park tickets and car hire. That's for 2 weeks in August summer hols.

We were going to do Easter but found that pool heating at that time of year bumped the price up a bit so decided on August

I'm here at moment as well, in a villa in Kissimee.

Booked flighs, car hire all independently.

My main advice would be don't try to cram everything in, today is our last day & whilst we have tickets to still go to things, kids are knackered.

Why don't you try to do a city and then Orlando? You can often get the city leg as a stopover so doesn't cost any more. I loved Chicago and loads for teens/pre teens to do plus restaurants and good shopping. Whatever you do book everything separately, almost always cheaper! Good luck

Easter is a very busy time for the parks, but if you are there for three weeks you could work around the eak bits a bit anyway.

Weather would be pretty nice.

We've just come back and when we were pricing flights there were around £1000 per person.

Accommodation is a good price generally - a good sized 4 bed villa with decent pool is about £450-500 a week.

Park tickets are the biggest cost:

www.disneyholidays.co.uk/walt-disney-world/tickets/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=disneyworld.co.uk&utm_campaign=generic&utm_content=parks-sub-menu

DD also had a Magic Band for Disney ($13 each) as it mkes it easier during the day for FP and photos.

We have used this site for non Disney tickets (and Disney in past - didn't this year as saving was minimal and I wanted to use the My Disney Experience app/site straight away to plan Fastpass and meals)

www.undercovertourist.com/

We really like it and have been 6 times DD has been at ages 2, 4, 7, 9, 10 and 12 and has gotten different things out of it at different times.

As well as Disney and Universal we also like a day at the Kennedy Space Centre and we will have a morning at a water park followed by shopping at one of the malls (Florida Mall or Mall at Millenia) Now DD is older she likes a shopping session -often the prices at places like Hollister and Pink are the same in $s as they are in £s back home, so decent saving.

We tend to do parks most days. We aren't the type to have break days - other than a water park or space centre. Last time we did a day at the beach but in August it was just far too hot for me.

DD is a night owl so we tend to go to the parks a bit later in the day, arriving a bit before lunch but usually stay til the end of the night. Only early day we did this time was the first day when we went to Universal to queue for the new Harry Potter ride - though in hindsight it wasn't really necessary as the queues later in the day were much shorter than we thought they would be, especially the second week.

Ooops - forgot to add. The people who own the villa we used this time often fly via New York. It works out a fair bit cheaper usually, and they also get 2 or 3 days in NYC.

We flew via Philidephia, flights a lot cheaper. It's an hour from NY so going there tomorrow for a few days.

I last went 10 years ago. My parents booked with Virgin and we stayed on International Drive. Its a 10 mile road full of hotels and buffet restruarants (which were very cheap). If you book with a tour operator you'll probably get one free dinner/breakfast per person at the hotel during the stay even if room only.

It can be a very full on holiday. Be a geek and have an intinery. We went twice and the second time was much better after we planned it better. We tried to do it so that we had a busy day followed by a more restful day. In my opinion, universal, universal island of adventures and MGM are the busy and tiring parks - lots of amazing rides & lots of rushing around.

Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Epcot & Seaworld are a little more relaxing but expect a lot of walking.

Make sure you go to he waterparks. They are amazing. Go for a full day and chill out.

A visit to Clearwater beach is also worth it albeit a bit of a drive.

Have fun!