Thinking of Florida - advice please!

[AllBuggiedOut]

Planning a family holiday for me, DH, 3DSs (ages 2, 6 & 4) and my parents this summer. We've been offered accommodation near Naples for a couple of weeks in early August, and I'd love to know if anybody's been there, or can offer advice about, well, anything really! What were the flights like? Is getting car seats with car hire easy? Would it be a good idea to do an overnight trip to Disney (or other) and/or Cape Canaveral? Never been to the US before, nor travelled long haul with the boys, so any advice would be welcome, thanks!

Some general information for you:-

ALL UK visitors to the US must complete the online ESTA (electronic travel authorisation form) before travel. All passports must be up to date, each child needs their own individual passport.

There are many dodgy websites re ESTA that charge unnecessarily and bugger up your credit card (!) but this is the official US one:-

esta.cbp.dhs.gov

If you go to Naples or that area you have two choices of airport. These are Miami (not a nice airport at all!) and Tampa (much nicer). BA fly direct into both. Distance from Tampa to Naples is around 100 miles plus. Flight time into Tampa is around 8 1/2 hours; Miami is probably nearer 9. Its an overnight flight coming back to the UK so you will arrive back the next day very early, all departures to the US will leave mid to late morning.

Staying in Orlando instead if you want to visit Disney and or Cape Canavaral (the Cape area for instance is about 1 hour east of Orlando) is the option of choice as the distances are far shorter. It would take some hours to drive up from Naples to Orlando and even staying overnight will make it overall a very long trip, personally if you did want to see Disney etc I would stay a lot closer.

I would do your researches carefully and plan well in advance of travel.

Another thing to do is to tell your credit card company that you will be in the US for the duration as again your card can be stopped if you do not advise them beforehand.

A portable DVD player for the children can also be a godsend. Do also take enough of their favourite foodstuffs for the journey as airline food for children is not all that fab. Do leave behind any fruit (particularly that) or uneaten food on the plane.

Thanks - lots of helpful information! Staying the whole time in or near Orlando isn't an option for us; if we go, it will have to be to the free accommodation we've been offered, but it seems a shame to be (relatively) so close to Orlando and not go, even if it is a slog. I'm hoping the driving might be reasonably easy...

I guess a dvd player would be useful when waiting around in airports?

Agree with Atilla ref the airports (Miami is awful and a last resort) Also ref the distances, its a very long drive from Naples to Orlando.
why don't you rent a villa for a few days in Orlando. Have a look at Loyalty Usa which is run by an english lady called Yvonne who has been managing luxury villas in Orlando for over 10 years. All of her villas are within 4 miles of Disney. Many management companys only book by the week but Loyalty do bookings from 3 days and may do 2 night bookings. They all have private pools and some have games rooms too which would be handy for the kids. You can sometimes get special offers from $100 per night (for teh whole villa, not per person) which works out cheaper than 2 rooms in a cheap motel. www.loyaltyusa.com

Will look at loyaltyusa, thanks.

May be being a bit dim here (long haul virgin, as I mentioned...) but why does the airport really matter? Miami is 2 hours form where we'll stay and the drive is trough the everglades, whereas Tampa is 3/4 further.

In my experience, immigration tends to take a lot longer at Miami than either of the airports at Orlando (not flown into Tampa but imagine it is better than Miami) The times I've flown into Miami there have been lots of flights in from places such as Cuba so LONG queues at immigration and it just took forever.
The drive up through the everglades is nice though. I did it once at around 5am and saw the sun rising which was nice.

Thanks.

The drive from Naples to Orlando seems to be just under 4 hours - has anybody done it? That doesn't seem to bad to me to do a night or two away in the middle of a 2-week break, but maybe I'm being naive... I imagine the driving will be pretty easy?

I did the drive last summer from Naples up to Orlando and think it was around 4 hours but we weren't in any hurry and were in a camper van and seem to recall went the scenic route so I'm sure you could do it in less.
It is easy driving in Florida. We drove from Orlando down to the bottom of the Florida keys then up to Naples and back to Orlando in a week.

Can anybody recommend a guide book for me? Because I know next to nothing about the area I'm finding to hard to search online, and would like to have a browse in a book before I start looking for specifics.

From looking at other threads on here, there seems to be a consensus that for younger kids (mine will be 2, 4 and 6), Disney is better than Universal. Is that right?

[whispers] I found cape canaveral really boring btw though when I said this last in MN I got shouted down - I think yours might bne a bit too young for it as well.

They are however the perfect age for Disney (too young for Universal) but you will need to be in a villa or cheap walkable hotel nearby to see the fireworks and parades which the little ones like best ime.

Oh no, de - why? My boys are all rocket crazy and I'd heard it was very "hands on"...

Maybe its changed [hopeful emoticon] - this was some time ago - we had to do a compulsory bus thing and then a guided tour and apart from the main control bit it was all a bit dull.

We realy enjoyed the everglades though - crocodile places and air boats etc...

Thanks - I will research it properly before we commit

Has anyone hired a car large enough for 7 and all their luggage?