Orlando Easter 2010

[Dozza]

Hi
We are travelling to Orlando over Easter this year (Maundy Thursday for 2 weeks)with two children (ages 8 and 11). We are going to Epcot, Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure, Sea World, Kennedy Space Centre, Wet and Wild and Aquatica. We do know that it will be busy but wonder if anyone has any experience of Orlando at Easter and which parks/attractions to go to and when. Also, we need to take anti-sickness medicine on board the plane for our son who suffers from Migraines. Are the airlines ok with this? we're flying with United Airlines.
Thanks for all your help!

My advice re going there at Easter - go early and arrive there asap after the park opens.

Pace yourselves, wear soft and comfy shoes and try not to wear yourselves out!.

Take half the clothes and twice the money!.

Do not rely on UA to fully provide on the flight; take their favourite foodstuffs with you for them to eat. Also if you have one use a portable DVD player (inflight entertainment can be poor for children).

If you have a photocard based driving licence take this with you as some stores do like to see picture id when making purchases.
Picture ID can be asked for also if you wish to buy an alcoholic drink.

Do also inform the credit card company of your travel plans as your credit card may have a "stop" marker put on it otherwise.

Be very wary if using a mobile phone to call the UK; cost can be extravegent. Buy a phonecard instead (you can buy these from supermarkets and you will get a lot of talktime for around $10).

Universal now offer a front of line pass at a price but this does not actually take you to the front; it may just put you on a shorter line instead. Do the "popular" rides first; for example at Universal Islands of Adventure you may want to ride the Incredible Hulk coaster or the Spiderman rides first.

Do look at their websites and pay close heed to their height requirements for rides. They will not let the child ride if he/she is not tall enough.

If the anti sickness medication is in tablet form this will pose no problems. If it is in liquid form then the 100ml rule applies; I would get a letter from the GP if this is the case and hopefully this will be let through security without problems.

The ESTA is now a mandatory requirement for entry into the USA so if you have not done so already do complete this online prior to travel. The website to use is this official US govt one (only use this one because ESTA is free). Its esta.cbp.dhs.gov.
This will need to be completed for all members of your party.

If you turn up at the UK airport without having done the ESTA beforehand (and they will know) they may not let you fly.

any other questions just ask.

We're going this Easter too. I presume that you're aware that the Shuttle launch has changed dates and is now on whilst you are there, so I would double check your plans for whilst you are there as there will be some restrictions in place.

The Dibb website is worth a browse if you haven't come across it before. It will link to all of the park times and the various "busy day" calendars. We go with the jetlag so at the start of the holiday we are at the parks ridiculously early. If you are staying on site I think that you can get into some parks at 7am. This way you beat many of the crowds, especially Americans, who won't get to the parks until 11 or so. By 1 or 2 the parks are heaving which is when we go back to the villa for a break. We may then come back in the evening to see some of the shows/parades.

In Disney get used to the Fastpass system and how this works as it will save time. We bring ds/psp/ipods for queues.

If there are any meals that you particularly want to do then again it is worth booking ahead.

We going in second week of Easter hols, 10th April for 2 weeks! Our kids are younger, 5 and a 10 month old baby, we took our ds when he was 3. You won't be disappointed, Orlando is amazing! What I would say is it can get a bit much every day with pRk after park and we found our ds loved the villas pool the best! There are lots of hidden costs in Orlando, it's 11 dollars to park at the parks which soon adds up! Food inside the parks can be expensive. What we did was go to the eat all you can breakfast buffets before we went which are brilliant value for money, especially the ponderosa. For dinner we didn't rate them though and ended up at chilis most nights who do fab burgers and steaks! Shopping is AMAZING and stay open really late which is a good time to go. Fast track rides are brill but not all rides offer this. Seaworld is good but only for the shamu show which is an amazing show. We are doing universal this time and heading to the coast more. We did mainly Disney last time. Have fun fun fun and take loads of money, just for the shopping lol! X

Agree with ladymuck on the parks in the morning, villa/pool in arvo then another park for a parade in the evening.....ooh too exciting, although were not looking forward to the flight with dd. X

Wow! Thanks for all your help. There's loads of useful info there so now feel more prepared. We didn't know that the shuttle launch had moved dates. How exciting but I guess won't be able to get anywhere near!Looks like we need loads of sleep before the hol as we won't get much rest while we're there!!!

We have been in the Easter holidays and the queues at the theme parks were not as bad as we were expecting.

Universal Islands of Adventure has lots of big rides, most of the rides have height restrictions, great if you love the big rides, but not a great deal to do if you don't.

If you want to dine with the characters at disney then I would recommend booking before you go, we didn't and were lucky to get a cancellation but it was much later than we would have liked as our youngest was only 4 at the time.

If you like big rides, when you at disney consider planning the most popular rides when the parade is on as the queues are shorter, obviosly depends on whether you would want to miss the parade.

The dinner shows are good for a night out, our favourite was the pirates one just off international drive.

DO NOT use the hotel room phone to call the UK, we made that mistake, we made a couple of quick calls and expected it to be fairly expensive, but were shocked when we got the bill.

Try and have a rough idea of what you want to do each day before you go, when we went we took each day as it came, we are going again in the summer and are going to try and have a rough plan of each day before we travel so we don't get to the end of the holiday and find we missed things we really wanted to do.

Bushe Gardens is worth a visit, it's about an hours drive but was one of our favourite theme park.

By about April 10th most US kids will be back at school so the parks should be a little quieter.

I always recommend this place to Orlando visitors.

It is the Wekiwa springs state park, right in Orlando, and it is a great antidote for weary theme park travellers.

For around $5 you can park your car all day and swim/paddle in the creek - (turtles when we were there!) Hire canoes and just chill out. It was actually one of the best days we had in Orlando and the kids loved it.

thanks for all your replies. I haven't been able to log on for a while but am blown away by all your useful info. One final thing which beach is best? don't know whether to head west or east when we fancy a dip in the sea! Any suggestions?

Can't offer much useful advice myself, as we're off to Florida for the first time over Easter as well but I've found the Dibb boards very useful. They have a busy day guide which can help plan which park to go to on which day.

Touringplans.com also have a guide to how busy they think it's going to be.

Hope you have a great time!

Why only EPCOT - do go to MAgic Kingdom or you really won't get the full Disney thing I promise you. And leave 2 days for Epcot to be able to properly vist all the world pavilions - and stay for the night fireworks they are great!

We did go to Florida a few years back and overdid everything and came back exhausted!! Therefore, we have decided to only do Epcot as this was the park we enjoyed most but had the least amount of time at. We have the Orlando Flex Ticket to cover IOA, US, SeaWorld, Aquatica and Wet and Wild. Hopefully by limiting ourselves this time we will be able to relax a bit more.