My Great Orlando Vacations, booked online
After traveling all around Europe and knowing very interesting places, which I recommend you a lot to do, a few months ago, I had one of the best holidays I ever had, and it was in… Orlando.Obviously it was a family trip, with two kids, 3 and 5 years old, which on paper makes everything more difficult.
I made careful planning of everything and I booked and purchased everything online, taking advantage of the great prices and endless alternatives that can be found on the web.
I will describe here the steps I followed and probably you will get some tips from them and copy whatever is useful to you.
The first thing I did was booking well in advance. I did it around three months before. Doing this, I was able to get a very nice $140 suite room in just $79.
The price was not that because it was low season, but because the booking was done in advance. I followed the price increase since my booking to my departure and the price was increasing week after week until it reached the $140.
I carefully looked into several sites for hotels, taking care to look inside the rooms the location in the city and how close was from the attractions I intended to visit.
I found some suites from a chain I did not know before, and then I went into their site to take a second look to the suites. By the way, I checked the price with them and it was cheaper through Expedia, the site I used that time for booking.
My obsessive research had its rewards as I got a very cheap suite-room, in my favorite Orlando area (Lake Buenavista) and very close to Disney.
After I did my book online through Expedia, I waited a few days and mailed the hotel to confirm my booking with the number of beds and the kind of room I had asked for.
This is always important to do, I booked once to a hotel in London and when I arrived there, they told me that they never received notification of my booking. I have to make clear that it was not through Expedia.
Regarding my plane tickets, I got a fair fare and it was the same with the airline than with Expedia. I also checked with Travelocity, Orbitz and some others which I also use often with the same result.
The next step was with the car, where happened something very funny. I got one fare from Expedia and a more expensive fare in the site of the car rental company, however, when I called the car rental company to their 1-800 phone number, I got a much better price than in any of the previously mentioned sites.
I don’t know if they do not have online such kind of packages or I didn’t look for it properly, but I followed every step in the process and I didn’t get it, and I got a very good price for a whole week.
Finally, I needed to get the tickets for the parks. I recommend you, especially if you are traveling with small kids, to wait until you are there to purchase the attractions tickets. The reason for this is very simple: You won’t get much better price online.
Besides, you never know with kids, if one is sick one day or if you decide to go somewhere else for one day. The price for one day less or more makes big difference when you purchase four or five tickets, therefore I would wait to purchase them in place.
However, if you are pretty sure what you want, use only the Disney site (or Sea World or Universal sites) to purchase the tickets. These tickets can be easily forged.
You can apply some of the same techniques I followed to any trip you plan to do, just remember that you need to search a lot and verify and you will have the cheaper vacations ever.
