Our Adventure is out there - August 2022 Disney Universal and Naples
 

So we are Michelle (me), Adam (DH) and Cooper (DS12 turning 13 in New York this year!). We are Australians living in the UK. We love to travel and America is one of our favourite destinations :D we have been to Disney 6 times but also love to explore other parts of America. We have been to New York twice and loved it, did a road trip down through the Florida Keys and Miami, explored Boston, Niagara and upstate New York on an even longer road trip ( soooo many hotels!) This year we have a sneaky week planned for Austin Texas (so excited) and another week in Lake Como for a big birthday for my Mum.

This trip came about as we had finally earned enough reward points with Virgin Atlantic to redeem flights to Orlando! :grin: The outbound flights were simple enough to book but we had trouble finding flight to get home (I would have happily stayed in Orlando!) so after much tooing and froing I suggested looking for return flights from JFK ;) and wouldn’t you know it we found flights! We all love New York so this was a complete bonus. I managed to secure flights from Tampa to New York that were really reasonable so we were set :D

So we are flying direct from Manchester to MCO and have our first four nights at the Rosen Inn at Pointe Orlando (cheap and almost cheerful) followed by 4 nights Club Level at Royal Pacific Resort. On our trip to Disney last year we upgraded our Universal tickets to Annual Passes, so this will be our third use of the tickets which feels like good value.



After this we have 7 nights at Residence Inn Seaworld and we are going to use our Seaworld/Aquatic tickets and also use this opportunity to visit Wekiwa Springs State Park, De Leon Springs and Blue Springs State Park. They look amazing and we love to explore the local area. I have also managed a quick Disney fix, I have made a booking to go back to Beaches and Cream for a patty melt and a no way Jose - we are all looking forward to this!



From here we make our way to Naples for four nights, this is a family favourite. We love the beach and the restaurants, it is super chilled and just beautiful. A lovely chance to recharge after the excitement of the parks.



We are going to spend our last two nights at the Grand Plaza Hotel, we normally stay at the Beachcomber Resort in St Pete Beach (a summer holiday tradition) but it was cheaper at the Grand Plaza so we booked it!



Then yay for 6 nights in New York :D we are staying at the Crowne Plaza HY36 in Midtown. Not far from the Empire State Building, so within walking distance to most things but also not far from the subway. We are super excited for this trip and after writing my first dining report at Christmas I feel a little bit more confident about trying it again. If you are still reading, thank you for hanging in there! More updates to follow :

Your plans for this summer sound fab. We loved NYC when we tagged it on to the start of our 2017 Orlando trip. It's somewhere we have to go back to sometime.

I'm looking forward to reading all about your plans.

Hi Abby, thank you :D we feel the same way about New York. There’s a few things (actually lots of things :pgig: ) that we didn’t do last time that I am looking forward to doing, like going to Katz’s Deli, I think we might do a food tour this time, so we can try lots of places and have a good explore at the same time. The Vessel looks awesome and we didn’t walk the High Line either, the boys are already looking into a baseball game as well. We probably should have flown into New York as I have a feeling we are going to be exhausted by the time we get home :d: thank you for reading :wavey:

We went to Katz's on our first full day, we had done a lot of walking as we'd done SOL and then walked over to Brooklyn and back. We were exhausted but it was a great sandwich. The High Line we did on our last day before flying down to Orlando.

A food tour sounds great, although we did love the cheap and nasty hot dogs and pretzel stands.

Have you done Juniors for the cheesecake? That was great. We did all the tourist spots as we also did breakfast at Ellen's Stardust Diner. There are probably way better places, but we still loved it.

You know all the good places to go! Adam loves Junior’s, I think he might be part Cheesecake :d: I was pleasantly surprised by just how good the ‘real’ food was.

We caught the subway over to Brooklyn and walked back across the bridge. It was amazing but I was slightly terrified of the cyclists :blush: they go so fast! We had some amazing pizza and Cooper had a few dodgy hot dogs :tongue: I also loved all the desserts at Magnolia Bakery.



We loved Central Park, SOL, Intrepid Natural History Museum, ESB, TOTR, we also saw Matilda on Broadway and we did a champagne cruise down the Hudson. I know shopping isn’t your thing but we even caught the bus out to the outlets in Jersey (spoiler alert, the Orlando ones are better).

I am going to have to get organised and start making a rough itinerary for NY and also sort out something for Cooper’s 13th Birthday, lucky guy! No pressure :pgig: :wavey:

That sounds like a really good mix - we’ve done the NYC & Florida combo many times and loved it. Naples is also one of our favourite places.
We did a Texas road trip last summer and spent a week in Austin, Texas (it was fab!) You will have a great time.

Thank you :grin: this is our first time doing a NYC and Florida combo and I am quite looking forward to it! Naples really is beautiful and it was DS who asked if we could make it one of our stops this year, how could I say no ;)

Ohhh, I would love to hear about your Texas trip! We have all the main sights planned but was there any one thing that was your absolute favourite? I love the look of Barton Springs and there are loads of activities on Ladybird lake that look brilliant too. The Capitol Building looks spectacular as well. I’m hoping we manage to fit in some good BBQ too :tongue:

Thank you so much for reading and commenting :wavey:

Wow this sounds like an epic holiday and a great mix of different things. We went to NYC when we were in our early twenties in 2004 but would love to go back again at some point.

I love the photo of your husband at Juniors, he looks like he knows he's about to eat something pretty tasty. Great photo of you walking over the bridge. You did it the sensible way, by getting the subway over and walking back, we walked both ways, we clocked up 35,000 steps that day so we definitely deserved our meat sandwiches at Katz :D and the beers :d:



Have you hired a boat in Central Park? That was actually only about $15 I think. Not quite the same as your champagne cruise I'm sure ;) but we had great fun doing it.



Also, we did the Ride, which was awesome and could be fun as a birthday treat. Again, I'm sure you've heard of it, if you haven't already done it but we loved it.

Looking forward to reading all about your adventures this year. A NYC stop sounds an idyllic stop off on the way home. Your Universal Annual passes seem to have been well used, great value for money to use them 3 times. Without a countdown this year we won't be bumping into you this year, so look forward to reading all about your holiday.:wavey::wavey: