Long stay (5-6 weeks) has anyone done this and suggestions for best way to book please!

[Guest]

Hi everyone, we are lucky enough to go to Florida most years for our annual hols and usually just book a package deal through one of the travel agents or virgin direct. We always get a villa and inclusive car hire as it has always been the cheapest option for us (2 adults 4 kids). We usually do 2-3 week stays but always find ourselves running out of time and wishing we could stay longer. Next summer we would desperately like to do the full 6 week holidays but the travel agents only seem to do max of 28 days. Has anybody done a long stay and if so how did you go about organising it? My budget for the booking excluding spends is 8.5k is this even achievable for this price in the summer hols? Any advice much appreciated!

[welshwiz]

Welcome to the Dibb

If you're flexible with your choice of airline and route then putting the trip together yourself you could achieve a very good trip for your budget including flights, car (minivan I guess for your party) and villa.

FLIGHTS: sign up for email alerts on kayak/skyscanner or follow the summer flights/glitch thread on the Dibb. If you're willing to fly indirect or into Miami or Fort Lauderdale or alternative routes such as ex Manchester but connect in London (e.g. BA flydrive) then you'll save loads compared to direct Virgin flights into MCO.

CAR: BA flydrives are a good option or Alamo Brits or Andy at Discount Florida Car hire.

VILLA: post a request of the villa requests section of the Dibb and villa owners will come forward with availability and quotes for you.

Your budget is realistic for flights/car/villa for a party of 6 but not including park tickets.

Happy planning!

[scottish mama]

Great advice from Welshwiz.
We've been lucky enough to go for between 4 and 5 1/2 weeks during the school summer holidays for the past 5 yrs.

We do it all diy, booking flights first so that we get them in a sale, as they're the bulk of the budget. We fly indirect (have to from up here anyway) and will fly from/through anywhere that gets us there at a reasonable price. We trawl the Dibb as some lovely Dibber always shares their bargain flight. We have a limit of £500pp for the flight and have always managed to stay within or frequently under this (the only time we went over budget was the Virgin PE offer via Ireland).

We book villas using websites such a HomeAway, villas2000 and owners direct. We often stay 2 weeks in Orlando then 3 weeks at the gulf coast.

We only get tickets for one theme park, usually Universal, but there is so much to do both in Orlando and Florida in general, that we could stay longer and still have plenty to do. We do eat in a lot but still enjoy nice meals out, and whilst we do sign up for coupons and vouchers we're not always eating at the cheapest places, just not eating out every night.

Car hire again we usually find via the Dibb and looking for sales.

Being at the coast means we can live very cheaply, enjoying the pool and the beach and taking picnics etc. Obviously the more activities you want to do the more money you'll spend, but that's the same wherever you are and there is a lot to do for relativity little cost.

Hope this helps!

[Guest]

If you book your car hire you may have to book it in two bookings went we went for 7 weeks we had to do four and three weeks going back to change our car after four weeks. It may have changed but that was fairly recently we had to change.

[bighal]

When we stayed for 6 weeks we booked a fly drive with BA and booked the villa with Homeaway which we got a discount on as we booked for 5 weeks and then a week at Disney with our DVC points.
The slight problem we had was that the car hire was split into 2 by the hire company as they didnt do bookings over 4 weeks, just need to make sure the voucher is applied correctly in these cases.

[Guest]

Thanks for the great responses so far... one thing that would be useful to know is when the best time to book flights is...is it best to book them asap for next July or wait until nearer the time? I've been looking and although not all sites allow bookings a year in advance, the ones that do are coming up pricey for July 2018. Almost £900 pp which is way more than I want to pay as it will be over £5k just for the flights..