The Lills 1st Trip to Florida

[kellbelle]

There are four of us...myself (the mum, chief organiser of everything to do with this holiday!), my hubby (does what I tell him...most of the time!), R (8 years old boy who will go on anything he's big enough for!) and L (5 year old girl who loves princesses but is a bit of a wimp when it comes to rides!). So we are the Lills and it's our first time in Florida as a family, I say as a family as I've been here 3 times previously as a child but haven't been for 15 years so I've been so longing to be back again!

Here we all are at DLP last year.

So ever since I last went I've been waiting for the day until I could go back again! As soon as we had the kids it was talked about but we had always decided to wait until they're older. Last years we went to DLP and the kids loved it, hubby not so much as he's not the biggest Disney fan but will play ball a star long as it makes me and the kids happy. I said we need to go to Florida as it's such a different experience. Not only is WDW much much bigger but there's so much other stuff to do. I never stayed in the bubble as a child, we always stayed in a villa so we could get away from the madness that is the parks! And this is what I always wanted to do again. Luckily that was what hubby wanted too so we could have our own space, he doesn't like the hustle and bustle of hotels.

In January this year (when everyone is thinking about holidays after the Xmas break) I was looking at flight prices on VA and came across a bargain at flights for around £400 each direct! Showed hubby, who was also desperate for some sun to look forward to, who pretty much said "just book it then"! Now that I had his approval I was thinking more seriously about this! I decided to wait to see what happened with the prices, showed my parents who also thought they were a great price (they've been lots of times, most recently two years prior). As I was watching the prices they seemed to go up slightly each day, so with no signs of coming back down I booked them after a few days before they went up even more. In the end we got the for £1500 for the four of us as we used virgin air miles from a recent Vegas trip and Tesco clubcard points to get £200 odd off...bargain! We were going to Florida!

Next thing, find a villa for the dates we've booked. I forgot to add that we booked the flights for 21st May-9th June 2017...that was only 4 months from then! So the challenge was to find a villa for just under 3 weeks in a few months time which had everything we wanted! The criteria was our own pool and spacious deck, a lanai, close to WDW of course, games room and themed bedrooms for the kids. After a few weeks of looking we realised we had to compromise on something! It ended up being between two villas, one being in Kissimmee (which is where I ideally wanted to stay) with themed bedrooms but no lanai) and the other in Clermont which I'd not really heard of but was still only 20 mins away, had a lanai but no themed bedrooms. Decided to be sensible and forfeit the bedrooms for the lanai! This one also had a massive decking area and looked less enclosed so looked perfect!

With villa booked and deposit paid, next was car hire. After browsing on The Dibb I noticed that a few people were booking with Avis BA who had a deal on at 7 days for the price of 5. This meant that you'd have to swap cars during the holiday, but it meant saving money which I wasn't all for! I persuaded hubby by saying that we could have a mustang convertible during the middle week (when we wouldn't have cases to fit in) so he was sold straight away! So that's what we booked, a focus for the first five days, mustang mid week and fusion final week. We saved over £200 by doing this. I also joined the BA executive club so that we could get a free additional driver.

Car hire sorted, next big spend was the park tickets and I knew this was something I couldn't save any big bucks on! Ideally I would have like doing the 3 week Disney tickets, but the offer at that time was for the 2 weeks ones so the 3 week tickets cost so much more. So I bought 2 weeks at Disney and 2 weeks at Universal. Also planning on doing Sea World but decided that it was cheaper to book that separately online the day before we go. We didn't want to do Busch Gardens or Aquatica anyway as the kids are still small for the big rides of Busch Gardens and Aquatica seemed like just another water park when we had enough choice with the Disney two and the new Volcano Bay! Also on the plan was to do Kennedy Space Center as one of L's topics this year was space but we will buy that there too.

Over the next couple months I sorted Estas, car parking at Gatwick with an overnight hotel stay, Revolution card and other bits and bobs. I also joined the Touring Plans website as planning is what I love to do so felt right that I had to plan this trip out well with so much to do. One of my recurring dreams was that we ran out of time to do everything (seriously I dreamt this a few times!) so I'm glad we booked for 3 weeks. Let the park planning commence!

[debsym62]

looks like this will be a trip report to enjoy reading, have a great time.