£1 flights, Naples, Sarasota and 14 days in my favourite place - Pre trip report

[Hodders]

I think I have finally decided on a name for this pre trip report but I may decide to change it if something better comes to me.

This will be my 7th trip to Florida, my fifth with my husband. The children have been twice before are now aged 9 and 7.

The last 2 trips we have been on with the children, we have always had one set of grandparents with us. However, this will be the first time we have flown with the children.

We started planning this trip about Aug 2016 and friends of ours that have been to Disney before said they would like to come, but couldn't come if the flights were £900 each. I said hopefully we can get a deal!

I kept finding the odd deal like going from Manchester then flying to Heathrow, then having to transfer to Gatwick and catching a flight from there. DH wasn't convinced, as we live an 1hr south of London so we didn't book.

I kept searching and subscribed to all relevant threads on here, then in October someone posted they got a good deal through AA. We had briefly spoke about going to Miami and doing a trip to Naples, especially as we had already decided on doing more than 2 weeks. Anyway, the flights that I had looked at earlier in the day (Heathrow to Miami) were reduced from £1000 per person to £370 for adults and £260 for children) At this pointI started shaking and saw that AA have the option of holding the flights at that price for 24 hours. After speaking very quickly to DH we decided to book and whilst I was booking our flights, DH was trying to get hold of our friends, by every means possible, (texting, calling, fb messenger, what's app, who knew there were so many ways! ) I decided to go and ahead and book their flights and then if we had to cancel it, it wouldn't matter.

Eventually, they called back and asked what the catch was, as basically the flight was £1 each plus taxes. Told them we had the flights on hold for them if they wanted them, they agreed and gave us their card details. I managed to get the flights times I wanted, with earliest flight out and latest flight home. I hope by leaving late that I will manage to sleep more than about 30 minutes on the plane. I did look and see if we could fly straight out of Orlando to save the travelling back to Miami but they all had indirect flights which we didn't really want.

So now we get down to my favourite part, the PLANNING! I love it!

I wanted to go to Naples as last time we went to Florida we went to Discovery Cove and I would like to give my daughter (who loves Dolphins) a balanced view and give her the chance to see some in the wild. After one of my friends telling me they went once to Naples and they saw Dolphins from the pier I knew I wanted to do this. We decided on 2 nights at Naples then move onto Sarasota with a view to doing Busch Gardens the next day.

With a rough plan decided, we spoke to our friends regarding Disney and Universal tickets. DH definitely wanted to do Universal as he loves the bigger coasters and we are hopeful our daughter can do them this year as well. Our friends however, said they couldn't justify the extra for Universal tickets, which was fine, we totally understood due to the cost.

I found a Dibb villa in our favourite place, Emerald Isle. It is gated and we have stayed there 3 times before, so this will be our fourth time. We love the flexibility of having a villa as our children don't sleep well when we are all in one room.

I started looking at car hire and couldn't believe how much it was, whereas if we split the car hire and booked two lots it was loads cheaper. So we decided to book a transfer from Miami to Naples so no one has to drive and we won't have a car to pick up, then we will pick up a car in Naples on the 2nd day of the holiday. This made the car hire pretty reasonable. We got it during a BA executive sale with Avis, 7 nights for the price for 5 or something like that. As we were booking I also checked out the deals on hotels and they had The Sandcastle Hotel at Lido Beach for £50 for the night(which is by Sarasota), which seemed like a good deal so we booked that as well and our friends did the same.

A couple of days after we arrive it's DHs birthday, so somehow I got looking at boat hire in Naples. I have found boat hire for about $250 for the 8 of us, which seems good as a lot of the individual boat trips work out more money for 8 people. It sounds idyllic and hopefully will mean more chance of dolphin spotting and maybe manatees as well. Due to timings though, we have to do this the day after we fly in, so hopefully we won't be too tired to enjoy it.

2 MONTHS TO GO!
The excitement is kicking in, knowing 2 months today we will be on our way!

As I have just booked one night at Disney campsite, I have now paid for our tickets so they are set to arrive in the next day or so. Our 60 day fp booking opens up on Tuesday, so fingers crossed we manage to get Avatar ones.


10 DAYS TO GO!
not long left to go and I am now wondering how I am going to get over the feeling of sadness when we have to come home. I can't believe I am already thinking about coming home.

Anyway, onto better things, I managed to get FOP fastpasses for one evening but we will also try to do rope drop on our first morning for this ride.

The packing is coming along very slowly, our friends who are coming with us are packed already, so I am feeling rather disorganised.

[Hodders]

Updated

[Pussycat Doll]

You'll love Naples, it's one our favourite places. We rented a boat a couple of years ago, if you search for ' A villa owners trip report' you can read my trippie about it.

[Hodders]

Thanks, I have already read it when we were thinking of booking a boat. I can't wait, I hope the boat is easy to use. I will go back and have a read again though.

[Smilesonfaces]

Only 1 day to go ! Hope you have a fantastic holiday !

[Hodders]

Thanks, yes I will try and carry on and do a travel day tomorrow! Packing hell still going on!