Ideas for booking cheapest Holiday to Florida USA

johnbhoy

Hi, looking at booking a holday for 2 weeks to Florida for me and the wife and 3 children aged 15, 13, 10. have never been over to the USA before, but want tips on how to get the best deal/package as well as tickets for theme parks etc. When do i want to go? apart from Hurricane season ANYTIME that i can get the cheapest deal! Oct Nov Dec 06, Jan Feb March April 07.
For example i enqiured regarding holiday from local travel agent for holiday in Nov 06, was given a price of £2,600 inc Flights, Hotel & Car Hire ONLY, was also was quoted another £500+ for flexy passes for theme parks. What is the chances of me trying to book this up nearer the time in late Oct early Nov abnd getting it a lot cheaper? how much cheaper would i be looking at? or would it all be booked up? same goes for other dates i quoted early next year etc. Just some ideas tips will be most helpful.
I work for the Royal Mail, wife works part time as in under £75 a week as she claims for ICA for our youngest who has 'special needs' so our income is not the greatest, hence a cheap holiday to the US, as i could never afford to go in peak time as in School holidays in July Aug etc.....or could i?. Cheers!

Jazzy_B

I'm no expert, but I've found that October school holidays aren't too pricey.
Several people have told me the earlier you book, the better. A friend of mine booked with Thomas Cook this time last year for this year's summer holidays, for £1800 for 4 excluding car.
Have you checked out Travel City Direct website. We found them to be more competitively priced than several of our local travel agents.
The cheapest place I've found so far for park tickets is here
http://www.florida-magic-tickets.co.uk/
Universal have good deal on their American site. If you book a 2 day pass, you get an additional 3 days free.
Hope you manage to get there.

saveapenny

https://www.travelcitydirect.com/anitenextpage.asp?p=HOMEFLORIDA
https://www.eclipsedirct.co.uk
https://www.directholidays.co.uk
https://www.style-holidays.co.uk
Nicest time to go is end of October so you can take in Halloween the parks take on a completely different atomospher at night

lynn44

good luck will be interested in prices that come back, we are thinking of going for june but would like 3 weeks, been before and stayed 2 wks . would like 2 wks in theme parks area then week relaxing on beach's.....we never hired a car, found we were in theme parks all day and evening toured international drive and malls all by local transport which was excellent, we had bargain £99 flights and got our motel in International drive really cheap....that was travelcity....

telly-addict

We have found that mid February is the cheapest time to go to Florida, having travelled at that time in 2004 and 2005. We have always found Virgin to be the cheapest and I have done a lot of checking and comparing the brochures.

It's out of hurricane season, quiet, sunny but not too hot.

From personal experience the earlier you book, the better choice of hotel and flights you will get. We booked 13 months in advance for our holiday departing next week (Florida!) and we couldn't get our first choice of accommodation through Virgin (their allocation was full) or our first choice of flights.

If you get the brochures early and do some careful reading of the offers, it is possible to combine early booking discounts, free/lower child places, special rates on rooms. Book online and get a 5 or 10% discount, or, get your travel agent to price match the online price and take advantage of their low deposit scheme. The Virgin deposit is £120 per person. We have used Thomson to book it, paid about £100 deposit and then the balance of the deposit a couple of months later - it just spreads the cost.

I have the second edition Virgin Florida brochure that runs from Jan 06 to APril 07 and it has offers for Sept 06. The other offers required booking by 28 Feb - I suspect the next brochure will come out shortly and will have offers for next Spring. Your travel agent should know when the next one is due. Otherwise try the Virgin website www.virgin.com/holidays

Disney hotels are very expensive and could blow your budget, with your size/age of family it could work out better to have a villa. 1 Jan to 15 Feb 2007 departure you could get a 3 bed house for £395 a week or a 4 bed house for £435 with Virgin. The villa we had was lovely and was really a home away from home. It wasn't any further from Disney than some of the hotels and you had the benefit of separate bedrooms for the children, laundry and cooking facilities, your own pool. For departures from 16 Feb to 30 April it goes up to £525 and £555 respectively.

apcorbett

All depends really what you are looking for. There are often some exceptional deals through Virgin, but you need to catch them when they're available. My favourite time is mid-October - it's still nice and hot, but the parks are not too crowded.

However, over the last four years, I've found it's better to book everything seperately, which also gives you the luxury of choosing nice flight times, decent airlines and choosing your own hotel/car/villa etc.

Going over in late October this year, and for two adults and two kids, we're paying £1800, but that includes a four bed villa, American Airlines flights and a car.

Dumyat

we booked separately once..but when the kids are over 11 they count as adult fares on the flights...package deals then worked out cheaper. Its just a case of putting in the homework...check even the most unexpected tour operators...we once went fly drive with kuoni who are not known for budget deals...
Check weekday flights too...usually cheaper and if you are going off season not usually a problem to find villas which will rent any day of week.

we have been at easter...although check you dont clash with american Spring Break because the parks are very busy then. Just back in october...and apart from the hurricane it was fine!! lol parks were reasonably quiet and weather was ok.

magentadreamer

I booked my trip seperately for this May due to the fact that as a single parent package holiday firms tend to class my 8 year old as an adult. I saved a hell of alot by self booking BUT the price you were given for the holiday part does sound extremely reasonable for two weeks due to the fact your eldest kids would more than likely be classed as adults if you attempted to book seperately. Also some hotels will only allow 4 people in a room so this might also bump up the cost -not too sure if your quote was for two rooms or not.

Attraction tickets - these do tend to be cheaper if you don't book them with your travel agents. Again all your party will be classed as adults - a child becomes an adult at 10 for most theme parks in Florida. I booked my tickets with http://www.orlando-ticket-deals.co.uk/index.html -they come highly recommended on a variety of disney related boards and when I booked mine in Dec they were the cheapest.

Virgin do regular 10% off weekends or days so might be worth looking on their site to see what prices they come up with.

I self booked by scoring the net first for cheap flights -eventually got them with dialaflight but do check. I then did the same with hotel rooms - booking with baholidays ( british airways) -they had an offer on where my room ended up being £28 a night due to the stay for 4 get a night free offer. My other hotel was booked with https://www.travel2florida.co.uk.

What I would do is scour the net one evening checking out flights etc and the package tour firms and see what they came up with as with the ages of your kids etc I think a package tour would be cheaper, tickets for the parks I'm 99% sure you'll get cheaper by not buying via the tour company or travel agents.

Hope it all comes together for you - we're getting very excited in this house!

pavlovs_dog

we booked ours through going places. not the most obvious, but we went round different travel agents, got quotes, asked GP to beat it, and they did - no other company could get the the price they offered us.

we flew with mytravel - which as far as budget airlines go, was absolutely first class

there is a fab orlando/florida sticiky on this site - why not have a read, may give you some ideas?

and when it comes to exchanging your currency - try marks and spencers. offered us the highest rate we could find anywhere, online and on high st

MINMOUSE

I have 3 kids to and had many hours searching for the best deal. We ended up booking via Jetsave (virgin flights) as they were only charging £199 per child so saved quite a bit. £199 kids deal is on again but you have to book by then end of March 06

apcorbett

It is always worth checking out the following website, who scour the rates of the most common brokers.

Without exception, the best rate is Thomas Exchange, who are based in London.

http://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=70099