This is my dream holiday but it seems to be so expensive, does it have to be?
Find out how to holiday in Orlando on the cheap…
It has always been my dream to take my family on holiday to Orlando and it is something we are saving for. It is going to take us a while but I have started my research. A few friends have asked for tips on how to bring down the cost on a holiday to Orlando, so I thought it may be helpful to do a guide and we can all save together 🙂
The biggest decision is choosing whether to go through a travel agent or have a ‘DIY’ holiday where you book everything separately yourself. I am always so worried about doing this when I head abroad as I don’t know the country, don’t know if I will be getting a good deal etc so I am going to base this guide on going through a travel agent so I know everything is booked properly and safely, if anything goes wrong then I will be covered.
Work out how many people will be going with you.
We are a family of 5, 2 adults and 3 children. After getting a few prices we noticed it wasn’t that much more to add a few more people onto the booking, we decided to invite my mother and father in law along as well as my brother and sister in law.
The price for 9 of us went up by an extra £2000 but by the time we split the holiday 3 ways, it worked out much cheaper than just my family going. It is worth asking family or friends if they want to tag along and split the price.
Do you want a hotel or a villa?
If you are going with just your family and you will all fit into a hotel room, that may be a cheaper option.
I am looking at villas because there will be 9 of us and I think we would drive each other mad if we were all stuck in small hotel rooms for 2 weeks.
You can bring the price of your holiday down by booking a villa and doing self catering as eating out every day will be very expensive.
Which travel agent should you book through?
There are so many travel companies out there and they all say they offer the best prices, so just who is the best travel agent to book with?
Direct flights seem the best option but they seem to bring the cost of your holiday up considerably – by taking a flight with 1 stop and adding a few hours onto your journey, you could save hundreds!
Here are the prices I was quoted for flights and villa per person with each travel agent…
- Thomson – £1020 per person. This price also includes luggage and car hire.
- British Airways – £772.44 per person. This price also includes luggage, care hire, taxes and charges.
- Virgin – £1022 per person. This price includes luggage, car hire, taxes and charges.
- Travel City Direct (Thomsons sister site) – £915.44 per person. This price also includes car hire, taxes and charges.
- Thomas Cook, flying from Manchester and staying in apartments as they didn’t have flights from my home town or villas – £1,082 per person. Nothing included in your price, not even your luggage!
British airways didn’t fly direct to Orlando from Newcastle for me, this price is for one stop for on the journey there and the return home. It adds 3 hours onto the journey each way… a small price to pay for a £300 saving per person!
Where to book attraction tickets from
Most of the time, it is more expensive to book your attraction tickets through the travel agents. However, I am very surprised to find that it was cheaper to book your tickets direct through British Airways than anywhere else.
I have heard a lot about Attraction Tickets Direct, they sell the attraction tickets at a better price than most travel agents plus they are posted to your home before you go on holiday so there is no queuing for them when you arrive. This is worth knowing if you are booking through another travel agent rather than BA.
I have done massive research into these before recommending them and they are 100% legit.
Visit Orlando website also have money off coupons on their website, you can see them here…
Travel insurance
This is the holiday of a lifetime and you would hate it if anything were to happen and you had to cancel.
When I was made redundant back in 2013, I had to cancel my holiday that we already had booked because we could no longer afford to go. Unfortunately we hadn’t taken travel insurance out so we lost all the money we had already paid too 🙁
This is as far as I have got on my research so far but I will be adding to this every time I look into something else to prepare for our holiday of a lifetime!
Let me know if you have been to Orlando in the past. Do you have any tips of your own you could give us?
Where is best to go? Where should we avoid? Do we need comfortable shoes etc?
Photo credit to British Airways
Hi Ashleigh, I’ve been to Orlando a few years back. Your article is good. I just wanted to let you know that eating out is in fact very cheap and the number of ‘eat all you can’ restaurants is quite high. That said, I found it hard to eat healthily at the restaurants and if you are vegetarian, as I was, I found it even harder. We stayed in a motel, which is a cheap option, one room with two large double beds. We were two adults and two children, so as long as the children are at an age where they can share and you don’t mind sharing the room with them, then that can bring the cost down significantly. The motel had a swimming pool and bar and it was a nice environment to take a day out from the Disney parks. The parks can be quite exhausting if you are going there a lot. Car hire is essential but that said, the parks are all within about 20 minutes drive of each other. We stayed in Kissimmee which offers lots of options, seemed safe and there were places like mini-golf to keep you entertained when you take a day off from the parks. Comfortable shoes are a must for the parks, as there is a lot of walking involved. We booked our trip independently, not through a travel agent, and it worked out a much cheaper option. If you are booking your flights with British Airways or one of the big names like that, you should be fine from a risk perspective – these big names are highly unlikely to go bust, leaving you stranded. But of course, if you are nervous of this sort of thing, then you balance the additional cost of booking through a travel agent against your need to have a good time and be relaxed on your holiday! I hope you have a great time, whenever you do go. It is definitely the holiday of a lifetime. I would recommend planning in a day to the Kennedy Space Centre. It is a long drive and you might want to stay over in a motel up that way for one night but it is well worth a visit. For me, this was one of the most memorable days of the whole holiday.
I love your website!
Hi
We got stung a few years ago booking flights and car hire with Virgin Atlantic as the car insurance the page defaults to doesn’t cover you and we had to pay $500 before they would let us take the car from the airport. The Virgin Atlantic staff in Orlando were very unhelpful and as I’d book it all in the UK just told me to ring the UK to sort it as they wouldn’t get involved.
Don’t stopover on flights! When you’re on your way you’ll just want to be there and on the return leg you’ll be so shattered after (generally) a night flight you’ll just want to be home again!