Welcome to Travel Insights

Your official site for all the latest news, updates, and excerpts from "Coast to Coast with the Kids" by family travel expert Laura Miller

Before You Go

Travel Consulting Services

Be prepared Before You Go- When to Book Your Reservations and Buy Tickets

Before You Go

When to Book...

Keep in mind that central Florida is the number-one family vacation destination in the United States. You will be in the company of countless other families trying to plan their vacations to the same destination, so advance planning is key. Though on occasion you may luck out and get airline seats or find a reasonable hotel room at the last minute, that is by far the more the exception than the rule. Attempting to book too late in the game for an entire family is a risky proposition at best, not to mention that it can cost you dearly in the end (monetarily and otherwise). The larger your family is, the bigger the

risk you run of not finding what you need let alone what you want. If you plan on vacationing in central Florida, it’s a good idea to begin making your reservations somewhere between 9 and 12 months in advance of your trip – that is if you want to ensure that you have any options to choose from when booking your flights, accommodations, and at times even park tickets. Also keep in mind that if you intend to redeem any travel rewards - whether it be for airlines, hotels, or rental cars - reward reservations are among the very first to go, and believe me they book up quickly. There are usually only a limited number of seats or rooms allocated for reward reservations, even when reservations are booked as far as a year in advance. The longer you wait to make your plans the pricier (in this case costing you additional, sometimes even double, the reward miles or points) the seats or rooms can be – if there are any available at all.

Also keep in mind that if your plans include staying at a resort located right on theme park property (especially at Walt Disney World though including Universal Studios too) the rooms at the on-site resorts book up quickly too and are often extremely difficult to reserve during the holidays and school breaks if you haven’t allowed sufficient lead time.

Now, this is not to say that if you wait you won’t be able to find airline tickets or book a hotel room – often times some of the best deals can be found at the last minute. The difficulty is that most of those last-minute deals come with a mile-ling list of restrictions; there are generally no more than a handful of these tickets or rooms available at the discounted prices; and they sell out quickly - then what would you do? While I admit that when I travel by myself (in order to check out the areas hotels, resorts, and restaurants as well as to pound the theme park pavement in order to keep this site and all of my printed travel guides up to date) I plan only weeks ahead, but I would never ever consider planning or booking a family vacation to Florida any fewer than 9 months before our intended date of departure.

>>>Click Here for a Month by Month Vacation Planner

Get Your Kids to Help
Get your kids, no matter how many you have or how old they are, involved in the planning process of your vacation. When the kids actively participate in the decision making process it gives them a real sense of involvement. It allows them the opportunity to get excited about each and every aspect of their upcoming vacation - even parts they may have otherwise been indifferent to or less than enthusiastic about. It will also give them a real boost of confidence, knowing that their opinions count and that they play an important part in the planning process. We have often let our kids pick our hotel (after narrowing down the list to 2 or 3 appropriate hotels for them to choose from of course).

And we often choose the restaurants we dine at in much the same way. Each night of the vacation we allow one of the kids to pick where we are going to eat. First they decide what type of food they would like to eat, then which restaurant we should eat at (both choices again made from a relatively short list that we’ve provided for them to choose from). To ensure the process is fair each child is allotted one evening to call the shots, working our way from the youngest child to oldest. And to ensure there’s no squabbling (or at least as little as possible) we make a schedule ahead of time so everyone knows what day each child will be picking the restaurant for that evening. This way everyone knows the plan in advance, everyone’s a bit more cooperative, and there are far fewer problems in the end.

Site Map

About