Everyone is always talking about the ways to get good rates on hotels – using points, looking at websites like KAYAK, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Expedia, etc. However there’s one tried and true method that’s been working for over 100 years…
Continue reading “How To Get A Hotel Discount The Old Fashioned Way”
I don’t know if I should call this a public service announcement or if it’s a rant but whatever it is, this is how I feel when I read some of the comments to online questions.
Of course, I know the first rule of the internet:
However, reading others’ blogs means that I need to know what people are thinking in order to write things that are topical for my own blog. That includes reading all of our comments or checking posts on Facebook and Twitter.
Sometimes, the advice the people give drives me crazy and don’t get me started on the reasoning behind their comments, which can make even less sense.
What am I talking about?
Joe is definitely the points and miles person in our family. Me, I enjoy the benefits of his hobby but really don’t care about which plane is newer, bigger and better, how many cents a point is worth at any given moment, or what hotel gives you feather pillows and a personal concierge. As long as we get from Point A to Point B in a reasonable amount of time, and as long as our room is clean and relatively quiet, I’m good.
However if there’s one thing I’ve gotten really good at for all these trips to all these different places, it’s how and what to pack. For those of you who travel a lot, you probably already know all the ins and outs of this stuff. But for those of you who only go out of town here and there, here are some things to consider:
Continue reading “Going Out of Town? What to Bring, What Not to Bring & Tricks of the Trade”
We know that lots of theme park fans don’t like to go off theme park property when they vacation in Central Florida. We used to be like that, too, before we lived here. Eating at a theme park is usually faster than traveling off property to dine, it keeps you immersed in the theme park experience, etc. And we get it – there are indeed some really nice places “on property” that give you awesome food and/or theming, and you get to maximize your time in the parks. But if you limit yourself to just eating on property, you are denying yourself some incredibly good eats that usually cost a fraction of Disney’s and Universal’s prices and often taste even better than anything you can get in the parks or on property.
These are some of our most favorite “off property” restaurants. We’ve listed them in alphabetical order, since it would be almost impossible to put them in order of which is
best, second best, etc., and they run the gamut in terms of price point, food type, dress requirements and distance from the parks. Many offer meals throughout the day (i.e. breakfast, lunch, brunch, high tea), although we’re specifying our experiences with them for dinner. Most are places you can’t find anywhere else (or at least have only limited locations), they’re all “not to be missed” and some, we admit, are really just for adults (we’ve included level of “kid friendliness,” based on our observations, in each of the narratives). Continue reading “Our Favorite Restaurants In Central Florida That Are Off Disney/Universal Property”
We all know the process of getting through X-ray has become something of a time consuming organized chaos in the past several years. In fact, I’d put it up towards the top of the more stressful parts of air travel, up there with delays and the actual flight. Getting approved for TSA Pre✓® , Global Entry or CLEAR does help tremendously, but even then, there are people who are not super familiar with the modern-day process of going through X-ray, with or without those ways to get through the line faster, simply because they don’t fly very often, and sometimes that unfamiliarity can cause the line to snag even more.
For those of you who don’t fly often, or who knows anyone who doesn’t, here’s a list that might help:
