FLORIDA FUN!!
It took me sometime to persuade my husband to go as he knew it would be such a jam packed holiday but I managed to persuade him by doing a 2 centre with 10 nights in Orlando doing all the parks then 7 nights in St Petes Beach for some relaxing.
In Orlando we chose the Doubletree by Hilton at Sea World hotel. A 4 star hotel which offered free transport to all the parks. We decided not to hire a car as each park charges $14 per day for parking. The hotel was lovely with 3 swimming pools, 2 restaurants and a takeaway deli for breakfasts and pizzas – handy when you’ve had a long day in the parks.
The room was great with air conditioning, fridge and microwave. All staff were extremely helpful and as guests you got special offers at Sea World including fast pass bands which were fantastic. The only negative on hindsight is that although the hotel is on the main bus route it is quite isolated and the free transport to the parks was not very regular and also went to a number of other hotels increasing the journey time. I think I would hire a car next time.
We visited all the main parks, Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, Universal, Islands of Adventure, Sea World, Busch Gardens and Aquatica – busy busy! Disney is great for younger children and in particular girls with all the princesses – my son didn’t even want to meet Minnie!! Our favourite, however was Universal and Islands of Adventure. These have some of the best rides including Spiderman 3D, The Simpsons and Men in Black – all of which our 5 year old could go on. Islands of Adventure also have the new Harry Potter world and opening this summer Despicable Me.
Disney offer a great way to skip queues by using Fast Pass, this gives you an option to come back at a specific time and use the quicker queue – however, you can only have one fast pass ticket at a time. Universal, unfortunately, only allow you to do this by buying a special pass for all the rides which started at $50 each on top of your park pass. We were also able to enjoy the bigger rides by taking advantage of child swap so that we didn’t have to queue up twice – sometimes this was really quick as you could use single person lane.
After 10 days of being parked and queued out it was lovely to pick up a car and drive over to the gulf coast and check into the Tradewinds Grand Island Resort at St Petes Beach. Located right on the white sands this hotel offered us the relaxing week we were looking for. Double beach cabanas, free beach towels to use, kids club during day and evenings, dive-in movie nights – plenty going on if you wanted it. 4 restaurants and several bars as well as spectacular sunsets every night.
We drove into St Petersberg one day, a lovely town with some nice shops and quite an upmarket feel to it. We also drove up to Clearwater through a number of other lovely resorts such as Treasure Island and Indian Rocks. Clearwater was a bit busier and I would say the beach was the best we saw.
All in all it was a great combination and a holiday which would suit everyone. I would love to return again in a couple of years when my son is tall enough for all the big rides and would probably base myself at Universal Studios.