Florida

It's top of most children's travel lists, but in my family, I am the biggest child of all! I had been to Florida pre-children and have organised lots of holidays for my clients. As you can imagine, it took little convincing when I suggested Florida as our main family holiday. The excitement levels rocketed, and the countdown was our most exciting one yet, all helped my our amazing myTC app.

We opted to stay on site at Disney for most of our stay then end the holiday with a few epic days at Universal.

We booked just in time to qualify for free Disney Dining which was a huge bonus for us. I estimate this saved us around £4-5k compared to how much we would have spent on food and soft drinks. We had to explain the snack, meal system to the teenagers a few times as they were treating it like an all-inclusive resort!

We chose to stay at Disney’s Old Key West which has great accommodation options ranging from studios to two-bedroom villas. We opted for a one-bedroom bungalow for the five of us – very spacious with a full-size kitchen and laundry room. It suited us perfectly.

The accommodation was a boat ride away from Disney Springs and there’s regular Disney transportation to all the parks. We loved the ease of having everything so close by and cashless makes everything easier with a family. Make use of the bookable fast passes and plan Disney Dining in advance if you can.

There’s plenty of availability on the day for lots of rides and venues but the most popular ones like ‘Be Our Guest’, need to be booked quickly. Our favourites were 50’s Prime Time Café in Hollywood Studios, and Tusker House in Animal Kingdom, a great character dining experience. The newly opened Flight of Passage and Everest, both in Animal Kingdom were the Brady Bunches favourite rides, that is until we visited Universal!

Our children are 16, 13 and 9. I’m a huge Harry Potter Fan and the boys love Marvel. Universal was perfect for us, when we return we would spend more time here. It was too cold (in Florida, I know) for the newly opened Volcano Bay and we simply ran out of time. We stayed at the Loews Sapphire and were incredibly lucky to be upgraded to a huge suite with VIP status and unlimited fast passes. This is not standard at the Loews Sapphire so we were incredibly blessed as our stay was short.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, was reason enough for us to visit. It is spectacular to see, with the rides, interactive elements and characters. You are there in the book and can imagine Harry, Ron and Hermione passing you by. I could have spent days revisiting just this part.

We braved Hulk and Rip Ride Rocket, escaped from Gringotts, played at being a Transformer, created Mayhem with the Minions and took an out of the world race through New York with Jimmy Fallon, then finished off with a must do meal at the Hard Rock Café.

We used Uber for our transport between Disney to Universal and back to the airport. As we travelled to Newcastle via Dublin to Orlando, US immigration was completed in Dublin far quicker than in the US.

Florida was amazing, next time we will stay for longer with a revisit to Universal, Busch Gardens, Kennedy Space Centre, SeaWorld, Discovery Cove, Gatorland, Clearwater, Anna Maria Island, Florida Keys and Miami. I just need to convince Mr B first!