Why yes, yes you can…
Our final family adventure of the Summer was taking our first trip to Orlando! No one in our family has been to Florida before and I got some pretty decent rates on airfare flying from Des Moines to Sanford (which is about 45 minutes Northeast of Orlando). FYI – it was hot. It was August, in Florida, during hurricane season, so think STEAMY. It rained several afternoons, which really isn’t much different than Iowa’s summer weather I guess… but it didn’t cool off at night like it does around here.
Side note: I was scouring the internet for Groupons, deals, coupons, and anything else that I could find to save us money during the trip. I couldn’t find much for the big theme parks, unless you are a Florida resident. Therefore, most of them were way out of budget for us. Seriously, like $150-200 PER PERSON PER DAY. Nope. I’m out. But I wanted to share the awesome deals that I DID find:
Meals and Attractions
Before we went on our trip, I checked Groupon for everything. I found a few attractions and local restaurants on sale for half price (score!) and purchased those ahead of time. I also scheduled a mystery shop for one of our meals (think $200 steak dinner for date night!). It does take a couple of hours to type up the reports for the higher dollar assignments, so I only wanted to do one (not be typing reports all week), but there were TONS available in that area. While we were there, I checked Groupon periodically for more offers as things came up that we wanted to see, using the app on my phone. We got a ticket for the Pirate Dinner Adventure for $29 instead of $64 and I saw offers for skydiving, go-karts, and the Crayola Experience too!
*Bonus: If you have Rakuten (formally known as Ebates) you also get CASH BACK at GROUPON!
**AND Stay tuned next week for more info on mystery shopping!**
Restaurants.com
I also have the Restaurants.com app on my phone. It is specific to restaurants and you can narrow down to your zipcode. For some reason, many years ago, I ended up with some Restaurant.com credit and have been checking it regularly ever since. This website tends to be about half off (think get $25 off a $50 bill) and has more dining options than the other two apps (probably because it focuses just on restaurants). It also boasts a wide variety of cuisines, includes menus and special dietary accommodations. There are definitely some “lesser known”, family restaurants on this one if you would rather check those out than the big chain restaurants.
RetailMeNot
RetailMeNot has branched into the restaurant world when I previously used it for retail and shopping discounts. Some national chains have offers on there for discounts or free appetizers, so definitely check it out while you’re shopping around.
In my internet searches, I found the Sightseeing Pass, which was super flexible and serves tons of major cities, INCLUDING Orlando. You can choose whether you want to visit 2, 3, 4 or 5 attractions out of over 25 things to do in the Orlando area and pay a set price that adds up to 25-50% OFF of the regular admission price when buying each attraction separately. It also includes discounts at tons of shopping and dining locations and a 7 day pass to the hop-on/hop-off trolley on International Drive ($12 value). I opted for this experience and 5 different attractions throughout our week and paid LESS than one day at Universal Studios or Disney World. The boys (ages 6 and 13) pretty much loved EVERYTHING we did, but Wild Florida was probably their favorite because there were tons of parrots, peacocks, goats, and tortoises that they could feed, pet, and interact with, in addition to the airboat ride (we saw a gator!) and the other exotic animal exhibits. Several cities also have a “Go City Card”, which is very similar and gets you access to multiple attractions at a discounted price. We used one in San Francisco a few years ago.
Ending our Summer with a trip to Florida was a pretty good mom-move on my part. You better bet that when my 6 year old had to write about his Summer vacation, all 2 sentences of it with lots of misspellings, he said: “We went on vacation to Florida for 10 days”. I highly suggest checking out what there is in and around Orlando that does not include the two major themeparks that most people are there to see. If that is your thing, that is great, but there is LOTS more to do and see and I think my money was better spent doing ALL these other adventures than spending one or two days at Disney for nearly the same price.
Fall and Winter are fantastic times to go see Orlando, it’s less busy AND there are tons of extra special attractions for Halloween and the holidays. You will also avoid the sweltering heat of summer in Florida (I almost melted you guys). If you are planning an upcoming trip, I HIGHLY recommend Orlando!