Our family of 5 including our 9 month old baby boy, went on a road trip for spring break 2014 to Outerbanks, N.C., Orlando and to Savannah. It was pretty much a 2 month preparation.
Here are some money saving tips, so your family vacation won't empty out your wallet :)
Booking the hotels through expedia.com a month and a half prior to date will save you a couple of hundreds. I recommend a hotel that has a breakfast buffet, (embassysuites.com) so you can have brunch at the same time and you will have more time to roam around.
Booked a mini van through budget.com You will save more if you choose " local rates". I needed a minivan, cause our 7 seater SUV, will be to cramped up from all of our stuff. With the mini van, I had enough leg space, while taking care of our baby in the back seat !
Bought the theme park tickets through disney.com and universal.com on the week before the travel, so we can skip the long lines at the parks and the credit card bill will reflect for the following month :)
Bring packs of bottled water, juice and soda.. and snacks. You are allowed to bring it inside the theme parks anyways... And you won't have to spend $8 for soda !
Ponchos !! you can definitely get it from local dollar stores instead of paying $7 for one. It will definitely be of great use.. Which we actually did use for 2 days, due to scattered showers in Orlando.
Stop by the Visitor Centers for all your destinations, you can easily get some coupons for Trolley tours which we used Oglethorpetrolleytours.com in Savannah, GA. Wrights Brothers museum discounts in Outerbanks, and Gatorland discounts.
For the kids entertainment.. And the parents sanity .. Here's a list of things I found helpful for our travel.
1. portable DVD player for the backseat.. And don't forget to rent a couple DVD's from redbox which is available all over. It was really convenient to find several gas stations along the way.
2. Tablets, iPods , diary of a wimpy kid book series.
3. During the trip, we asked our 10 & 9 y/o boys to have electronic free time and played a game of searching for license plates we rarely see in the east coast.
4. Frisbee for the beach
5. Flashlights/ wands for the theme parks and was used for ghost crab hunting at night on the beach of Outerbanks.
Overall, our trip was not stressful as I thought it would possibly be, with all preparations ahead of time you will enjoy your trip one day at a time!
