Family Travel Archives - Page 6 of 7

Feb 28 2017

Why staying at an on site Disney resort is worth it

Staying off site makes sense for a lot of families visiting Disney World, especially those on a tight budget. I’ve written before about how we rented a condo off site which saved us over a thousand dollars over renting multiple rooms at an on site Disney resort.

However, Disney offers plenty of value for the premium you might pay by staying in an on site Disney resort. And a reminder – if you stay in one of their value hotels, you might not even pay a huge premium. You can score a value at $100/night which negates any savings from staying off site (but whether a value makes sense for your family or not is another matter altogether).

You pay a premium to stay in an on site Disney resort, but here the many benefits Disney offers (and their monetary value!) that makes it worth the cost. — I spent more time in this lobby than I would have liked due to our bag issue, but at least it’s pretty to look at!

Still, I wanted to know what benefits on site Disney resort guests received. I actually booked a room at Port Orleans: Riverside, a moderate hotel, for four nights before #DisneySMMC began. This was my own money (minus the Citi Prestige 4th night free benefit, cha-ching). The four nights came out to around $190/night all in, though I could have gone as low as $165 if I hadn’t booked the river view room.

I didn’t look (because I didn’t want to move hotels), but I probably could have booked an off site property for like $100/night or so. Staying at Port Orleans: Riverside meant no kitchen, no extra room, etc., things I really enjoy about having my own apartment. Still, I definitely see how the $65 extra dollars a night can be worth it: here are some reasons why (in chronological order).

No rental car needed thanks to Disney’s Magical Express (estimated savings: $18/day)

I honestly felt some apprehension about using Disney’s Magical Express bus service. Disney’s Magical Express provides transportation to and from the airport for guests staying at Disney resorts. I’d say the Magical Express presents a ton of upside.

If you’re checking bags, you can check them all the way to your hotel room with many US carriers. That means you say goodbye to them at bag drop and say hello to them the night of your arrival in your hotel room. The amount of stress that saves a dad like me dragging two young kids along is unquantifiable. Amazing!

Secondly, while you do have to wait in a line to get on the bus, I’ve always had to wait in line getting a rental car at MCO so that’s a wash. AND you don’t have to worry about driving or carrying a million quarters with you for the stinking SunPass! Still, make sure you bring plenty of food/water/activities for the kid since the bus can take over an hour (each bus drops at multiple properties).

Good travel hackers probably can score a car rental for $15-$18/day, factor in gas and tolls and Disney’s Magical Express might save you $18/day. (Here’s where the commenters come out and say they can score $5/day rentals – great! Please write a guest post.).

Magic bands are included AND you can go straight to your room (estimated savings: $15)

Disney World’s magic bands are amazing. You can use those magical bands to get into your room, pay for stuff, add pictures to your Photopass, and much more! (OK, maybe that’s it). I seriously loved having a magic band, I didn’t need my wallet for anything and it just felt freeing to tap to pay for everything (much like the Octopus card in Hong Kong).

But the best part of having magic bands at an on site Disney resort? Online check-in. Basically, you can check in from the My Disney Experience app before you even get on your flight. You’ll receive a notification e-mail when you can get into your room. If said e-mail comes before your Magical Express bus arrives at the resort, you can walk straight to your room like we did. Or, since you aren’t worrying about bags, you can go straight to the parks.

While hotel chains like Hilton offer online check in, you still need to go to the front desk to grab your keys (though I think some hotels have keyless entry? IDK). It’s worth about $15 for me to go straight to my room without waiting in another line. I didn’t count the cost of the “free” magic bands because chances are if you’re staying off site you wouldn’t spend the thirteen bucks to get them.

Great pools and activities for kids (estimated savings: one day’s park admission)

The majority of on site Disney resorts are well themed and a pleasure to walk around. I’ve visited a bunch but only stayed at Port Orleans: Riverside as an adult so I will just talk about Riverside and French Quarter (we walked over there a bunch of times).

I can confidently say my daughter and son probably could spend an entire afternoon at the pools. Quiet pools, central pool, doesn’t matter – these pools just scream fun. Whether it be water slides, buckets of water pouring on your heads, or Mardi Gras themed floats in the water (French Quarter), it’s just fun to spend time at the pool.

Riverside also had a great playground where we spent some time. There’s entertainment in and around the resort, you can just take a nice stroll, or ride the boat to Disney Springs. You could spend an entire day wandering around Port Orleans Riverside and French Quarter and not get bored. If I personally was staying off site, I probably wouldn’t take a day just to lounge around my hotel, so I estimate this benefit to be worth one day’s park admission, which, admittedly, could cost as little as $10.

Still, the fun in the themeing at Port Orleans: Riverside actually can be pretty hard to quantify.

Free Parking at theme parks (estimated savings: $20/day)

Obviously if you didn’t rent a car you don’t need to worry about this. But if you did rent a car, parking at theme parks is free for guests at on site Disney resorts. This saves you a quantifiable $20/day (but of course negates the rental car savings). Of course, annual passholders also have waived parking fees (and bear in mind that getting an annual pass makes financial sense for repeat visitors more often than you think).

Don’t forget, you don’t need a car because of Disney’s Transportation system. You can ride free buses to and from the parks and to many other areas around Walt Disney World. We used this system extensively and while I heard that Port Orleans: Riverside had spotty bus service; our experience didn’t reflect that. Lost backpack at bus depots notwithstanding, of course.

If time is money, time saved is money saved (estimated savings: whatever hourly rate you value your time at)

One of the savings from staying at an on site Disney resort is tough to quantify: time. If you spring for a deluxe resort, you are within walking distance to the parks. This saves a ton of time, especially if you have young kids. You can walk home to take a nap instead of worrying about public transportation, spending “just an hour” in the park doesn’t feel like a colossal time investment – these things are tough to quantify.

But as any parent of young kids will tell you, time is precious. A trip to Walt Disney World requires a significant investment and that can often lead to a lot of stress. Staying at an on site Disney resort relieves some of that stress by freeing up your valuable time. I’m probably not doing a good job of explaining this, but I just felt more relaxed staying at Port Orleans: Riverside than I did off site. And while I’m a bit rusty on my personal T-rate, that’s very worthwhile.

Bonus savings: Use Amazon Prime Now to buy drinks and snacks

Disney World has these pretty neat souvenir cups that you can basically refill everywhere. That’s pretty useful to get your Diet Coke fix on, but you can do better than the $18 these would cost for the length of your stay. For a $5 charge you can use Amazon Prime Now to get all sorts of groceries delivered to your resort (or any grocery delivery service really). You can of course do this if you’re staying off site as well, but you’re likely to have a car in that situation.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed staying at an on site Disney resort much more than I expected. Overall, I’d say for the $65 extra per night it would have cost to stay at the most basic room at Port Orleans: Riverside, I received at least $25/day in value. Honestly, that’s probably a conservative estimate since renting a car probably costs on average closer to $30/day.

Personally, the decreased stress, fun theming, and enjoyable ambience of the hotel more than made up for that extra $40/day, but obviously your mileage may vary. Every family has their own unique situation and you can’t go wrong as long as you try to do what’s best for your family.

What does everyone think, did I miss any benefits of staying at an on site Disney resort? Let me know!

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Feb 23 2017

Discovering the family friendly Embassy Suites

For one reason or another, we’ve stayed at Embassy Suites two separate times in the past two weeks. I booked the Doubletree near Disney Springs during our daddy daughter delay which I found family friendly, but Embassy Suites (also Hilton) tops it. My wife stayed in the Charleston property and finally for the last two nights we’ve stayed at Embassy Suites Charlotte.

What have I learned? Just how family friendly Embassy Suites can be! I’ve often spoken about how apartments like AirBnB make more sense for my young family, but perhaps I need to do more research. Embassy Suites represents a great middle ground – here are some quick hit reasons why.

You get a suite regardless of your status

Amol posed a fun question the other day:

Random question for twitter: what are the minimum things a hotel suite should have above a regular room?
— Amol (@PointsToPointB) February 11, 2017

I’d advise you read through those responses for some amusement. I think a good rule of thumb is that a suite should have a separate room with a separating door. People rave about Hyatt’s confirmed diamond suite upgrades (and now Globalists are entitled to suite upgrades if available too).

Well, at the family friendly Embassy Suites, every room comes with a separate living area. How did I not know this!? This obviously comes in super handy when traveling with sub 5 year olds. The baby can nap separate from everyone else, parents don’t have to sit in the bathroom with the light on, etc. etc.

As far as I can tell, you can only receive one upgrade at this particular Embassy Suites – to the Presidential Suite. But hey, everyone enjoys a suite when you stay here.

I've come to realize that Embassy Suites can be a great option for family travel. Here are some reasons I think the hotel chain deserves a look! — Having a pool to yourself is nice too

Free made to order breakfast

Breakfast matters. One of the reasons I love staying in apartments is we can cook our own breakfast. My sister’s family, my family, and my parents went through 24 eggs in four nights in Charleston this past week!

Embassy Suites comes with free hot breakfast, including made to order omelettes. That means we can just wake up and roll downstairs to eat breakfast. That also means we don’t need to worry about buying groceries or cooking eggs without oil. 😛

Complimentary drinks at night

Sometimes parents just need something to take the edge off. Every night, Embassy Suites has a happy hour with some light appetizers. You also get a few drink coupons to get free drinks – some pretty nice stuff. I had a scotch and M had an orange juice. Everyone had cheese and crackers.

Refrigerator, microwave, and no minibar

If you have kids, you know that they often wreak havoc with the minibar. Especially egregious? The minibars that get triggered electronically! Thankfully, the family friendly Embassy Suites rooms come with both a refrigerator and a microwave, both with nothing inside of them!

That means you have the utility of an entire fridge for milk, fruit, yogurt, etc. You have a microwave to heat up leftovers if you’ve eaten out, and at any Embassy Suites you can guarantee that those things will be in your room.

Final Thoughts

One of the toughest things about family travel can be deciding where to stay. While I still might gravitate towards apartments, the family friendly Embassy Suites is quickly shooting up my list. Plus, at 30,000 points a night while we were here in Charlotte (a busy time due to the CIAA basketball tournament), the price is right too! Where are some hotels you enjoy taking your kids, young and old?

Feb 10 2017

Real Life Family Travel: Compromises

I’ve learned a lot over the past eight years, first through traveling with my wife, then with my daughter, and now as a family of four. It’s easy to blog about the great experiences and make everything sound hunky dory, but I’ve long wanted to write a series talking about the real experience of traveling together as a family. Part I: The Glue turned out to be a bit nicer than I was expecting, but that was important to start the series off. Things get a little hairier in Part II: Family Travel Compromises.

The moment my wife and I started discussing our honeymoon, I realized that the key word would be compromise. I wanted to take it easy, she wanted to see the sights. I wanted to sit on the beach, she wanted to see the city. She wanted art, I wanted….not art.

Once we had kids, we had to make even more compromises for family travel. But the funny thing I’ve learned over the years? Our travel hasn’t suffered in the least even with a need to compromise. In many ways, it’s improved. But slowly but surely the travel compromises I’ve had to make have added up. Here are six compromises we’ve made as a family in order to keep traveling.

Real life family travel means making family travel compromises for the benefit of everyone in the family. And that's okay. Here are six compromises we've made as a family in order to continue traveling together. — It’ll be awhile before we swim out to any private beaches again

Compromise 1: Fewer connections, more nonstops

After we got married, I quickly realized that my wife wasn’t going to tolerate too many connections on the way to our destination, with good reason. Connections obviously increase the chances for stressful travel plus you’re spending more time in the air. Even when we started flying up front I only managed to convince Jess to fly one extra connection max. Same for long layovers. (Lufthansa first class going east to China was truly a victory though!)

Once we had our first child, I pretty much stuck to the same rule. Of course, before kids, I would just take an extra connection (when allowed) to try out new first class cabins. After M, I would take that extra connection to save some money or miles. After our son came along? Suddenly, I have found that I am willing to pay much more, miles OR cash, to fly nonstop.

If we’re talking a six hour flight it might be okay to break that up into two three hour flights. But anything under three hours forget it. It’s just not worth the extra hassle for me anymore.

Compromise 2: No more super early or super late flights

I never have liked 5 AM flights, but I’ve booked them in order to save a few bucks or because of saver award space. Reasoning? I’ll just sleep on the plane! Sure it won’t be that comfortable but I can at least catch up a little bit. The only probem with kids? You can’t sleep on the plane. Even if the kids fall asleep, the odds of you being in a comfortable enough position to get any significant rest equal the odds of me ever qualifying for the Boston marathon.

The other day we took a 7:45 AM flight to Orlando and I thought even that was pushing it for our kids. Again, with one kid we were much more willing to do this (I’m pretty sure I woke M up at 5 AM a couple times). With two potentially overtired kids, my scientific calculations put the odds of a meltdown at 5X as likely – and not worth the risk!

Of course, somehow I’ve found myself booked with the family on the 1:45 AM Cathay flight out of Boston in a couple months. Reasoning? Either take a connection or fly that nonstop. I opted for the nonstop but I genuinely have no idea how that will go. Two family travel compromises went head to head and I chose the nonstop. Should be fun! 😛

Compromise 3: Less activities, more breaks

Jess and I love hitting the ground running. I have fallen asleep at many museums in Europe after getting off the redeye and trying to fit in an entire day of sightseeing. Then we’d fill up the rest of our vacation with a similarly packed itinerary.

Learning to travel with my family meant learning this important family travel compromise: less is more. Nowadays I plan our arrival day around activities that should help us get acclimated to our new environment (I even skipped the parks on our first day at Disney!) If there are time zones involved I pretty much plan nothing except for where we can eat in a pinch.

This compromise manifests in a couple other areas. We spend more time in less locations now. This allows us to take things easy and not try to cram everything in to two days. When overseas, 4-5 days per destination sounds good to me. So when in the past we’d do five or six cities in a two week trip now we do about three.

The kids also mean that we need to be ready for a quick escape from any activity. That’s why cities like London where the majority of sights are free work super well for families; you can always bail and come back another day if things aren’t working out. Less activities is more, less time in each activity can be more too.

Compromise 4: Eating is mostly for sustenance, not enjoyment

Speaking of spending less time in each activity, I don’t know about other families, but with two kids under five eating can feel like a mad rush. Like, we might as well be feeding these kids from troughs! And when they’re done they need to be entertained or want to run around.

That means fine dining (obviously) and even enjoyable semi-fine dining are mostly out of the picture. In fact, eating has become more about making sure the kids are fed and not grumpy and less about what we are actually eating.

Obviously, we still try to find places to eat that we would enjoy regardless, but the kids’ needs come first.

Compromise 5: More apartments, less hotels (even with status)

I know people love their Hyatt Diamond status and I’ve really enjoyed having it the past two years. Still, the stark reality for our family? Most suites don’t surpass apartments when it comes to ease of use and comfort. With young kids, a kitchen makes a huge difference. It helps to eat better by cooking our own food and also bails us out in a pinch when the kids are hungry.

On top of that, even with Diamond status you can only bank on one bedroom suites. Having 2-3 bedrooms makes a huge difference for us since our son really needs his own room to function well (M was easy because she’d co-sleep). So having more space works better for us and I find my real life family travel compromise is giving up the lounge, free soda, the baller feeling of being in a suite, etc.

Of course going through Airbnb or something usually means you’re paying with cash – another compromise. Now that Hyatt allows Globalists to upgrade award reservations the valuation changes a bit, but not enough to make status worth it. And without status, the apartment rental/hotel question isn’t really even close.

Compromise 6: More domestic, less international

Our final compromise cuts me the deepest. We’ve really moved towards more domestic travel, dropping from two planned international trips a year to one. We love traveling internationally and love doing it with our kids but all the little tough things add up.

Time changes usually take 2-3 days to deal with, so not only are those days affected but it really means that to make a trip feel worth it you need to spend at least a week. Language barriers are always tougher to navigate when you feel stressed and traveling with kids often creates stress! And while we love trying new foods (well, my wife does), the reality is, not having “safe” options for the kids can wear us out.

None of this even mentions the extra travel time (though as I love to say, it takes less than an hour more to get to Europe than California). So we’ve compromised a bit on our international travel. But hey, we’re still going to Asia in April and that leaves enough time to still make two overseas trips this year so we’ll see!

Final Thoughts

Real life family travel means family travel compromises. The trick for us is compromising on the little things but keeping the overall picture in focus. For our family, the focus is exposing our children to new environments, new cultures, and breaking out of our comfort zones. While we may travel shorter distances, eat faster, or see a little less, we still love traveling with our family and the “compromises” are what makes that possible. Worth it.

What kind of compromises do you make to travel with your family or loved ones? I’d love to hear them!

Feb 05 2017

Dos and Don’ts on your first day at Walt Disney World

We are officially here for #DisneySMMC and we had a bit of an uneven day. Fun, but uneven. For some reason we prepared less for this trip than our usual, my guess is because we were both slammed at work last week. Regardless, we’re here! Anyway, I need to process a bit so here is my list of dos and don’ts for myself. Learned from personal experience within the last 24 hours…

Related reading: Six must pack items for Disney World

Do: Take a morning flight so you can spend the afternoon getting acclimated

Don’t: Wake up your kids at 600 AM and expect everything to go smoothly.

Do: Utilize Disney’s Magical Express

Don’t: Forget to bring a bag to hold the garbage from all the snacks you need to feed the kids on the trip (which can take up to an hour or more). Also, don’t forget to wash out your pocket afterwards.

Do: Check-in online, receive a text message when your room is ready, and use your magic band to get into your room. Truly wonderful.

Don’t: Book a room on the second floor if you have a stroller. Or two. Port Orleans: Riverside does not have elevators (at least in my building).

Don’t: Go to the front desk reception for any reason if you can help it. The line is interminable. Seriously, check in online.

Do: Use Touring Plans or the unofficial Port Orleans site to help you choose a room you’d like. Touring Plans will fax your request in if you are a subscriber.

Don’t: Underestimate the value of being closer to the lobby and food court.

Do: Consider renting a stroller. Super convenient. We used Orlando Stroller Rentals, the City Mini we got is well used but still works great. Beats the alternative we had at home.

Do: Enjoy the very nicely themed and fun pool.

Don’t: Leave your clothes there and not remember until two hours after pool close.

Do: Order food from Amazon Prime Now or an equivalent food service. You save so much money. It costs $5 to deliver to the hotel but still well worth it.

Don’t: Call bell services asking them to bring the food but tell them you got groceries instead of something from Amazon, even Prime Now. They didn’t realize our food was there and didn’t call us back (because they were waiting for the food). An hour wasted and we had to pick up the food ourselves.

Don’t: Stick to your plan of going to Disney Springs even though you are an hour behind schedule (and one hour short of the kids’ normal bedtimes).

Don’t: Sprint through the resort after dropping off the groceries to make a bus in order to stick to said stupid plan.

Don’t: Show up at Disney Springs with no idea where you want to eat it is crowded, especially on a Saturday night.

Do: Eat at Morimoto’s Street Food. I liked it quite a bit.

Don’t: Go to Disney Springs without knowing how you are going to get out of there. Another half an hour wasted looking for the right boat to go back (we never found it because we made the mistake of ignoring a dock cast member’s direction for a land cast member. Is it too much to ask for people to know the right information though?).

Do: Stay calm. We obviously hit a lot of rough patches today, mostly of our own doing, but kept it together and didn’t ratchet up the stress, mostly thanks to The Glue. Things could have fallen apart but instead we still had a really fun day.

Do: Show empathy for your fellow travelers. A poor woman on the bus was in tears because she couldn’t calm down her toddler. That was rough.

Do: Prepare for an early morning rope drop the next day by getting the kids to bed as early as humanly possible despite spending way too long finding a bus at Disney Springs.

Don’t: Stay up late blogging about it that night.

Here are my quick impressions of what I’ve seen so far, all of which has been new to me (since we usually stay off site).

Magical Express: Great to have the service, though not necessarily the most convenient. Still, it was amazing to have our bags just show up.

Port Orleans Riverside: This resort is beautiful. The room is modest but feels comfortable, but the theming of the resort overall is great, and obviously what I’m paying for.

Disney Springs: Doesn’t feel like my scene. Too crowded and too confusing. Maybe it’s just cuz it’s Saturday night but I didn’t have the greatest first impression. Probably is cooler for people without kids (though there was a super cute kids’ dance party going on).

Disney bus system: It’s free…so that’s something. TBD I guess.

Tomorrow’s a new day and I can’t wait to get to Epcot!

Jan 31 2017

How I decided between the multitude of travel options to Orlando

For some reason, domestic travel stresses me out more than international travel. Booking the travel, that is. The reasons for this are pretty simple – international travel presents way fewer options. If I’m trying to book a premium cabin with miles (which I try to do), then my options really boil down to how persistently I check award space.

Domestic travel between cities like Boston and Orlando, however, can be booked any number of ways:

Cash
Cash Equivalents (ThankYou Points, Ultimate Rewards, Membership Rewards, Flexperks)
Airline miles (fixed value)
Airline miles (region based)
Airline miles (distance based)
Gift cards

As I like to do from time to time, I’m going to break down my thought process and how I decided to book my flights. Surprise surprise, I screwed up! Oh well…

Parameters

I have reached the point in my life where traveling with kids, I now refuse to

a) fly with a connection (at least for destinations within 2-3 hours)

b) leave super early or super late

That meant that there were only four options: Delta, Jetblue, Spirit, or Southwest. Since I try to spend cash last (TM Free-quent Flyer), I dismissed Spirit immediately. This also helped me avoid any carry on bag fee calculations.

For various reasons, I also only needed to buy a one-way flight. That meant that Flexperks were probably out, since the cheapest award you can get is for a flight up to $400. The cash prices weren’t going to approach that.

Checking cash prices

Due to my parameters, I quickly cut down my options. Since UA and AA both don’t have direct flights, I eliminated distance based mileage options (British Airways or ANA). I’m not sitting on any gift cards to any of those airlines, so I eliminated that option as well.

booking travel — Hmm a few days out – these flights must not be too full since the prices haven’t gone up too much

I knew that the majority of my remaining options were going to be a function of the cash price for flights. Cash, cash equivalents, and fixed value points are all tied to the going rate for the flight you want.

So I threw my city pair and dates into my favorite flight search engines (Kayak and Google Flights) and found that the cheapest non-stop flight was around $175 (Delta). Jetblue was going at around $200 and I think Southwest was pricing out at like $240 (I threw this out after looking at the cost in both cash and points so I forget).

Converting cash prices to cash equivalents

Once I had the cash prices in hand, I set about looking at how much those flights would cost if I paid with cash equivalents. I’ve learned to not worry about how much I earned the miles for in general and instead just focus on how much value I’m getting at the time.

So the cost of these flights with cash equivalents was pretty easy to calculate:

Membership Rewards (Business Platinum): 17,500 cents / 1 cents per point = 17,500 MR points

ThankYou Points (Citi Prestige): 17,500 cents / 1.3 cents per point = 13,461 TYP

Ultimate Rewards Points (Chase Sapphire Reserve): 17,500 cents / 1.5 cents per point = 11,667 UR points

The Jetblue flight cost about 15-16,000 points, I can’t remember exactly. Anyway, at this point Ultimate Rewards were looking pretty good but I still had to check region based mileage programs.

Delta Air Lines, Boston’s hidden gem

I shall not continue beating the dead horse. But suffice it to say, Delta’s website showed three award seats available for 10,000 points each. This looked like a better deal to me than all of my other options, so I booked the tickets. I made sure to pay the taxes and fees with my Delta Gold card so that I’d get a free checked bag (a mistake I’ve made in the past).

10,000 points for $175 tickets felt like a great deal – especially since Delta miles feel less valuable than UR points, my next cheapest option. Getting a value of over 1.5 cents per point felt like a real win. Except.

My foolish mistake

At this point, savvy readers probably already know what I messed up. Robert Dwyer, ever the voice of reason, pointed this out to me after I had already booked. Since I have the AMEX Business Platinum AND Delta is my airline of choice, I could have gotten 50% back off a pay with points redemption.

Short version: I could have paid 17,500 points for the flight, but get 8,750 points back for a total cost of 8,750 MR points AND mileage earning. Dooooooooooooh.

Final Thoughts

I’m still shaking my head at myself for missing that. The great things about miles and points are you have a ton of options to save money, but having lots of options means you sometimes miss the obvious one. Hopefully, running through my thought process will help some of you avoid that mistake and help inspire you to think through all your options as you plan travel. And hey, even though I could have saved a few miles, I got a travel related post out of this and fulfilled the bossman’s wishes!