Florida 2010 epic.Trip
Welcome to the page for the Florida 2010 epic.Trip. This is where I’m going to collate all the information you’ll need for the trip!
The Premise
A two week trip in September 2010 to Orlando for Theme Parks, Rollercoasters, Waterparks and Fun! Probably staying in a villa and consisting of the epic.Team and Friends. For the epic.Team I’m going to take the lead with the organisation, for anyone else, it’s up to you. I’ll give you all the information and you can book it.
There’s 5 main items to sort out for the trip. They are:
- Dates
- Flights
- Hotel/Villa
- Theme Park Tickets
- Car Hire
Dates
September is a good time to go to Florida. The weather is generally hot with very some rain in the afternoons. The crowds are fairly low. Queues at Islands of Adventure were between 5 and 10 minutes in Sept/Oct 2009. It also avoids school/uni exams.
Flights
We will be flying from Manchester (it’s closer to most of us and has benefits with Angelus living very close) and will most likely be flying with Virgin as they are the only airline that fly direct to Orlando International Airport (charter airlines will fly to Sanford).
The price will be between £350 to £450. I’m going to keep an eye on prices and we can book when it’s cheapest, so it’s best to have the £350-400 standing by ready.
Hotel/Villa
We could stay in a hotel or we could stay in a villa. If there’s 6-8 of us a villa would be better. Last time I used Afty’s Mum’s villa, which worked out at just under £800 for two weeks although it might be a bit more now the exchange rate is worse. Work on between £150 and £175 each.
Theme Park Tickets
There’s two main groups of theme parks – Disney and non-Disney.
- Magic Kingdom
- Epcot
- Hollywood Studios
- Animal Kingdom
- Blizzard Beach/Typhoon Lagoon
- Universal Studios
- Islands of Adventure
- Seaworld
- Busch Gardens
- Aquatica
The Disney parks are covered by a normal Disney 14 Day Ultimate Ticket, this costs about £210. The other parks are covered by the Orlando FlexTicket which is about £155. We will need to shop around for better prices as we might be able to save another £20-30.
Car Hire
With 6 to 8 people we really need two cars. I’d reccomend one 8 person car and a smaller 4 person car. We’ll need 2 cars to cope with the luggage to/from the airport and it allows flexibility. For drivers, you can normally get any number of additional drivers added for free as long as they’re 25 or over. If they’re under 25 there’s a £100 fee.
For the SUV/large car it’s £420 and the smaller car is £250. We need to make a decision on what to do with this.
Summary
The total cost for the holiday for flights, accommodation, tickets and car hire will be between £800 and £1000 depending on what we go for for car hire.
Prices have gone up a lot since last year (over £100 more on the theme park tickets) and it is a bit more expensive now although we might be able to save money on the villa by doing a deal with Afty or finding somewhere cheaper.