Continuing on our saving money on your trip to Florida theme, today we’re talking about theme parks. Apart from the flights, visiting theme parks in Orlando can be the most expensive part. There isn’t really a way around this. Either you go to the parks or you don’t. But it can get extremely confusing. Sorry if you’re reading this and you already know, but for total beginners, here goes.

There are three park companies – Disney has a total of four theme parks (Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios and EPCOT); Universal has two (Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure) and Seaworld has 3 (Discovery Cove, Seaworld and Busch Gardens). On top of this there are also two Disney water parks (Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon), Seaworld has one (Aquatica) and Universal have one (Wet ‘n Wild). Still with me? Great.

The theme parks that you visit will depend on your interests, who you’re traveling with and the length of your holiday. As we’re only going for a week this time, and staying on Disney property next year for our honeymoon, we will just be doing Seaworld, Busch Gardens and Aquatica. The Disney parks may appeal to you, or you may like to do all of the parks.

Once you’ve decided which theme parks take your fancy then you’ve got to find the tickets. You can buy your tickets in three different ways.

1. Direct at the theme parks on the day of your visit. If you’re only planning on visiting one park for one day then this is a cost effective way, but if you’re planning more than one visit to each company’s parks then this is the most expensive option. This also eats into your visit as the queues at the start of the day can be really long.

2. Online with a US based company. They have different tickets to the UK tickets, and one of the main features is Disney’s Magic Your Way, where you can pretty much customise your tickets to suit your needs, including park hopping, a set number of days, etc. I’ve found this to be extremely confusing and would mean having my days planned well in advance.

3. Online with a UK based company. This is how I go about purchasing tickets as you get different tariffs than the US based companies. My favourite being the 7, 14 or 21 day ultimate Disney tickets, which include all 4 theme parks, both water parks and now includes a round of crazy gold every day if you so wish to partake! You can also get 14 day Universal tickets for both the parks and 14 day Seaworld tickets for 2 or 3 parks (depending on whether you want to do Discovery Cove or not). This means that your holiday can have some spontaneity to it, and if there’s a park you’re almost passing you can just pop in for your favourite ride or show. It also means that you can do half days at the parks without feeling guilty about having paid for a full day.

A 14 day Disney ticket for 2014 costs  £260, making it just £18.50 a day if you visit every day. For comparison, a ticket to Alton Towers is £42 online. I’ve mentioned Florida Escapes above, and I cannot praise them enough. After extensive research they have been the cheapest company to book my theme park tickets with for three years running. Granted that at times it has only been by £5 or so, but they don’t charge postage (or a credit card transaction fee). They’re also really great if you have any questions or any problems. The staff have always been friendly both online and over the phone. They’re also ATOL protected.

If you’ve missed any of the series so far, we’ve discussed saving money on your flights and how to save on accommodation in Orlando.

Now that you’ve booked your flights, you’re going to want to look for somewhere to stay. On my previous trips to Orlando, I’ve always opted to stay in a villa – mostly because I went for over 20 days each time. This year we’re branching out and staying in a hotel, as we want to be closer to the theme parks, and it’s only a week, so a hotel works out cheaper.

You can choose to stay “on site”, which is a theme park’s hotel, or stay off site. Being on site costs a lot more, but you can enjoy perks such as longer park hours and free parking within the parks. Staying off site will save a lot of money and you can still get just as nice accommodation.

Villa pros:

• Great for larger parties.
• Private swimming pool.
• Kitchen facilities mean you can save on eating out.
• There are villas to fit every budget – you can find a villa from £350 upwards.

Villa cons/things to consider

• If you’re traveling between September and April you’ll want to add pool heating, which often comes with a surcharge.
• You will need a hire car.
• You may be slightly further away from the parks. This hasn’t been an issue for us before, as we’ve driven, and it takes 30 minutes from leaving the villa to pulling into a Disney car park, but we’re looking forward to being closer this year.
• Lack of housekeeping – you’re in charge of clearing up after yourself.

Hotel pros:

• More facilities.
• You can get away without hiring a car, especially if your hotel offers shuttle buses to the theme parks.
• Daily housekeeping.

Hotel cons/things to consider:

• Most, if not all, hotels in Orlando add a daily resort fee per room. This can be anything from $2-$30. This will be listed when you book the hotel, in the fine print, or you can Google the name of the hotel and “resort fee” to find out what it is.
• You will need to tip housekeeping daily (typically $1-$2)

 Saving money on villas

• Book with the villa owner direct. My favourite place to look for villas is DIBB. You can either post your villa requirements, search for villas or even search through special offers for villa owners with particular dates to fill.

Saving money on hotels

If you’re looking to book a hotel then I can strongly recommend booking through Hotels.com. Firstly, there’s currently 8% cash back on hotel bookings – so for every £100 you spend on a hotel booking you’ll receive £8 back through Quidco. In additional, Hotels.com run a loyalty scheme where for every 10 nights you rack up (not just 10 nights in a row) then you get a night for free! This is in addition to the great prices – I’ve always found Hotels.com to be the cheapest.

You can also book a “secret hotel” for a cheaper rate. A secret hotel is where a company like Expedia offer you a “secret” hotel for a cheaper rate. You can find out the location of the so called secret hotel by finding out whatever information you can from the website (such as amenities and trip advisor reviews) and with a little detective work (otherwise known as copying and pasting into Google), you can find out the name of the hotel before you book.

Another great way to get a bargain on a hotel is to “name your price”. Priceline offers you just that – you can bid each day to see if your lowest offer is accepted. It is important to remember that your bid is binding, and if it is accepted then you’ve booked that hotel. Priceline doesn’t tell you the names of the hotels, but you can make a fairly good estimate on which hotel(s) they are, by narrowing down the location and the amenities on offer.

There’s always plenty of accommodation in Orlando, so don’t stress yourself out too much worrying about hotels selling out. A lot of the hotels and villas are mirror images of each other, so if your perfect accommodation is not available to you then you’re sure to find something else.

It’s no secret that I love Orlando, Florida. It’s where Tony proposed, it’s where I’ve been on holiday for the past 3 years and it’s where we definitely want our honeymoon (with a few upgrades!). I knew that realistically, we couldn’t afford to go to Florida again this year, and we’d have to wait for our honeymoon next year. This upset me more than I am willing to admit, so I’m really excited that we’ve managed to grab an absolute bargain for a week away in Florida later this year. I thought this would be the perfect time to bring you a series of blog posts talking about how to save money on a trip to Florida.

People often think that going to Orlando is expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. You can do Orlando on almost any budget, and during this series I’ll be providing you information on how to get the best value and decide whether you can afford a holiday there.

Before you do anything, make sure that you’ve signed up to a cash back website – where you’re paid for purchasing something through a link they provide. I’d recommend signing up to Quidco, Topcashback and Fat Cheese.

You’ve got two options when looking at your flight – you can look for a package holiday which includes your flight, hotel and often airport transfers, or you can “DIY” and book them all separately. This is now my fourth time going to Orlando, and each time it has worked out cheaper to DIY and book everything myself.

If you want to look at booking your flights and hotel together, I can strongly recommend Low Cost Holidays, ebookers and Tesco Compare Holidays.

Getting your flight can be the trickiest bit – everything else can fall in to place later, but you need a flight, and you need to book before they’re sold out. If there are very set dates that you must travel (school holidays, annual leave, etc) then you’ll want to get your flights booked ASAP, before prices increase or seats sell out. If you’re free to book your holiday any time then you’ll have more options when booking your flights, and more chance of getting a great deal.

You can fly direct to Orlando International Airport, or Sanford airport (still in Orlando), or you can fly indirect. I’ve flown both direct and indirect, and honestly, they both have their pros.

Direct:

• Gets you to Orlando faster

• Less time spent travelling

Indirect:

• Clear immigration elsewhere in America – saving you lots of time at Orlando

• Saves you from £100 upwards as opposed to flying direct

Start pricing your flights using various sites – I like to look at Last minute and Skyscanner – I find that Lastminute is generally more up to date than Skyscanner, as they had the Virgin Atlantic sales prices listed, whereas Skyscanner were listing Virgin Atalantic flights for double the price. There’s also Kayak and Google flights. Keep an eye on how the flight prices fluctuate, and you’ll get a feeling of when is a good time to book. When looking at the prices, make sure that baggage is included. It is included with Delta, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, but Monarch charge £43 for a bag. I have never paid more than £500 for a flight, including the credit card fee.

If your dates are flexible then be sure to check the prices for different dates. We saved over £150 each by flying back home a day later than we originally planned. Airlines often have sales too – especially at Christmas and Easter. That’s how we managed to bag direct flights with Virgin for £438.99.

When you are ready to book, be sure to go through the cash back websites (Quidco, Topcashback and Fat Cheese) before purchasing your flights, so that you can get a little bit of money back on the purchase.

Once you’ve purchased your flights, be sure to sign up to the airline’s loyalty scheme. These schemes award you air miles every time that you fly. Even if you’re not planning on flying for awhile, and even though you may not fly with the same airline, you may as well rack up the air miles whilst you can.