Florida Parks; best to buy tix here or US?

A buddy told me you can get Disney tickets in the supermarket for local prices. Helps them generate traffic in Anaheim. Not sure about Orlando.

Try asking on Martin's money saving site.


Money saving

The word among my Florida relatives is that The Mouse rarely gives anyone a discount, although a large clan might qualify for a group rate. Local supermarkets often have coupons for three or four bucks off tickets to other parks. Try contacting the Chambers of Commerce in the towns of interest.

Sometimes you can earn free tickets by sitting through a time share selling pitch - however you lose if you are suckered into buying a time share. Attender beware

Hi, Mike

The local stores buy part-used tickets off people, and sell them at cut-price, so that might be worth checking out.
The Kennedy Space Center has a return within 7 days for free offer on bought tickets, so there is a possibility that they may be available (we gave ours to one of the ticket guys on ome of the shops).
Some of the parks (eg. SeaWorld) have now taken to fingerprint scanning to link people with the tickets, so I don't know what the situation is re. using other people's tickets there.

There are also multitudes of discount voucher booklets there, though mostly for meals.

BTW, on the eating out angle, Ponderosa is the best cheap breakfast buffet stuff your face place; Sizzler is good too, but Shoneys and Dennys were disappointing. Logans do great steaks, Giordanos do humungous pizzas, and the family liked the Bahama Breeze restaurants.

Thanks; more eating/shopping chain advice would be appreciated.
My daughter is leaving for university in Florida at the weekend, and I'll be going over initially (to pay the bills!!). Will need to buy; bedding, hair-driers, straightners, computer bits etc. You get the idea.

I found the Kennedy Space Center to be a complete disappointment. For the most part, you are on a bus (when you aren't waiting for a bus) in the stifling heat, getting distant views of large buildings.

Maybe I'm spoiled. There is far more to see in the lobby of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum than there is in all of KSC.

Eating advice--don't be shy about asking the server to wrap up the remainder of any huge portions that you can't eat. Don't leave tomorrow's lunch on the plate. Of course, it's bad form to do this at a buffet.

Shopping--Get most of this stuff at Wal-Mart or Target. The university may have specific ideas about what computer they want your darling to have. In some cases, if you buy the computer from the on-campus IT department, they will add a first-rate warranty of their own, including house calls for repairs. They should have a big stack of spare parts for anything they sell. It would be worth a few emails to find this out in advance

More shopping advice--be judicious about buying textbooks. A lot of used copies are available on line these days. For literature and humanities courses which use readings from lots of books, the length of the syllabus is inversely proportional to the importance of reading any one of the books. A lot of the high-demand books can be checked out of the library for a couple of hours as needed.

RE Target - if you consider then to be a French company (which they are not) and pronounce the name to your self as Tarjay you will have an inner smile when you go the shop. Rather like Millets and Millay in the UK.

This is a frivolous post by the way.

Thanks guys ( esp. Paul )


Will be staying in a house, so have the ability to cook ( and stuff the fridge full of beer and wine. )

I know that a fair few places give Forces Discount, but not sure if that beats a bulk ticket for everything; family of four, two weeks, £1600 ( yes pounds. )

M

More shopping advice--Don't miss out on the American renaissance in brewing. It's easy to find crappy beer in the States, but there is lots of first-rate stuff out there too. Find a store that will let you buy single bottles and be adventurous.

Sierra Nevada ale is ubiquitous and excellent. Arrogant Bastard from California and Terrible from Quebec are worth searching out.

quote:

Originally posted by JRHardee:
The word among my Florida relatives is that The Mouse rarely gives anyone a discount, although a large clan might qualify for a group rate. Local supermarkets often have coupons for three or four bucks off tickets to other parks. Try contacting the Chambers of Commerce in the towns of interest.

I think you're right, I never was aware of any discounts for the big parks unless there is a corporate promotion. I usually buy my tickets at the gate.

quote:

Originally posted by JRHardee:
More shopping advice--be judicious about buying textbooks. A lot of used copies are available on line these days. For literature and humanities courses which use readings from lots of books, the length of the syllabus is inversely proportional to the importance of reading any one of the books. A lot of the high-demand books can be checked out of the library for a couple of hours as needed.

Totally agree. Be very sceptical about assertions that a particular textbook "needs" to be purchased for the course.

You haven't got a clear picture of my daughter yet. Books weren't mentioned, 110 volt hair-straightners and hair-driers are her first priority, needed within minutes of landing, then clothes and makeup. The computer will be needed for Facebook. Any text books will be very much an afterthought.

I don't know about the UK/US comparison but I would recommend you make your mind up in advance of your trip where you wish to visit and work out the groupings of the various parks. I seem to remember the parks are grouped by ownership as Sea World/Busch Gdns, Disney (5 parks?), MGM (3 parks?) and if you buy a multiple ticket the major part of the cost is taken up with the first few visits and subsequent visits get cheaper and cheaper. I learnt to my cost last year when having bought a day family ticket to Sea World on the turnstiles (had to pick myself off the floor when asked for about 300 bucks) I could have added a day at Busch for not much more. We started with a three day ticket to Disney and upgraded after the first couple of days to add a few more which pro rata was much cheaper.

Oh, and buy the travel adapter plug in Sainsburys, not at the airport.

On the Forces angle, we were quite surprised that before the killer whales show at Sea World, they did a special round of applause for the American and British servicemen and ex-servicemen in the audience.

We were a bit disappointed at the sandwiches that Publix (supermarket) made; I'm sure they were better the last time we went, but Subway was exactly the same as the UK. Likewise TGI's was pretty much the same as UK, so probably a miss.

For places to go, Wonderworks is very good (it's an upside-down building, and they refer to the top floor as "the basement"), and Ripleys was probably no better than the Trocadero in London.

For clothes shopping, there are three designer malls, probably all worth a visit if that's your thing.

The Old Town Kissimmee is worth a visit, there's a couple of multi-storey go-cart tracks there which my boys liked (but ISTR you have a daughter, Mike?).

If guns is your thing, then you can just walk into a place (there's one called Riegs on the Orange Blossom Trail that we went to), show your ID and pay, and you can take some guns into the range and have a blast. My 11, 13, and 16 year olds got to fire 9mm, .45, and .38 Magnum handguns (all outlawed in the UK). Oh, and if you do, dont think about bringing any empty shell cases back in your hand luggage like one of mine did

What I didn't get to do was go into a pawn shop and find an old classic guitar (the nearest I got to that was one had a 70s Ovation for $350, but I didn't go for it), and I didn't find any 2nd hand music shops at all.

As bornwina says, you can get combined SeaWorld/Busch Gardens/Aquatica tickets (all worht going to but Busch is a long drive), and Universal is good (Harry Potter land is the best; the simulation ride is good and the queue takes you through a very realistic Hogwarts "museum", but I'm not sure the wand shop is worth queuing for). I was a bit disappointed with the Hard Rock there (my burger was tasteless).

Yes, old town Kissimee is well worth a trip particularly Sunday night (I think) when there is a huge hot rod cruise. Also Gatorland was a worth a go (no rides but the jumparoo was quality) and the air boat rides.