Atlanta Trip Planning

We settled on a 4 day, 3 night trip to Atlanta at the beginning of our spring break week.  There are so many things to do in Atlanta, but we knew the aquarium was at the top of our list, with World of Coca-Cola close behind (for the kids at least).  We used that as our starting point and figured out our other activities from there. Atlanta CitiPASS Since we were planning on hitting several of Atlanta’s biggest highlights, the CitiPASS was a great option for us.  It is essentially a coupon book for Atlanta’s top attractions.  Each booklet contains …

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Belize Planning and Itinerary

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As part of our self-proclaimed decade of travel, we decided to let the kids pick the family vacation destination in the year of their 10th birthday.  We want to foster a love of travel in them and thought that involving them in trip planning would be a great way to do that. Of course we had to set limits in terms of travel time and cost.  RB immediately wanted to go to Japan and JB to Africa.  While I would absolutely love to do those trips with them some day, I don’t think they are at the right ages yet. …

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Booking a Disney Cruise on Opening Day

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More than any other cruise line, Disney Cruise Line (DCL) has a ton of hype around releasing their next season’s itineraries and booking on opening day.  While other cruise lines offer promotions throughout the year that help defray the cost of their cruises, Disney does not (with the exception of some rare Florida resident or military discounts) and usually their prices continue to climb as you get closer to cruise time.  For this reason, there is often a mad rush to book on opening day and secure the lowest possible price. I got caught up in the frenzy last week …

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Italy Trip Planning

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Our 15th wedding anniversary is in September of this year, and we decided to take a trip to Italy to celebrate!  With no family living nearby, we had to schedule our vacation around the school break schedule so that we could take the boys to my parents. We decided to go over their spring break, roughly 5 months before our anniversary.  Hopefully an early celebration isn’t bad luck! When we came up with the idea of dedicating this decade to family travel, we hoped to be able to take an international trip every year.  The first year was a little …

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Disney World Trip Planning

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We took our first trip to Disney World before our oldest started kindergarten.  We figured the kids would be good ages (3.5 and 5.5) and it would be nice to fit it in before we became a slave to the school calendar.  We booked for May 2013 but then had to cancel due to work obligations.  In a last ditch effort to squeeze it in before school started, we booked for mid-August.  Yes, August.  It was a great trip.  But it was HOT.  I’m absolutely glad we went.  But it was HOT. I have always advocated to my husband that …

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Disney Cruise

There are some people who are cruise fanatics.  Every vacation is a cruise.  They love nothing more than being on a boat and filling their days jumping from one on-board activity to another.  They love waking up in a new place each day.  They love getting off at the various ports and exploring the area for the day.  They love the four course meals, dressing up for formal nights, gambling in the casinos, partaking in the drink of the day.  They love everything about cruises and couldn’t imagine a better vacation. I am not one of those people. The idea …

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