Travel Tips Archives – Page 2 of 3 – Parents with Passports

Guatemala Travel Tips

June 16th, 2018admin0 Comments

Due to safety concerns, traveling to Guatemala with children can be stressful. My Guatemala family travel tips below can help you plan an amazing visit to Tikal so you can enjoy the site without the stress. There are no border fees to enter Guatemala. When crossing from Belize to Guatemala, Belize charges a $40 BZ ($20 US) exit fee. There is NO fee to enter or exit Guatemala but many unscrupulous agents will tell you there is a 10 quetzales (about $1.35 US) immigration fee. They will then pocket the money. (Literally. They just put it into their pockets.) If …

Belize Travel Tips

June 16th, 2018admin0 Comments

Belize is an amazing family travel destination that offers both beaches and jungles. Check out my Belize family travel tips below for help planning your own unbelizeable vacation! Split your visit between the jungle and the beach. Belize offers two very unique experiences. The jungle has Mayan sites, cave adventures, hiking and waterfalls, wildlife, and more. The beach has the second largest barrier reef in the world. Neither should be missed. It is like getting two vacations in one. Start your visit in the jungle. If you split your time between the jungle and the beach, start in the jungle. …

Safety in Belize and Guatemala

June 15th, 2018admin0 Comments

Safety in Belize While safety is always in the back of my mind while traveling, it immediately moves to the forefront when you are planning a trip that includes your kids. When my oldest son wanted to choose Belize for our family trip this year, I knew next to nothing about it. A few quick google searches and it became clear that we would have to research further on the safety issue before agreeing to this trip. Belize consistently ranks in the top ten countries in the world for per capita murders. It has been as high as #2 on the list …

Travel Between Belize and Guatemala

May 31st, 2018admin0 Comments

Travel from Black Rock Lodge to Tikal After 3 amazing nights at Black Rock Lodge, we headed to Guatemala to visit Tikal. This was the stressful part of the trip – both the planning of our journey and the execution of the plan. I’ll write separately about safety concerns in Guatemala, but suffice it to say that this was in the back of our minds the entire trip. Once we decided that we didn’t want to miss Tikal, we had to then decide between a day trip with an organized tour or an overnight stay. The day trips seemed like …

Booking a Disney Cruise on Opening Day

March 12th, 2018admin0 Comments

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 …

Disney World Tips

February 18th, 2017admin0 Comments

There are literally thousands of Disney planning websites out there with more Disney tips and tricks than I could ever imagine let alone write about. I wrote a very few of my own tips and take-aways for each park at the end of each blog and here I will just offer two reviews and one word of wisdom. On this trip we purchased Memory Maker and the Disney Dining Plan, both of which were new to us. I researched them both extensively beforehand and hopefully sharing my experience can help someone else make their own decision. Memory Maker At …

Hollywood Studios

February 15th, 2017admin0 Comments

We started the morning of our third day in Magic Kingdom and headed to Hollywood Studios a little after noon. For our family, Hollywood Studios holds the least interest. The boys aren’t huge Star Wars fans and Tower of Terror is definitely out as a ride option. (They do thrilling but not scary.) But we have to balance that with the fact that their absolute favorite ride in all of Disney World is there, Toy Story Mania. So skipping it entirely wasn’t an option. We figured a half day would be fine. JB had used a birthday gift card to …

Epcot

February 11th, 2017admin0 Comments

One of my regrets from our first trip to Disney was not spending enough time in Epcot. I was pleasantly surprised at how interested the boys were in exploring the countries and how much time we could have spent there. I wanted to avoid making this mistake again but with limited days and lots of ground to cover, I was left with roughly 8 hours there. We arrived around 1:00 and planned to stay for Illuminations at 9:00. That seemed like ample time to ride a few rides and wander around the countries. But as they say, the best laid …

Animal Kingdom

February 8th, 2017admin0 Comments

In order to fit in a full day at Animal Kingdom and still get to see all the nighttime shows in the other parks, we split our Animal Kingdom time into two days. We spent about three and a half hours there in the morning on the second day of our trip and then returned for our last morning of the trip. On our first visit, we had lunch reservations and FastPasses in Epcot for later in the day so we headed straight to Expedition Everest when we arrived at Animal Kingdom to try to take advantage of lower early …

Magic Kingdom

February 3rd, 2017admin0 Comments

Since Magic Kingdom has the most rides and the most ground to cover, I decided to use the Touring Plans website to map our a general path through the park. I had never used it before and was really impressed. I input our Fast Passes and lunch reservation times, told it what rides we wanted to ride, and it automatically calculated the best route to take through the park to maximize rides and minimize wait time and walking. We are definitely not the type of family to follow a minute by minute schedule through Disney World, but I liked having …