Great ideas and destinations for your Florida family vacation.

If you have had a Florida family vacation getaway on your radar for a while, now is the time to consider taking it. There are a lot of websites out there telling you about great ideas and destinations in Florida, but you have to sift through all the advertisements and garbage before you find any real information that you can actually use for your Florida family vacation. One of our frustrations, as expressed before, is that many sites simply don't offer the exact information that you are looking for. I have found that sites on Florida are especially bad. We have done our best to make sure the links and information we create here, offer the information you really are looking for.

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The most common Florida destinations

Most Florida family vacations involve a trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, the "Space Coast" which includes Kennedy Space Center (about 40 miles east of Orlando), Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay (about 2 and a half hours west of Orlando), Southern Florida Keys (where you can snorkel in beautiful blue-green waters and enjoy white sand beaches or visit Everglades National Park), and lastly a great place for a Florida family vacation road trip

Some familes like to be around other people when they vacation, therefore they don't mind the crowds and the waiting in lines. If you are like my family, you hate crowds and lines. The best way to avoid these, are to travel in the off season or go to Florida vacation destinations less visited.

Best time to take a Florida Family Vacation

This totally depends on your family and what kind of vacation you like. Do you like crowds or not? Well, there are basically two family vacation seasons in Florida. The first season starts in mid-December and goes through mid-April. In this first season, you will see mostly older families with grown up kids, really young families with children aged 5 and under, and the "snow-birds." Most families with school age children still have their kids in school and prefer not to take just 1 week (during spring break) for their Florida family vacation. The second season is going to start when school usually lets out in June and runs until school usually starts again in August. In this season you will find families with children mostly aged between 6-18 years of age.

What is the Florida weather like during these seasons?

Starting around Thanksgiving (the second busiest time of the year-Christmas is busiest) and running until May, you can expect mostly low humidity, blue skies, and moderate to warm temperatures. Obviously, this is what most families from the northern climates are looking for. During the summer months (the second travel season), Florida's hurricane season starts and lasts until November. The temperatures are usually humid and hot and afternoon rains can be the norm. For some reason, this doesn't keep vacationers away.

How do we avoid the crowds on our Florida family vacation?

The best way to steer clear of the crowds are to travel in May (think Memorial Day vacation), September (think Labor Day vacation), and the whole month of October and the first part of November. We have also found the crowds to be limited in mid February and early March, but you can also get unlucky during this time as well.

Travel Tip

We have found that if you are willing to take your Florida family vacation getaway during the off seasons, you can actually find really great deals. Most hotels have vacancies and the theme parks are not as packed, therefore, they are usually offering discounts or specials that you don't see during the peak seasons. A lot of families are going to have to fly to Florida. Flying is most often half the expense of the vacation. The best time to get your plane tickets are at midnight Tuesdays. So if you are diehard enough, you get up at 11:45 Tuesday night and start doing searches at your favorite airline after the clock strikes midnight. Airlines dump un-purchased tickets back onto the system at that time and re-arrange their flight schedules, so this is when plane tickets are at their lowest. The other option, obviously, is to go through a big search engine like Expedia.com or Priceline.com Air .

Remember this!

When you are in the midst of your Florida family vacation and you are feeling overwhelmed by the crowds or people around you, take some time and reflect on why you took this family vacation getway. You wanted to relax and spend time with your spouse and kids right? Don't let the inevitable family argument ruin your vacation. Relax. Enjoy yourself and have a great time!