Homeaway.com - experiences?

[Tyche]

I'm taking a family vacation to Florida next month and I've been looking at some places to stay. I seen homeaway.com run an ad during the superbowl, checked out the website, and it looks pretty sweet. I want to try to avoid hotels and condo areas because for the most part, I hate people. I'm also going during spring break season and I want to avoid the college douchebags like the plague, especially since I have young children. Someone please tell me that they had good experiences with this.

[Waraji]

March? LOL good luck, what with just spring break, there's also Ultra Music Festival happening on the 27th. If you're considering South Florida in March, avoid Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, Daytona is also a nono. Best bet head up to Boca Raton, considering nothing much ever happens up there.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

March? LOL good luck, what with just spring break, there's also Ultra Music Festival happening on the 27th. If you're considering South Florida in March, avoid Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, Daytona is also a nono. Best bet head up to Boca Raton, considering nothing much ever happens up there.

WMC is that whole week so there will be much more than that shitty music festival. A lot of hotels will be having pool parties and the streets will be packed with partiers club hopping the whole week of 22nd - 28th.

So yeah avoid Miami and South Beach for sure

[Tyche]

I'm wanting to stay in/around Orlando/Kissimmee. I have kids, we're hitting disneyworld a few times. I doubt there'll be much spring break action going on there, so I thought it best to stay in the central part of the state and just make the hour drive to Cocoa beach or possibly head to St Petersburg for a day or two to take the kids to the beach.

Oh, and I'm going from the 13th to the 20th.

[Waraji]

Ah yeah didn't mention WMC! Well if your staying around central you should be fine! Hoping it turns out to good weather for ya around that time, certainly the best time for tourist to come down from the north, since it shouldn't be ungodly hot as they'd put it.

[Absolutely Virtue]

Check out St. Augustine, which is a bit south of Jacksonville, in the northern part of the state. More family oriented (ie, not a spring break destination). Has some historical stuff, some nice stuff, some family stuff.

http://www.augustine.com/

[Tyche]

We''ll be buying 4 days of park hopper passes to disneyworld, so in order not to travel hours a day, I need to stay near Orlando/Kissimmee. The destination isn't the issue, it's the place I'll be staying.

As an example, I've sent an inquiry about possibly renting this place.

http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p147002

[BardonGaruda]

I went to Orlando last year and stayed in a holiday home with some friends. We went to the parks most days but as we had a pool in the house so we took a few days to make use of that too.

I booked through Disney4Villas though. Found the whole thing to be pretty straight forward. House was good quality and had no problems at all while there. I suppose it really depends how much time you plan to spend in the place you'll be renting. If it's just somewhere to sleep then the place you enquired about looks fine.

THe part we stayed in was Davenport which was a pretty quiet residential area. A bit of a longer drive to some of the parks but nothing was more than 30 minutes away.

At least checking out Disney4Villa will give you something to compare the package you're getting to.

[Dense]

I always use http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/ (for the last 10 years or so). It's hit or miss, but you can pick and choose based on price and location...


Edit to say that I didn't realise holiday-rentals.co.uk is now part of HomeAway >______< I actually didn't visit the site before i posted, only afterwards... Great site, and I have been using it for locations all over the world for many years (Jamaica, Southern Florida, Barcelona, Czech Rep, Italy, Switzerland, etc)
:D

[Antithesis]

I'm taking a family vacation to Florida next month and I've been looking at some places to stay. I seen homeaway.com run an ad during the superbowl, checked out the website, and it looks pretty sweet. I want to try to avoid hotels and condo areas because for the most part, I hate people. I'm also going during spring break season and I want to avoid the college douchebags like the plague, especially since I have young children. Someone please tell me that they had good experiences with this.

March? LOL good luck, what with just spring break, there's also Ultra Music Festival happening on the 27th. If you're considering South Florida in March, avoid Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, Daytona is also a nono. Best bet head up to Boca Raton, considering nothing much ever happens up there.

Actually, it's a bit different. Miami has not been "the" spring vacation hotspot in a while (I think Cancun, Daytona and Ipanema are still the top three.) Miami doesn't start getting busy until mid-April. If you were to visit in March you would not have to worry too much about anything. I would recommend you stay somewhere in my area (Westchester.) Westchester is a pretty good area and it is basically 15 minutes on the expressway to get back to Miami beach ( Or any of the close beaches really, taking US1 will lead you to that beaches the opposite Miami; Biscayne and Cardon Park.) All in all, South Florida is fine during March. Take it from someone who lives here D:

EDIT: Waraji, your in homestead! Nothing happens their either! D:

[Kenshiin]

Sorry I don't have any experience with Homeaway.com but I just wanted to let you know, if you didn't already, that staying at one the different disney hotels is a really nice idea when going to disney. Being able to take advantage of the free shuttles as well as getting into the parks early is a really nice benefit. Parking can be a real bitch.

[Plow]

Yeah the Disney hotels are great if you're willing to pay for em.

[Tyche]

I've stayed at Coronado and we initially had booked it again. Ultimately decided that there's better things to do with the 1500 dollar difference between there and a villa located 3 miles from Disney. Maybe when the kids get older it may be worth it.

[Quixon]

Being able to take advantage of the free shuttles as well as getting into the parks early is a really nice benefit. Parking can be a real bitch.

My god this...

We stayed at the Pop Century this past summer. It is one of their "budget" hotels, but it was great. We paid around $880-$900 for Hotel, Airfare, and a Weeks worth of the Special Park Hopper Passes. We had the passes where you can do as many parks per day as you want, any day you want. I know some park hoppers are only 1 Park per Day.

Just looking at the parking lot when we got to certain parks was insane. Even on days when we got to the parks at like 8-9am.

And since you're a skinny shit....go to the Beaches & Cream Soda Shop @ the Disney Yacht and Beach Club. Order the Kitchen Sink...... and watch your entire family gain 3-4 pounds. Your kids will go apeshit over it if they like Ice Cream. It's literally a kitchen sink filled with ice cream and toppings. You can take the ferry from Epcot for free, takes like 10 minutes.

[Waraji]

EDIT: Waraji, your in homestead! Nothing happens their either! D:

; : shuduuup, just moved here from Hialeah last september. 14 years there, just like that...

[Waraji]

<_< double post?

I still have to drive up every other day to school at FIU, and still hang out on weekends in Hialeah though.