Our dream USA multi-destination holiday itinerary – Travel Loving Family
When TravelPlanners got in touch and asked me to share my dream itinerary for a multi-destination holiday in the USA I knew immediately how to reply. The email arrived as I was madly flinging last minute essentials into our suitcases ready to fly to Orlando for our USA road trip in the morning. It was a family holiday my husband and I had dreamt about taking with our boys for years. Seven years to be exact, the time since we left our home of three years, Savannah in Georgia (the Deep South) to rather reluctantly return to live in the UK.
Most of our family holidays have been multi-centre ones, we’re not great at relaxing and therefore a fly and flop on a beach type package holiday isn’t really our thing. We like to see and experience as much as we can by staying in different places and will happily jump in a car for a long road trip. Luckily our boys share our love of this sort of adventure too. They’ve grown up with it, so just think it’s normal!
Multi-destination USA holiday itinerary
I’ve shared our multi-centre holiday itinerary below, it may give you some inspiration for your next family holiday.
We absolutely love the USA, there is so much to do and every state is so different. I always think it’s a shame that millions of visitors a year (75 million according to VOA News) visit Orlando and don’t experience much other than the popular theme parks and beaches.
When planning our family holiday we really struggled to fit everything in that we wanted to do, even though we had three weeks to play with. After much discussion, (and friendly negotiation!) we decided to fly to Orlando, jump straight in our hire car for the four-hour drive to Savannah, (flights direct to Savannah and out of Orlando were much more expensive) before moving onto a beach resort at Hilton Head Island in South Carolina for a few days.
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Although it took us slightly out of our way we then chose to take a quick one night stop in Daytona Beach on our way back to Orlando. It was an ideal stopover for our visit to Kennedy Space Centre in Canaveral, before driving to our final destination, ten nights at the Caribbean Beach Resort at Disney World.
Including our overnight stay at Gatwick Airport and another one at Orlando Airport, the night before checking in at Disney, we stayed in six different hotels. Although living out of a suitcase with young kids may not be everyones cup of tea I can hand on heart say it was great fun. Our boys loved discovering new hotels, (and checking out the breakfast buffets each morning!) and our holiday seemed to stretch on forever as we crammed in so many experiences. Although I must admit, being able to properly unpack when we got to Disney was a treat.
Savannah, Georgia
Our primary reason for staying in Savannah for a few nights was to catch up with old friends and show our boys where we used to live. I can however thoroughly recommend a visit here if you are ever on the East Coast. I know I’m biased as we had three great years living in Savannah, but it is truly one of my favourite places in the world. It’s a unique city, a fascinating place with many historical buildings, pretty public squares and there is always something going on. It’s also really easy to get to from Orlando, you basically take two (very long!) roads to get there…
The best places to visit with kids in Savannah
We returned to all of our old favourite places and proudly introduced them to our boys… River Street and it’s popular candy shops, Bull Street to walk by Juliet Gordon Low’s birthplace (the founder of the Girl Scouts) and the location of Forest Gump’s famous chair all the way to Forsyth Park. The following day we visited Tybee Island which is a really laid back cool place, it hadn’t changed since we were last there, in fact it doesn’t look like its changed since the 1800’s! This quirky island is home to the the coolest restaurant in the area, The Crab Shack, where you can feed alligators with pieces of steak on cane poles much to my boys delight!
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
We used to visit Hilton Head regularly when we lived in Savannah, it was our favourite weekend hang out spot. It’s a one hour drive from Savannah and has a completely different vibe to Tybee Beach. We stayed at a beach resort we’ve stayed at many times before, the Marriott Hilton Head Resort & Spa and it was as amazing as we remembered it. The views overlooking the beach and ocean were incredible and our boys loved playing in the huge pool and hot tubs.
The best places to visit with kids in Hilton Head Island
Again we headed straight to our old favourite places. We spent a day showing our boys The Sea Pines Resort which is a private resort which spans the southern third of Hilton Head Island. It’s a perfect spot to take a walk along the beach, play golf, tennis and hire out bikes and boats, although keep an eye out for alligators if you do visit as they live in the wild at Sea Pines!
Daytona Beach
Our only regret of the entire holiday was only staying at the Hard Rock Hotel Daytona Beach for one night. It’s a lush hotel, located directly on the beach. Our boys were made to feel very welcome. They made a beeline for a drum kit in the reception and I expected the front desk staff to ask them to refrain form touching it and instead they gave them the drum sticks to have a go!
My full review of this hotel is coming soon as we were kindly asked to stay here for reviewing on our website. As you would expect for a Hard Rock Hotel there is rock star memorabilia on show throughout the hotel public spaces, it was such a cool place to hangout.
Kennedy Space Centre
My hubby and I used to have annual passes for Kennedy Space Centre so we’ve visited many times. It was however the first time we’ve taken our boys. The three of them (hubby included!) were like the cat that got the cream all day. They were literally beaming as they ran around the rockets and astronaut exhibits!
If you are considering a visit to Kennedy Space Centre whilst staying at Disney I would definitely say to just go for it. It’s a one hour, easy drive from Orlando and very doable there and back in a day.
Disney World and Caribbean Beach Resort
Our final ten days were spent at the Caribbean Beach Resort at Disney World. I’d read really mixed reviews about this resort but we thought the facilities were great for families. It’s perfectly located by the brand new Disney Skyliner (see pic taken from our resort below) which makes it so easy to travel to Epcot, Hollywood Studios and the Disney Boardwalk. It’s a moderate Disney resort, (Virgin rate it 3.5/5) so the (pirate-themed!) rooms are pretty basic and a little dark to be honest but we wouldn’t hesitate to book here again. We only spent on average one hour a day awake in our room as we were always up early and back late making the most of the parks so it was perfect for what we wanted.
We felt that there was plenty to do at the four main Disney theme parks and Typhoon Lagoon (Blizzard Beach was closed for refurbishment during our stay) and so we didn’t book for any of the other theme parks, (Universal and Sea World etc). Even with ten days, there were still lots of attractions that we didn’t get to experience and we definitely left wanting for more, and with two boys pestering to return!
I hope our dream multi-destination USA holiday itinerary has given you some family holiday inspiration? I have pages of notes about our travels that I will type up and share when I get some free time!
Disclosure – This is a sponsored post for TravelPlanners. All words and opinions are, as always, my own. For your info we booked our flights and Disney hotel via Virgin Holidays and then independently booked our other hotels and attractions. This type of holiday could be booked with the multi-centre holiday booking tool via TravelPlanners.
Copyright – All images copyright Travel Loving Family.
