When we went to Florida we stayed on International Drive but hired a car. Outside the hotel were plenty of busses but we preferred having a car to visit the Malls etc also.

One of the things that has always put me off of Villas is that many of them are about 45 mins drive from the various theme parks.

That said, although we have always stayed in hotels and been four times, we still take the car hire for flexibility, but many survive using hotel transport too and from the theme parks, just check that the hotel you book into does transfers and be well organised whilst you are there, to make sure you are not hanging about waiting for coaches etc

thank you for replies-who did yous book your holiday with? were the prices quite reasonable?

Our holiday was a long while ago now Blue but think we booked with Thomson's. We went for 3 weeks over Christmas and New Year. The park tickets were separate and we bought them in Orlando.

blue wrote:

thank you for replies-who did yous book your holiday with? were the prices quite reasonable?

Mine were also a while back, the first time we went without kids and booked a fly drive with Delta (don't know if they are still around) and booked into hotels/motels as and when we saw them as we drove down to the Florida Keys as well.

The three times we went with the kids we booked with Virgin Holidays from their Florida Brochure, so you go on a Virgin Atlantic Flight and they book your hotel and car. They weren't as cheap as Thomson/First Choice/Thomas Cook were at the time we travelled, however there are some advantages as you can go for odd durations like 10,11,17 days etc whereas with Thomson etc you are stuck with 7, 14, 21 days due to the flights being chartered.

Also it has been mentioned that Thomson et al have kind of caught Virgin up on prices now, but you would need to check that out for yourself by doing a lot of checks on the various websites, you can get all the prices on-line nowadays so even if you finally want to book in a high street travel agents, you can do a lot of the 'leg work' before you go in to book.

If its your first time of going I would be tempted to book one kind of package deal if you can get a competitive price.

We used to get our theme park tickets from a company called http://www.undercovertourist.com the website comes up with prices in dollars but you can change it to GBP's.

edit: checked that site and it now seems to price the magic my way tickets in US dollars but I guess you can work out the prices easily yourself.

thank you both v much for replies....
has anybody else been to florida recently and can recommend whose good prices?