I mentioned it last month, but I wanted to say it again in case someone missed it. You have until June 22nd to book a Walt Disney World trip with FREE Disney Dining. This means that if you stay on property and get at least a 1-day park pass (of course you can get passes for as many days as you’d like), you’ll get FREE meals for everyone in your party!

You really can’t ask for more than that. I’ve done this twice before, and it’s incredible. You will get to eat at some really great restaurants, and won’t have to worry about the price!

The package is a little bit different than in previous years, but it’s still great considering it’s FREE:

Each day, each person in the room gets 1 quick serve meal (which includes an entree, dessert, and drink), 1 table service meal (which includes an entree, dessert, and drink), as well as a snack credit which can be used on many items such as ice cream, fruit, drinks, etc.

Tips are no longer included, so you’ll still have to pay for that…but think about all the free food you will be getting each day!

It really is worth it, since you have to pay for a hotel room anytime you go anyway, so you would still have to pay to eat. I’d much rather just pay for tips than have to pay for my meals plus tips!

I’ll be going again in 2009 (hopefully they’ll have free dining again!) since I was just there in 2007, but I really recommend it to everyone.

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If you’re going to Universal Studios Orlando, and are considering staying on site, you might want to take a look at this deal. United Vacations has a deal where if you stay at one of the 3 on-site hotels (Loews Portofino Bay Hotel, Hard Rock Hotel, or the Loews Royal Pacific Resort) for at least 4 nights, you’ll get 2 FREE adult 2-park unlimited admission tickets! How great is that? You’ll also get a free Universal ExpressSM so you can skip the regular lines at most rides and attractions!

Not too bad, right?

To get this deal you have to book by December 12th, and can travel anytime by December 25th! So you have plenty of time. The Simpsons ride is opening soon, so if you’ve been waiting for that, it’s almost here!

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Looking for the perfect vacation for the whole family? As I mentioned last week, Disney is offering FREE Dining if you travel between August 24th and September 20th. You have to stay on property, but since they have all types of hotels, you’re sure to find one that fits your budget. United has a great deal going on right now where you can book your trip to Disney, get the FREE dining package, and get a great price!

I can’t recommend Disney’s FREE dining offer enough. We’ve done it twice now, and really enjoy it. Hopefully they’ll offer it next year so we can do it again. We figure since we went last year, that we’d go somewhere else this year. But it makes your vacation so nice and easy not to have to worry about paying for your meals. You’ll also get some great meals when you have FREE dining, and since you won’t have to worry about the cost, you can order what you’d like, and get to try some really great foods!

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It’s finally here!! If you’ve looked into going to Walt Disney World in August or September, most likely you’ve heard of the Free Dining Plan they have had the past few years. We took advantage of it in September 2005, and this past September as well.

It’s back! If you plan on going to Walt Disney World between August 24th and September 20th, and are staying on property, as long as each person has at least a 1-day park ticket, you will get FREE Disney Dining with your reservation!!!

Considering it usually costs $37.99 for an adult, and $9.99 per child, you are getting a great deal. What exactly do you get with the Disney Dining Plan?

Each day, each person gets: 1 quick serve meal (which includes an entree, dessert, and drink), 1 table service meal (which includes an entree, dessert, and drink), as well as a snack credit which can be used on many items such as ice cream, fruit, drinks, etc. Tips are no longer included…but think about all the free food you will be getting each day!

We have taken advantage of this deal twice, and both times it was incredible! We ate some really great meals, and it didn’t cost us anything. The best part was, we went in September after most kids had gone back to school, so it wasn’t even very crowded! We were able to walk onto most rides without having to wait in line. So between that and the great (FREE) food, it was an amazing trip. Actually, we’re hoping they do it next year so that we can go in September of 2009. It’s fun going every other year for us!

To book the Free Dining package, you can either do it at the Disney Web Site, AAA, or at your local travel agent. If you do go, have fun!

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Rumor has it that FREE Dining at Disney will be offered for late August -Mid September starting tomorrow, April 10th. I have taken advantage of this twice before, and can’t tell you how great of a deal it is.

Tomorrow I’ll be back with more details on exactly how you can book your trip…and get your meals for free! Since I did this last September (and was just at Disneyland last month), I won’t be booking this year…but I’m hoping they’ll do it again next year because then I will take them up on it!

I’ll have all the details for you tomorrow!

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SeaWorld was a really nice drive from La Jolla. It was quick and easy, and we passed some really nice areas on the way.

We had a lot of fun that day, and got to see a lot of fish, penguins, dolphins, sharks, and more. While I knew it would be a fun day, I honestly didn’t realize how much fun it would be. The whole day was great, and the animals were really great.

The shows were a lot of fun as well. We were able to see the Dolphin Discovery, Pets Rule, Shamu Show: Believe, and Clyde and Seamore’s Risky Rescue. All of them were were really great, and we were impressed.

I hadn’t thought it would be a full day park, and figured we wouldn’t be there all that long, but we were there until they closed, which was at 6pm.

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After we checked out of our hotel in Anaheim, we started towards San Diego. When we planned our trip, we knew that Legoland was on the way, and loved the idea of seeing all of the amazing LEGO creations…so we bought 2 tickets (actually, we technically got them for free…see how we did it.)

It was nice and easy to get to - right off of the highway in Carlsbad, California. I will say this. It is a park definitely designed for kids. We knew this going into it though, so we weren’t surprised or disappointed. Almost all of the rides are kids rides, and adults going alone wouldn’t enjoy them. But we weren’t going for the rides. We had been to the Lego store in Disney many times, and loved the cool displays they had of a sea dragon, a family, and a lot more - all made out of LEGOs. The idea of an entire park of stuff like that really interested us, so we figured we would check it out. We also knew they had MiniLand, which took US cities and recreated them in miniature.

We had a good time walking all over the park. One section where we spent a lot of time was MiniLand USA. MiniLand has a mini version of Las Vegas, Florida, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC. It was incredible the level of detail they had for everything!! It was a lot of fun to look at.

We also enjoyed walking around the rest of the park, because everywhere you went, there were more cool LEGO creations. I even had to take my camera out when having lunch, because the restaurant had many cool characters in there as well!

If you really like LEGOs, you’ll enjoy Legoland, even if you don’t have kids. Of course kids will enjoy all the rides, but we still had fun.

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Since we were just talking about Universal Studios yesterday (even though that was Hollywood and this is Orlando) I thought this would be a perfect time to mention a new roller coaster that was just announced for Universal Studios Orlando! It’s called the Hollywood Rip, Ride, Rockit and looks really cool! It is going to have a lot of loops, twists, turns, and will even go out into CityWalk…so it goes outside the theme park!

It’s going to open next spring. This is one of many attractions that are currently being worked on in Universal Studios Orlando. I must admit, I’m really looking forward to going next year once all of these new rides and attractions open up.

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I have one word when it comes to Universal Studios Hollywood. Small. I was surprised at how small it was. I knew it wasn’t even close to the size of Universal Studios Orlando (especially now that it also has Islands of Adventure)…but it was pretty small.

We still managed to have a fun day though.

The first thing I have to say is that I was NOT impressed with the parking attendants. They offered 2 types of parking. “General” parking is $11.00, while “Preferred” parking is $20. That’s fine, but when they told me about both, they mentioned that it was a long walk if you took general parking, and they had no shuttles. Well…we still took general parking, and boy are we glad we did!

Talk about close parking. We were right in the middle of CityWalk, and it was maybe a 5 minute walk to the front gate of Universal Studios Hollywood? I mean give me a break. I have no problem with giving me choices…but don’t make it sound like I’ll be on a 20 minute walk up hills if I don’t take you up on it!

We had a fun day here, and I think we both enjoyed the Studio Tour most of all. Shrek 4-D was fun, although I was surprised that the seats moved. It was a nice touch that Disney hasn’t done with any of their 3D shows, so it was nice and different.

The different shows were fun too. We watched the Waterworld, Special Effects Stages, Universal’s Animal Actors, and Backdraft. They were all entertaining, and we would do them again.

Terminator 2: 3D was also fun, since it had been a few years since we had seen it back in Orlando. Unfortunately, the Simpsons Ride wasn’t open yet (it does open soon though), but it will be open by the next time we go to Universal Orlando towards the end of next year.

I really liked walking through CityWalk. They had a lot of restaurants - both nice sit down casual restaurants as well as fast food, so you could have whatever you were looking for. It was a fun day, and we’re glad we went.

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I was really looking forward to going to California Adventure. It was a NEW Disney park for me! I had been to all of the ones in Orlando before, and Disneyland wasn’t really “new” to me since I had seen much of it at the Magic Kingdom, but California Adventure was mostly new (minus some of the rides from other WDW parks.)

So I was really excited the second day of our trip when we started our day there. We had a lot of fun, and enjoyed a whole bunch of things. Here are just a few of our highlights.

I would have to say the most enjoyable part of the day was when we saw Aladdin - A Musical Spectacular. That was really good, and we both really liked it. We also really enjoyed the Disney Animation building. While we skipped out on Turtle Talk with Crush (because we had done it 6-months ago in WDW), it is still a really cool technology! The other things though, we did go through, and really enjoyed. When you first walked into the building, they had a whole bunch of Snow White pictures set up, and they were really cool to look at. We also really liked the Sorcerer’s Workshop. That was really nice, and decorated really well!

I love food, so I obviously enjoyed The Bakery Tour, and the Mission Tortilla Factory. I was surprised that the Mission Tortilla Factory was making tortilla’s right there for you to try! I figured the factory would be a pretend setup, and not be making the tortilla’s. But they were, and they were very tasty! I got a great recipe to make a dessert with the tortilla’s that I can’t wait to try.

I really enjoyed both It’s Tough to Be a Bug and Muppet Vision 3D. While I’ve seen both many times in WDW, it was neat to see how they were set up in California Adventure since the outsides of both were very different.

I thought Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sully to the Rescue was cute. I know it was just a re themed Superstar Limo (which I never got to see), but it was really cute, so I was glad I got to see it.

It was just a lot of fun to walk around, and see a completely different park. I will admit that it isn’t quite a full-day park, so it was good that we had hoppers and could go back over to Disneyland late in the afternoon when we were finished.

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