Is the Disney Dining Plan worth it?

Liz Hough on

Disney Dining Plan, Is It Worth It?

 

Disney easily comes up in conversations with random people I meet, but when they find out I am a travel consultant they always ask me if the Disney Dining Plan is worth the money.  I have read so many different opinions on various Disney blogs, Facebook pages, and travel agent outlets about people’s views on this subject matter.  It seems like people are split, some love it and some say it is a waste of money.  Well, several family trips with the dining plan and hundreds of clients who have been on the dining plan, the verdict is in, and we all think YES! 

 

For my family we choose the Disney Dining Plan which includes 1 quick service, 1 table service, and 2 snacks per person per night of stay and 1 resort refillable mug.  The refillable mug can only be used at your resort but a nice tip is to take it with you to the parks to hold your Free ice water.  With each table service meal, we were able to choose one entrée from the menu, one dessert, and one non-alcoholic beverage.  When you choose an entrée you are not limited to a select menu specifically for those on the dining plan.  You receive the same menu that everyone receives and get to choose any of the entrées including steak or salmon.  Dessert at Disney is fantastic!  It is gourmet and no matter what you choose it will not disappoint.  However, having dessert every day could be a lot for some people, as it was for me.  There is a little known fact that isn’t shared by the wait staff, but some restaurants now allow you to substitute your dessert for an appetizer.  You have to ask your server when you sit down if this is one of the participating restaurants and which appetizers are included, but you may have an option of a salad instead of the that rich chocolate cake.

Quick service meals are just like the combo meals that you get at any of your local fast food places, and snacks include a variety of foods including popcorn, cookies, cupcakes, fried rice, Mickey soft pretzels, a banana, or the famous Mickey Mouse ice cream bar. 

 

 

 

 

 

Now the Disney dining plan was the perfect amount of meals and snacks for my family, but some families have teens or growing, hungry children who eat a lot more or need more snacks, so purchasing another plan to fit their family’s needs would be a better option.  On the other hand, if you have members of your party who do not eat a lot of food, not including small children, any dining plan might be too much food for you and your family.  We always advise our clients to know what is best for you and your family, so we can make sure to fit your needs. 

 

So are you ready to find out if the dining plan is worth the money?  For a family of four ( 2 adults and 2 children under age 9) going to Disney for seven nights, who elect the Disney Dining plan, it is a little over $1100.  Now that is just for the Dining plan, not including park tickets or resort stay.  For four people on this seven-day Disney vacation, it comes to around $40 per person per day.   One character meal is around this same cost, if not more, so if you do one character meal you have paid for your entire day right there! 

Even if you are doing non-character meals, your meal cost with entrée, dessert, and non-alcoholic beverage can easily reach the $40 to $50 range per person.  When you look at the numbers you really see that you are paying for table service but getting a quick service meal and two snacks for free.  I, personally, find that the dining plan is worth the money and saves me time when we are there.  My meals are planned out, they are paid for, and everyone is happy because the food is so good. 

 

Now, one thing you must know is that tip/gratuity is not included.  The suggested tip is based on your total meal cost prior to deducting your plan.  It is up to you, how much you want to tip unless you are a party of six or more than 18% is automatically added to your bill.  Also on your bill will be the total remaining allotment of your meals.  If you had six table services to start and just finished eating, then your bill will show that you have five remaining.  You can always get your entire amount of allotted meals from the concierge or guest services at your hotel.  It is important to note that meals do not roll over after your stay.  If you don’t use them up you will lose them so I highly recommend planning out your meals for each day you are at Disney.  Also, the meals are to be used at your discretion.  If you want two table service meals on one day and two quick service meals another day, it is up to you how you use them, but again, use them up!

Fill out the form below to get started planning your next European Vacation.  Looking for a motor coach tour, self-drive, or private tour, we can easily put together the perfect European vacation for you and your family’s needs. 

When you book your vacation with a member of the Life is Better Traveling Team, you are supporting local families and business.  Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past 4 years, we have become an AMAZING travel agency due to your support!

Please understand we get several requests per day for European vacations. We provide experiences for our clients that provide a lot of value. If you are looking for a budget vacation, that is NOT us.

The “Mom Guilt” of Traveling

Liz Hough on

Should I feel the “Mom Guilt” traveling for work? 

 

I was recently honored to be chosen as a contributor for the Pittsburgh Moms Blog℠ in Pittsburgh, PA.  I am able to talk about all things mommy related, but I really wanted to stick to my experiences as a Travel Agent Mom.  I help plan so many amazing vacations for families, but the moms are the ones that confide in me about anxieties they have taking their kids on vacation. 

 

This week I wanted to talk about a business trip I took a month ago to a family friendly Orlando destination without the kids! Oh boy, did I feel guilty for not taking them but I did learn a big lesson.  Read my article to find out what it was.

 

 

Take a look at my article on Should I feel the “Mom Guilt” traveling for work?….CLICK HERE

Fill out the form below to get started planning your next European Vacation.  Looking for a motor coach tour, self-drive, or private tour, we can easily put together the perfect European vacation for you and your family’s needs. 

When you book your vacation with a member of the Life is Better Traveling Team, you are supporting local families and business.  Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past 4 years, we have become an AMAZING travel agency due to your support!

Please understand we get several requests per day for European vacations. We provide experiences for our clients that provide a lot of value. If you are looking for a budget vacation, that is NOT us.

 

Must-have car items for kids on longer trips.

Liz Hough on

You may not be flying anywhere, but traveling by car is a must for family trips this summer.  Our family travels all over the Tri-state area during the summertime, which means long car rides.  So what are my must-have items every time we have a car ride?  I am about to give away my favorite, must-have items:

    1. Smart tablets. I am a huge proponent of bringing along the Smart tablet or DVD player for the car, if your car doesn’t have a built in system already.  Since so many phones can act as hotspot, why not bring the Smart tablet and let the kids play some educational games or watch some movies.
    2. Snacks.  As soon as we leave the house, the first things I always hear is “what is for a snack?”  Pack a cooler with their favorite snack and drinks.  I even pack a few bottles of milk for the kids to help curb their appetites until we are able to stop for a meal. 
    3. Blanket and Pillow. It may be hot outside, but inside the car the air-conditioner is blowing full blast.  My kids are always telling me they are cold, so I pack a small blanket for each one of them, and they bring a small pillow to lay their heads against in their car seats.  Sometimes they even fall asleep and the silence in the car is so relaxing. 
    4. Dollar bin items. It is amazing what you can find at your favorite stores dollar bin.  Some of my favorite items to grab for less than $3 are the coloring items.  At one of the stores we go to, right in the front they have their $5 and under bins.  They change the items seasonally but it also seems weekly.  There have been various bags with the kids favorites characters and in each bag there are coloring pencils, pads of paper, stickers, and erasers.  This item is great for the car, the restaurant, and the hotel room.
    5. Games, Games, Games. There are so many games you can play such as “I Spy with my Little Eye…” or “License Plate” where you don’t need any additional materials to play.  One of my favorite games to make is Car Bingo.  You can make your own version using cardboard paper or buy one at the store, but there are various items you need to see such as a cow or a food truck.  You either close the flap on the board, or but an “X” over the item, and the first person to get to their items crossed off either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally wins Car Bingo.

There are so many fun ways to make your car trip exciting, and these are just a few of my favorite must-have items to help the time pass on our car rides.  I hope you can tell us some of your favorite must-have car items, and remember…Life is Better Traveling!

Fill out the form below to get started planning your next European Vacation.  Looking for a motor coach tour, self-drive, or private tour, we can easily put together the perfect European vacation for you and your family’s needs. 

When you book your vacation with a member of the Life is Better Traveling Team, you are supporting local families and business.  Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past 4 years, we have become an AMAZING travel agency due to your support!

Please understand we get several requests per day for European vacations. We provide experiences for our clients that provide a lot of value. If you are looking for a budget vacation, that is NOT us.

Flying with kids Pt III

Liz Hough on

How to Keep Your Sanity

 

You survived preparation and you kept them occupied at the gate.  Now comes the most challenging time, keeping them occupied on the plane.  In parts 1 and 2 of my series I talked about how I get the look of “you better keep those kids quiet on this flight or I am not going to be happy” and how to keep them occupied at the airport terminal.  But each time we fly, we get complimented on how well behaved our children were on the flight. 

I know it is not easy flying with kids, but I want to give you some tips that may help you get those same compliments on your next flight. 

  1. Don’t rush to board the plane.  The sooner you get on the plane the sooner the kids start to ask when is the plane leaving.  If it is a large flight and you have per-arranged seating, then take your time boarding. 
  2. Talk to the flight attendants as you step foot on the plane.  There is always at least one flight attendant there to welcome you, ask them how their day is going or if this is their first or last flight of the day.  My husband always makes good with the flight attendant so if we ever need anything, they are much quicker to respond to us. 
  3. Make sure you have everything you need in the bag you are going to put under the chair in front of you.  You can easily get to the bag under the chair but not the one in the overhead bin. 
  4. Let the kids sit where they want to.  Even if you have assigned seating and you are assigned the window but they want it, give it to them.  If you have two or more kids that want the window seat, then tell them that each of them will have the seat for a certain amount of time. 
  5. Wipe down the tray tables, arm rests, and seat belts with antibacterial wipes.  Once the kids start asking for their toys, you will feel better giving it to them to play with on a clean surface. 

Tips for keeping the kids occupied:

  1.  Get out those window clings I talked about in Part 2 of this series. While waiting for everyone else to board the plane and/or during take-off they can decorate the window and the underside of the tray table. 
  2.  Books are always a good thing to have on the flight.  I personally find that small coloring books, sticker books, and/or wipe-down books are fun for the kids and keeps them occupied for some time. 
  3.  Yes, I dare say it… SMART TABLET! Before you leave your house, load movies onto their or your smart tablet.  Nowadays, when you purchase a DVD of a movie you sometimes get the Digital HD version too.  Download them so the kids have a movie or two to watch.  You can also download some of their favorite games to play, but just make sure that they won’t need WiFi to play them. 
  4.  When the flight attendants bring drinks, this is usually a good time to give the kids their favorite snack.  Even though they may have eaten a meal at the airport, giving them a snack helps keep their energy up and you won’t have that hunger meltdown during landing. 
  5.  If your child is still using a binky or pacifiers make sure you bring plenty along. This helps to keep them calm, and it will also help with their ears for altitude changes.  I find that my children fall asleep with having their binky and the gentle sway of the airplane.  This makes me happy because now I have time to relax and take in a movie too.
  6.  Bring a small blanket and pillow. We have a small blow-up pillow that helps the kids get more comfortable in the seat.  They like the sense of cozy with a blanket around them. 
  7.  Get out their favorite toy. At some point during the flight they may get antsy and start to kick the seat in front of them.  A good way to keep your child from kicking the seat in front of them is by putting their favorite toy in the pocket in front of them.  They will think you are being silly by putting it there but if I tell my child that her toy needs to be secured in a seat, just as she is, and that the pocket is her toy’s seat, there are no questions.  This eliminates kicking the seat and an angry person in that seat. 

I hope some of these tips will help you and your family the next time you fly with your little ones, and as always…Life is Better Traveling with SAFE TRAVELS!

Fill out the form below to get started planning your next European Vacation.  Looking for a motor coach tour, self-drive, or private tour, we can easily put together the perfect European vacation for you and your family’s needs. 

When you book your vacation with a member of the Life is Better Traveling Team, you are supporting local families and business.  Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past 4 years, we have become an AMAZING travel agency due to your support!

Please understand we get several requests per day for European vacations. We provide experiences for our clients that provide a lot of value. If you are looking for a budget vacation, that is NOT us.

Flying With Kids Part II

Liz Hough on

Check me out! 

I was recently honored to be chosen as a contributor for the Pittsburgh Moms Blog℠ in Pittsburgh, PA.  I am able to talk about all things mommy related, but I really wanted to stick to my experiences as a Travel Agent Mom.  I help plan so many amazing vacations for families, but the moms are the ones that confide in me about anxieties they have taking their kids on vacation.  Whether they have an anxiety about a long car ride, if the resort will have enough to keep them occupied, dining options, or flying with kids, I am always there to listen and give advice.  My favorite advice to give is from personal experiences, so I have decided to dedicate my posts with Pittsburgh Moms Blog℠ to my personal experiences of traveling with kids. 

 

 

Take a look at my second article on How to Keep Your Sanity when Flying with Kids Part II….CLICK HERE

 

 

 

Fill out the form below to get started planning your next European Vacation.  Looking for a motor coach tour, self-drive, or private tour, we can easily put together the perfect European vacation for you and your family’s needs. 

When you book your vacation with a member of the Life is Better Traveling Team, you are supporting local families and business.  Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past 4 years, we have become an AMAZING travel agency due to your support!

Please understand we get several requests per day for European vacations. We provide experiences for our clients that provide a lot of value. If you are looking for a budget vacation, that is NOT us.

 

 

Save time when you do this…

Liz Hough on

How do you get ready for your vacation? 

Check lists, organizational chart, or throw it all in one bag?

 

I am going on a trip this week and even though I plan, arrange, and make sure all my clients have everything they need, I am finding myself a bit out of sorts.  I have been getting together our paperwork, making sure that we have all the arrangements finalized, the document holder is ready to go (yes, the exact same one I give to all my clients I use too), luggage ready, passports, etc.  So why do I feel like I am missing something?

 

I have a travel checklist I give my clients each time they take their trip to ensure they don’t forget anything.  This list includes everything they might or are going to need.  Documentation, identification, toiletries, clothes, electronics and charging devices, sunscreen, skis, surfboard, etc.  Some of the things on the list most people will never take in their travels. I wanted to create a list for all travelers going anywhere so I included everything from the basics to a bit of the exotic.

I am a checklist kind of person.  Unlike my husband who will throw everything in his bag the night before, I pack several days in advance to make sure I give myself time to remember everything.  So as I am going through my checklist I am finding it really easy to get my stuff together.  I have it all laid out on the bed in our spare bedroom or as my toddler calls it, Yia-Yia’s room as my parents sleep here when they are over.  Everything looks in order but I still feel like I am missing something. 

 

Now when you travel in the United States if you forget something you just go to the local store and get it.  When you travel internationally there is the confusion of which store sells what?  There were some stores in Europe that I had no idea what they sold until I physically walked through the door!  Depending on what you need or how bad you need it at the time, you may want to be walking in and out of stores.  Now we aren’t going far, the Bahamas, and the cruise ship will have stuff too.  I am sure we would be able to find whatever we forget in the Bahamas but it has been almost 25 years since I was last there, I may have trouble finding it.  The good news is, I still can’t figure out what I am missing so I may not have to find it.

 

I was telling my husband that I feel like I am forgetting something.  This is the thing you do when you are forgetting something, you ask the person who throws it all together at the last minute.  He kindly reminded me that I feel this way about every trip.  It seems to be more on my mind when traveling internationally.  I guess I could go a few days without vitamins or deep conditioning my hair.  After all people for thousands of years lived without these things, I can live without them for four nights.

 

So with this last thought, I guess it doesn’t matter how you pack for your trip.  Even having a checklist doesn’t guarantee me to remember everything.  If you forgot something, and hopefully it is something you can live without for a few days at a time, you will survive.  So the next time pack for your trips and feel this way, know that you aren’t alone, your travel agent feels the same way when she packs.

 

P.S.  CLICK HERE…I am giving away our check list for FREE just for reading this article.  THANK YOU!

 

Fill out the form below to get started planning your next European Vacation.  Looking for a motor coach tour, self-drive, or private tour, we can easily put together the perfect European vacation for you and your family’s needs. 

When you book your vacation with a member of the Life is Better Traveling Team, you are supporting local families and business.  Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past 4 years, we have become an AMAZING travel agency due to your support!

Please understand we get several requests per day for European vacations. We provide experiences for our clients that provide a lot of value. If you are looking for a budget vacation, that is NOT us.

 

Travel Protection covers you for….

Liz Hough on

Let’s talk about what you get with Travel Protection, because you may be missing out!

 

You have been saving up your money for a few years to take your dream vacation.  You are at the airport and the gate attendant announces the flight will be delayed due to mechanical issues.  This delay causes you to miss your connecting flight to your final destination.  Many hours later you get to your destination, and you slipped on a wet spot in the lobby landing flat on your back.  You feel a pinch, and have trouble standing up straight and walking.  At this point you wonder if the universe is telling you that you shouldn’t have taken this vacation, then you remember, YOU HAVE TRAVEL PROTECTION!  You can use your travel protection to cover all of these weird occurrences. 

 

Facts show that 17% of those who traveled had their travel impacted by medical problems, natural disasters like a hurricane, or mechanical/carrier caused issued which delayed their trip for more than 3 hours.  When you have purchased travel insurance, also called travel protection, there are three main services that you are getting:

 

1. Medical Coverage 

Most insurance plans, including Medicare and Medicaid, do not cover a person outside the borders of the United States.  Your credit card may have some medical coverage, but you may have had to purchase your trip with that card, and even then, the coverage amount is minimal.  Hospitals outside of the United States will require a person to make full payment before they are allowed to leave the hospital, no matter how much the charges may be.  This could lead to a financial hardship on the whole family.  With Travel Insurance, you have several tiers of medical coverage and it can either act as your primary medical insurance or secondary medical insurance. 

 

2. Travel Arrangements 

There are many things that can happen including trip cancellation, trip delay, and trip interruption.  Life happens and sometimes things happen right before a trip that forces you to cancel but the supplier might have 100% non-refundable cancellation policy.  But your travel insurance doesn’t and you can recoup the cost of that trip not taken.  Did you know that when you have trip interruptions you can be reimbursed for meals, lost luggage, and missed connections?

 

3. Concierge services

Most people don’t realize that travel insurance companies offer this service.  Want to go golfing?  Call the travel insurance company and they will set up a tee time for you.  Did you forget to send flowers to your mother for her birthday before you left to go on vacation, call the travel insurance company and they will send flowers, balloons, or a cake.  There are so many possibilities to use this service and it is all part of the plan you purchase. 

 

Travel Protection is for everyone who is going to take a vacation or even a small trip.  If your credit card offers travel protection, you really need to make sure you check what is covered, how much is covered, and if you need to have purchased your vacation with that card to get the coverage.  Since becoming a travel consultant, I have been purchasing travel protection for myself and my family even when we take small trips here in the United States.  Why do I do this?  I know that it is there if I need to use it, I know how much I am covered for, and if I need any reservations somewhere I can call the concierge services to do it for me.  Oh, and it also gives me peace of mind.

 

Stayed tuned for next week’s newsletter about knowing what you get when to purchase travel protection.  Also, if you know someone who is about to take a vacation and haven’t purchased travel protection, please forward this email onto them and tell them to sign-up for my HIGH CONTENT newsletters about travel at LifeisBetterTraveling.com. 

 

Fill out the form below to get started planning your next European Vacation.  Looking for a motor coach tour, self-drive, or private tour, we can easily put together the perfect European vacation for you and your family’s needs. 

When you book your vacation with a member of the Life is Better Traveling Team, you are supporting local families and business.  Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past 4 years, we have become an AMAZING travel agency due to your support!

Please understand we get several requests per day for European vacations. We provide experiences for our clients that provide a lot of value. If you are looking for a budget vacation, that is NOT us.

Why you may want to check your luggage

Liz Hough on

Do you have anxiety about checking your luggage at the airport?

You may never have to worry about that again!

 

When you buy a plane ticket today, one of the questions you are now asked is if you want to pre-pay for any checked luggage.  The last thing you want to think about is checking your luggage if your vacation is months away.  Checked luggage causes thoughts of mishandling, stress packing, and anxiety.  Many people have been too afraid to check a bag that they have mastered packing their carry-on.  But what if the airport could guarantee that 99.5% of the time, all luggage would not be mishandled? 

 

Each year the amount of mishandled luggage is actually decreasing.  In 2014, according to SITA, the world’s leading air transport IT and communications specialist, airlines mishandled 7.3 pieces of luggage per 1000 passengers and in 2015 the number dropped to 6.5 pieces of luggage per 1000 passengers.  Considering there were 3.5 billion people who flew worldwide in 2015, one might argue that this is still a large amount of mishandled luggage.  So what are the airlines doing that the rate has gone down?

 

In 2005 the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas introduced RFID technology in tagging checked luggage.  Most passengers would not even know that their piece of luggage has an RFID chip on it, as the chip is embedded in the tag that looks similar to the old barcode tag.  The barcode tag system has a high accuracy rate of 80 – 95% but since implementing the RFID tag, they have found an accuracy rate of 99.5%.  This means that when a piece of luggage is mishandled, instead of deploying teams of people to find luggage that looks similar and scanning the barcodes, they can send out a signal and know exactly where the piece of luggage is at the airport. 

 

 

But it is 2019, why aren’t all airports doing this?  Most airports allow the actual airline to control their luggage handling, where McCarren decided to take it over.  The good news is that one of the largest airlines in the industry, Delta, has been slowing implementing this into various airports and seeing almost 99.9% accuracy rates of finding mishandled luggage.  IATA, International Air Transport Associate, has insisted that all airlines implement a system where they are able to track each bag, step-by-step, from the checkpoint to its destination by 2018.  Having this type of system in place will really give the traveler peace of mind that their luggage will be at their destination when they land.  It will also cut the amount of costs that the airlines have to pay out for mishandled luggage. 

 

It sounds like soon Life will be Better Traveling!

Fill out the form below to get started planning your next European Vacation.  Looking for a motor coach tour, self-drive, or private tour, we can easily put together the perfect European vacation for you and your family’s needs. 

When you book your vacation with a member of the Life is Better Traveling Team, you are supporting local families and business.  Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past 4 years, we have become an AMAZING travel agency due to your support!

Please understand we get several requests per day for European vacations. We provide experiences for our clients that provide a lot of value. If you are looking for a budget vacation, that is NOT us.

I am opening up and you may be surprised.

Liz Hough on

  Why I Do What I Do?

I am sharing the REAL reason why I do what I do and you may be surprised.

 

I recently had a friend look over my website and told me I was missing a key element, Why do I do what I do.  As I started to explain to her how I became a travel consultant she stopped me and told me that it wasn’t the “Why.”  So after some soul searching and a lot of thinking, I wanted to share with everyone my “Why.”

 

Travel is a passion of mine and it is something I absolutely love to do.  When I personally travel, I get feelings of excitement, relaxation, interest, curiosity, and a bit of anxiety.  When it all comes together I have created a memory that reminds me of all of these emotions. 

I have traveled to 17 European countries, and in each country, I experienced what I just described.  I felt excitement when we were roaming the canals of Venice and thinking this is nothing like Italy in Epcot Center (even though it is a good replica). 

 

 

 

 

I felt relaxation in Scotland when my husband and I enjoyed an anniversary dinner on Rose Street in Edinburgh drinking Scottish beer.  I was interested in touching a 1000-year-old entrance to a library while in Ephesus in Turkey.

 

 

 I was curious what smoked lard and Palinka tasted like in a small café in Bucharest, Romania.   I was anxious going up the cogwheel train to Jungfraujoch in Switzerland while my head was pounding from altitude changes.  The best part of travel is that when I am not traveling and I think of those places I instantly get a smile on my face regardless of the emotion that I felt. 

 

 

 

 

Was I travel consultant when I did all of those things?  No.  It was because of those trips, journeys, vacations that I decided I wanted to help plan those types of experiences for other people.  I wanted to make sure that when someone came to me for planning a vacation to another country that we planned something amazing and unique.  A journey of memories that causes emotions which can be triggered back at just the thought of them.  When I plan a customized European vacation for someone there are many times an emotion from one of our trips will come up and I just get a smile on my face.  So I guess in some ways my job makes me smile, a lot.  What a great job to have!

 

It has taken a friend who had a smile and her head tilted to one side, asking my “why” to really understand why I love my job.  It is the people who I plan amazing journeys with, who I now feel are friends, it is the amazing places that I get to go and experience, and it is being able to spend more time with my family that has really made me love my job. 

 

I want to thank everyone who has planned an amazing vacation, trip, or journey with me.  You have been a great support to my business and when you work with me you are also supporting my family.

 

 

Fill out the form below to get started planning your next European Vacation.  Looking for a motor coach tour, self-drive, or private tour, we can easily put together the perfect European vacation for you and your family’s needs. 

When you book your vacation with a member of the Life is Better Traveling Team, you are supporting local families and business.  Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past 4 years, we have become an AMAZING travel agency due to your support!

Please understand we get several requests per day for European vacations. We provide experiences for our clients that provide a lot of value. If you are looking for a budget vacation, that is NOT us.

 

Kids and Plantations, oh my!

Liz Hough on

When you travel to the south there is one destination that is always a must, a plantation.  What is a plantation?  It is a large estate with usually several hundreds of acres of land, multiple working buildings, beautiful gardens, some type of cash or food crop, and many working animals.  Plantations are large enough that they can be an all-day sight-seeing tour, but when you have two little kids a full day looking at flowers and crops is not too exciting.  Around Charleston there are several plantations to choose from and they each offer something unique and different to enjoy.  One plantation was highly recommended to us by another mother who said she takes her children there and they really enjoy it.  If another mother recommends it then it must be good right?

 

 

 

 

So we planned to spend half a day or up to 6 hours at the Middleton Place.  It was about a 25-minute drive outside of Charleston on a 2 lane road that had multiple plantations.  We decided on the full experience which included a 45-minute horse drawn carriage ride around the plantation, entrance onto the grounds, and guided tour of the house.  There were also additional tours of various parts of the plantation during the day including a tour of the flower gardens.  When you are touring a plantation, it is best to get there earlier in the day to try and beat the heat, however, with kids, you get there when you get there.  We got there around noon and decided to take the guided garden tour.  There were only a few of us on the tour and the lady we had was extremely knowledgeable about the history behind the plantation, but the kids were hot and ready for something different. 

After the tour ended, it was time for our horse drawn carriage ride around the plantation.  The kids thought this was so much fun because they love horses and with it being so bumpy, they felt like they were on an amusement park ride.  As the estate was quite large, this was a great way to get around the grounds and see the different buildings and natural beauty of the property. 

 

After our carriage ride it was time to take our tour of the house.  The house was air-conditioned, which gave us nice break from the heat, but it was also dimly light due to the 200-year-old paintings and other valuables.  The tour was very interesting for adults as the guide went through a good amount of history, but the kids were bored and unimpressed by the children’s room. I wouldn’t recommend the house tour for children as there are a lot of artifacts that required no touching, and this can be difficult for kids (especially ours!). 

 

After the house tour, we headed over to the barn and blacksmith area.  We were able to see the horses being fed, and the kids found out that there were three cats roaming the area so it became a game to find them.  At a certain time every day, one of the employees brings Bessy, a cow, up to a special area where she is milked.  She was an older cow and very tame, which is why they chose her to milk.  The kids all gathered around to see what was happening and to our surprise, they let the kids milk her also.  This was a lot of fun for the kids, probably the best part of their day. 

 

 

 

 

We spent 4 and a half hours at the Middleton Plantation and I would say that it was worth taking them, but I would plan next time to get their when they first open to try and beat the heat.  We were also careful around any water as there were alligators lounging around on the grassy areas near one of the ponds, and definitely take bug spray because there were a lot of bugs.

 

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