Choices, choices,..

Bonjorno!

Today we’re picking up where we left off: part 2 of ‘Things you should consider while deciding when to visit a holiday destination’.

Last Thursday, in part 1, we covered (at least for us) the most important factor in choosing a time for our vacation, namely the weather. Today we’ll discuss two other factors that could be important in this decision-making-process: the American students’ school holidays and peakseasons.

Here we go!

SCHOOL HOLIDAYS

(Wyat Though)

We would have never thought of this on our own but luckily a friend of ours mentioned this as an important factor to consider. It seems logical right? If the whole country has days off, chances are they’re going to want to spend those days doing something fun. Therefore making it very likely that you’re going to have to face crowds, and I mean very large crowds. Obviously this is something we all want to avoid and that’s why we’ll take a look at the planned holidays in America. 

We kind of had a vague idea that summer holiday in America didn’t fall during the same period as here in Europe but other than that our knowledge of this specific domain is fairly limited. And so, like any modern day person would, we started Googleing!

We discovered that Wikipedia offers a perfect summary of all the holiday periods in America. You can find this here. Since we’re planning our visit in November, we were most interested in Thankgiving holidays, especially since this holiday applies to both public schools (elementary, middle and high school) and colleges/universities. Thanksgiving day this year falls on the 27^th of November. Good news for us, since we’ll be freezing our butts off again in little old Belgium at that time.

Also, the day after Thanksgiving Day is Black Friday and honestly, we don’t think we’re ready to witness this event in real life.

(Shannon Whitehead)

PEAK SEASON

If possible in any way, we all want to avoid booking a vacation in the middle of peak season. There’s more tourists, but mostly it’ll cost you a lot more money. Money which you’ll be needing to eat at all the different fastfood chains, right? So therefore, here you have a little rundown of the ‘best’ seasons to visit Florida when it comes to peak seasons.

When exactly peak seasons occur is dictated mainly by the weather. In the South of Florida peak season runs from December till April while in the North it runs from May till September. April through May and September through November are called ‘shoulder seasons’ and are the same for the whole of Florida. This means that the hordes of tourists have significantly thinned out, your accommodation will be much less pricey and, très important, the weather is just right.

In Orlando’s theme parks it’s not the weather but the school holidays that dictate peak season. And since there is practically always some holiday to be celebrated throughout the year, theme parks are busy all year round –no surprise there. But ofcourse, when in Florida… one simply can’t miss out on the amazing theme parks the area has to offer so we’re just going to try and start controlling our fear of large crowds and claustrophobia… Just to be safe.

That was everything we have for you for today. Tune in again on Thursday for more on our Floridian adventure!

R & B