From Boston to Orlando

I'm currently in the Sunshine State for a family reunion. We are very fortunate that my aunt and uncle have saved their time share units for the past few years so that the whole family can use them this week. When I first heard that my aunt was hosting this reunion, I was really excited. An "excuse" to go to Disney World! However, slowly the other financial aspects of this trip started to set in. A big one was how were we going to get there.

We knew we wanted to fly. Although most family and friends from outside of New England assume that Logan is the best gateway to Massachusetts, we actually prefer to fly out of TF Green in Rhode Island. Our drive is about the same to either airport, but we find TF Green to just be a lot nicer. From the employees to the cleanliness of the airport, to the cost of parking, to the ease of getting to the terminal from long-term parking, TF Green is just a lot of better. Plus a lot of times the airfare is cheaper.

This time TF Green did not have the cheapest price. However, the airport in Manchester, New Hampshire did. (Yes, despite being called "Boston Regional," the Manchester airport is in New Hampshire.) We found amazingly cheap tickets from there to Orlando. The trip to the airport wasn't much longer. Plus we were able to do curbside check-in before my husband, the Big Giraffe, dropped us off and parked the car. The long-term parking was a tad more than TF Green but far less than Logan and the Big Giraffe was comfortable walking to the terminal from our space. For a family of four with a lot of stuff, it worked out really well. My only complaint about the trip actually has nothing to do with the airport itself, but rather the airlines. We flew Southwest which doesn't have assigned seats. The sounds great, right? Sure, except that I got stuck sitting next to someone else's kid because there weren't enough seats for his brother and him to sit next to their parents. In reality he was very polite and well-behaved, but it's bad enough trying to figure out ways to entertain my own kids without throwing an extra child into the mix. Fortunately he actually helped me entertain my older son; he had UNO cards which we all played for a while.

Alright, there was one other downside to the trip...while our super-cheap flight home is mid-day, our super-cheap flight to Orlando left at 6:25 AM! You can imagine that after a travel day that involved leaving our house at 3:30 in the morning, we slept very well on our first night in Orlando. And it was certainly worth it!