Expert: Stephen Tanenbaum - 12/7/2004

Question
I noticed on your expertise description that you travel the world but I'm hoping you have some knowledge on where to get inexpensive airline tickets to Orlando, Florida.  We live in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  We would like to fly out of Grand Rapids, Lansing or Flint and land in Orlando.  We are planning on going to Florida from February 5-12th of 2005.  Any help you can give me in how to find the best rates on flying would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,
Steve Girschle

Answer
Hi Steve:

Interesting...our recent two month journey started in Maui, then Niagara, Toronto,Montreal and a repositiong cruise to Ft. Lauderdale. We spent 12 days in Florida inculding one full week on Orlando.

Check out this link: http://entertainment.com/save/gotoofferdetail?offerid=004OFR00612904&locationid=...

You may find the Entertainment Orlando Edition helpful in saving $$$$.

While our air flights to Hawaii and then Buffalo NY were FREE we were sadly unable to use the free return flight from Buffalo to California and hence I shopped the lowest priced flights from Ft. Lauderdale. Jet Blue offered flights for about $119 one way and COntinental was only slightly higher. I've hear that there are other flights
for as low as $99.

Don't know if flights from your area airports run much higher. I get my best deals through solid internet research and suggest you pursue that avenue and also check the Sunday Travel Sections of the NY and LA Times newspapers.

Hope you purusue free an aggresive free flights plan using
American AAdvantage and Citibank, Diners Club etc. We've been flying free for years with miles that are NOT obtained from flying. If you need advice in this regard I'll follow up with suggestions.

Do you have your lodging set up? We stayed seven days at the Embassy Grand Resort, three BR's, three full baths, four TV's, kitchen, Roman jacuzzi tub etc. for $35 per night, saving well over $1000 in exchange for a 90 minute time share presentation. If interested let me know...I used a web site that offered about 10 different properties to choose from...most offering 1 BR suites for about the same $35/nite. (they ran out of 1 BR suites so upgraded us to the eight person/two family size 3 BR unit).

Steve T.