travel – Josh Ledesma's Travel Blog

Travel Photo of the Month: The Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge
San Francisco, CA
June 2014

We’re going to Disney World! Tues. Blog / Cost breakdown

We booked our summer vacation to Disney World!

Our daughter has really been seeking some thrills and our last road trip went so well.

We started by saying what are we gonna do for vacation this year, since last year we didn’t do a big family vacay like we have done in years past. In 2017 we went to PR, in ’18 to Florida also to WDW, ’19 we did California & Las Vegas road trip. But with the circumstances in 2020, we stayed local, hit the coast and also baby Lainey, my niece, was due in July and we typically travel in June. So fast forward to Bela our thirteen year old says she wants to do something fun theme park wise, and so we thought why not? So long as her grades go well it would be good for her to get back out into the world before returning to school later this year.

I started looking into vacation packages and theme parks, and found a really good deal on a Universal Orlando Resort package. It didn’t really take much to convince everyone and so we booked it. Five days, Four nights with park tickets for all three of us, (our son doesnt need an admission ticket under three years old) for a very affordable $1430 with tax included. Now if you know me, I’m all about the deals. Deals, deals, deals. I won’t book anything I can’t cancel unless I’m convinced I’m getting the best deal I can. So I’ll break down the costs for you.

The most expensive part of this whole thing is the admission tickets. They’re four day park to park tickets, which Is certainly one of the more expensive options, but ill get into why we chose this pass in a bit. So each of those four day tickets costs about $345 per person (for all four days). So for $345 we are getting access to all three Universal Orlando Parks, Island of Adventures, Universal Orlando, and Volcano Bay water park for four pre selected dates. So some quick math, $1,035 for all the admission tickets. My overall total if you recall was $1430 (including taxes) so for the remains $395 pays for our room and taxes on everything for four nights, averaging less than $99 a night taxes included. Some of the perks to staying on property is we are able to enter the Wizarding World of Harry Potter one hour before the park opens, and there’s also complimentary transportation from the resort to the park, so you don’t have to pay for parking at the park. You do however pay for parking at the resort if you are bringing your own vehicle. Overall this is a very good deal on a budget travel for a family of three about $476/ person including taxes.

We also were flirting with the idea of Walt Disney World, but had some reservations at first. I wasn’t that sure about the rides and such for my son Teddy. He’s two and I was really thinking there would be a height requirement for most of the rides but upon further research we actually found lots for him to be able to do. So we began thinking that we definitely wanted to go for at least one day. Then I started to really dive into some YouTube videos from some of our favorite bloggers and got really really excited for it. We ultimately decided to purchase two day tickets to round out our week. I’ll breakdown the costs and stuff here and let me tell y’all, it was a little steep.

The long list of rides that we discovered Teddy could ride and would probably enjoy is mostly at Magic Kingdom. So thats where we booked our first reservation for. To just name a few, Dumbo’s flying Elephants, Tommorowland Speedway (to my surprise), Buzz Lightyear Alien something or another, the People Mover, which has only very recently opened back up. Upon some closer examination, he actually measures out a little taller than I anticipated so even though most of these have no height requirements, he is in fact tall enough to ride a few more that do have a height req. We also want to make sure he was able to visit the Animal Kingdom because we love animals and I think he will be very excited on the safari ride where you’re able to get up close to a lot of them. This is what ultimately led us to additionally add park hopper options, and the second day. It’s just too hard to see a lot of Disney World in one day. In fact, you could stay a week and not see everything you wanted to see. So naturally we opted to add on. I also am personally excited to see Spaceship Earth at night, which is at Epcot, and Toy Story Land is at Hollywood Studios, and although Teddy isn’t tall enough to ride, it’s his favorite Disney story so we can’t not walk through and visit it.

The process; I purchased the tickets right in the app. In order to get into the park, you actually need two things. The first is an admission ticket. Sounds normal right? Secondly, you need a “Park Reservation.” You basically, need to reserve a place in the park for the specific day and park that you choose. No longer can you simply purchase an admission ticket and get into the park. Weird concept I know, but it’s so that the capacity can stay at the restricted limit. If you have a four day ticket, but aren’t planning on visiting four consecutive days, someone else needs to be able to enter the park. So two things needed to enter Walt Disney World, a park ticket AND a park reservation.

The cost: the cost of a base ticket starts at $109, as you book into the summer months the ticket prices fluctuate some during peak. So our base tickets each go down slightly when you book consecutive days in some instances. But ours were about $130/day. The park hopper option was an additional $75 per ticket. So each ticket per person came put to $335 each person for two days with park hoppers. Grand total of $1067 after taxes. For comparison reasons of cost, we also paid just over $1000 for four day passes at Universal Orlando. We still need a hotel reservations or two nights around Disney World, since we check out of Universal Orlando after four nights.

Recapping two weeks of travel from Texas to Colorado and Tennessee

welcome everyone, Traveling Josh here, inviting you to join us on this little recap of adventure through the last couple weeks. Thanks for stopping by

So, hoo-freaking-ray, we got married! My beautiful wife and I finally tied the knot after ten years together and holy moly, I couldn’t be happier. I thought to myself what a great opportunity to finally start my travel blog and what better way to start it off with a bang. So Bang were married now!

My wife and I outside at Cheyenne Mountain Resort the day after we said “I do”

Here’s a quick outline of how the last two weeks sort of panned out for us and we’ll dive into some of the more specific details on our VLOG which you can find here.

April 1, road trip from San Antonio, Tx to Colorado Springs, Co. (Wedding location) We actually had initially planned to stay overnight somewhere in NM, but we oddly made very good time. By the time we were approaching that town, it was still very early in the day, it was around 3pm and we were due there in about an hour. With only about 4 hours remaining in the trip, we opted to muscle through and knock it all out arriving a day early.

April 2, We started the day with an appointment at the El Paso County Clerk’s office to pick up our marriage license. It was a special moment to me because we had woken up in town, a day early, we took our son with us and it was just really good vibes.

April 2 cont…We planned for Cheyenne mountain zoo, it was such a blast. Lots of walking obviously, but even more so do to it being on the mountain. Lots of inclines. Some of our favorite exhibits were the pack of wolves, the hippopotamus which was very up close and personal, and the gorillas. The giraffes were also a sight to see because there were so many. And the elephant exhibit was really cool too as there was a sort of sky bridge that took us over their heads. After heading back to greet some more of our family and friends as they arrived in town, we were able to sort of get around the resort property, and let me tell you, it is amazing. We had stayed here on our previous trip and were impressed then, but with all the back and forth greeting the family and friends, it’s no doubt that this property is A+

For dinner we took some of our guests to Phantom Brewing Co in downtown Colorado Springs. We did have to pay for parking but it’s a really cool little strip of downtown and the beer was phenomenal. I would recommend highly if your like beer.

April 3, Trip to the Royal Gorge, with an amazing scenic drive and the train ride through the royal gorge region. We absolutely loved the breathtaking views all along the way. The train cars were limited in seating due to the pandemic, and they offered food, alcohol, and beverages pre order or restaurant style. The train has multiple ticket options starting with coach, which is traditional type seating, which were actually refurbished airplane seats. There’s also a dining cart and a dome cart which gives views from up above. You can find ticketing info and all other general info here.

April 3, Manitou Springs Ave. elevation ~6k ft great shopping lunch at Townhouse Sports Grille. A top attraction in the area and rightfully so. Manitou Ave. Is home to tons of gift shops, local memorabilia, restaurants, desserts, it’s own arcade with vintage penny and quarter games. Really a must do when you’re nearby. It’s sort of nestled away in the mountains and a great way to spend an afternoon or an entire day.

April 3, We took our group to dinner at North side social, and I highly recommend it for groups or gatherings. They have arcade games throughout the place, an entire separate facility for pickle ball, which I’ve never played before but really enjoyed. They were kind enough to put out group in their party room separated from the general area and it had some games in there too. Large connect four, foosball, ping pong to name a few.

April 4, wedding day a whole story in itself. But to summarize generically it absolutely was one of the most fun, and positively emotional days of my life. And I will forever cherish those feelings and will recount that day over and over again for the rest of my life.

April 5, Most of our guests began to leave town so we took the immides to lunch at red gravy downtown Colorado Springs. The pasta was very good and Italian options and wine seemed endless. The water served in old cleaned out wine bottles and it was really cool to serve it that way.

April 5, back to Manitou Springs for some more shopping, got this sick hat, great coffee at loft espresso and just fun to walk around with much smaller crowds through the stores, and the arcade and finding snacks like shaved ice the girls loved. ice cream which teddy now really likes

April 5, little tired now take out at the Red Robin. It was about time to wind down, packing up the hotel room, loading stuff into the truck, fueling up, all that sort of thing. We decided to go takeout for dinner, and luckily there was a Red Robin nearby that offered curbside pickup.

April 6, wake up slow, check out, Third time to Manitou only to pick up coffee again, and grab Bela’s hat b/c she loved mine so much I couldn’t get it off her head. We probably started the drive home around noon. After having to double back to our hotel because w left my sons phone behind, and one last quick pit stop we were on our way.

Long road trips are always more fun on the way than coming home. the towns seemed further ill show you our route and how much of nothing is in north Texas and its dreadfully beautiful as the sun goes down and you’re not sure where you are or when the next sign of civilization will appear. Its different driving west to me because the day is getting later in a sense. The days always seem longer to me when im out west, so as we were driving into Co Springs, the day is almost being extended while the sun hangs out a little longer. Factor in the change on time zone and like our pal Lightning McQueen would say “Ka Chow” we’ve got an easier drive going west compared to east.

We stopped at a comfort inn in Plainview, Tx, finally some remembrance of a city. room was decently priced 129 think it came to $140 after taxes. I liked that it was indoors and we had a good view of the parking lot to keep tabs on the truck and stuff in the bed. Nothing really if any true value, but even so. We tried to get Chilis to go but the location stopped take out orders at 730, because the restaurant closed at 8. Odd. So we went to ihop and got take out, came back to the room to settle in. The hotel had complimentary grab and go breakfast, I think they even had waffles, along with fruit, coffee, juice, muffins, cereal, very accommodating of them. Link to that location in Plainview, here.

April 7 we wake up and head the rest of the way home and ultimately arrive fairly early in the afternoon maybe around 3pm or so.

April 8 we settle back in for a day at home but were not done yet.

April 9 wifey and I are flying out to Nashville for a little weekend honeymoon escape. Start with a marg and mini tacos at La Gloria at the airpots, which really hit the spot before a quick 2.5 hour flight.

April 9 we land In Nashville, grab our rental car from Hertz (not sponsored) check into the hotel. Grab dinner and some beers, and sample taste of live music. The pizza and beer at Tailgate Brewery was top notch. We had half pepperoni half Mac and cheese pizza it was phenomenal. And the oven baked Wings are a must add on, although hint in the name they’re oven baked hot fried. Highly recommend if you’re in the area.

April 10 we hit the local coffee shop Just Love Coffee (Music Row location), quick breakfast, large coffees and were off to the Nashville Farmers market. picked up some art for our kiddos’ rooms, from Ben . Handmade soap from lynchburg soap co and got to see all of what the famous farmers market had to offer.

April 10 we were off to the country music hall of fame, got to see the Kacey Musgraves exhibit, Brooks and Dunn feature hall, and tons of vintage country music history.

April 10 for lunch we hit Bolton’s spicy hot chicken. great outdoor seating and wasn’t very busy at all. Its more of a local spot compared to Hattie B’s or the other one. Recommended from our pal @Thrillist.

April 10 we went down to Lower Broadway and holy moly was it alive. Very crowded and got some great photos at the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian bridge down by the river across from Nissan stadium. One of my top moments from the weekend. Just me and my bride.

April 11 Sunday, we hit the coffee shop again, less satisfied than the day before, and then trekked back down to the Broadway area, to get our goo goo clusters which we were very excited about. Ashley made her own, see photos attached and we took them across the pedestrian bridge to eat them and snap a few photos. Another simple but favorite moment of mine. photos attached.

April 11 For dinner we grabbed a few beers and headed over to “the row” where we had some drinks and ate dinner to live music. a very nice way to wind down the weekend. Shout out to @ Tory Grace for the music that night. And it was a nice walk back to our hotel and we grabbed dessert on the way back at the Baked Bear, custom made ice cream sandwiches and related items.

Monday morning April 12 we woke up and flew home. Nashville airport and Ft Lauderdale airport really let us down in coffee and in food options. FLL had a Starbucks but we typically don’t get coffee there, plus as you can imagine the line was very long as it was the only place there. There was a grab and go line in the center of the terminal that did have some sandwiches and hot coffee but they were out at the time being and wasn’t replenished in the 20 minutes or so I had left until my next flight boarded.

I hope you guys enjoyed this blog post, please follow my blog for more stories, and have we got a list lined up, it’s going to be a busy summer! But foe now I’m signing off, thanks for stopping by and we’ll see you soon.