Cheap Family Fun

   While thinking of fun, affordable things to do with our family this summer, we decided to plan a weekend trip to Orlando. The best way I can advise doing this is by booking your hotel room through Hotwire.com. On numerous occasions, I have scored a 5 star hotel for under $100. You choose the area to stay in and your price range, and the hotel name is revealed once you lock it in. I've NEVER been disappointed. For this particular trip, we snagged a Crown Plaza room for $78 including tax, fees and parking.
   Back in December, Ian bought us Universal annual park passes for my birthday. We've used them 3 times since then and "got our monies worth". The bonus is that kids under 2 get in free so we can take Grady and just do the kid-friendly stuff, have lunch and leave - FOR FREE! You can even bring your own food and drinks into the park.

   There are several play areas in Universal including an epic ball factory. It's 2 floors of foam ball fun. There are air hoses that vacuum the balls up into a cage that dumps them on your head. Launch guns, a climbing maze (see above) and a giant twisty slide. Then just outside the ball factory is a pretty great little water park with dumping buckets, water guns, and a splash pad. A few feet from there is a toddler-sized covered playground. 

  Because I'm a huge Harry Potter fan, we did skip over to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter to get some Butter Beer, check out the dragon, use my wand to work some magic and ride the Hogwarts Express. I made my own HP maternity shirt out of an old bubble bottom blouse and magic marker. I Googled Harry Potter font and free handed this beauty...

   The scarf I already had made for a nice little baby bump sash :) 

   After a shower and power nap, we headed over to Downtown Disney (free to get in). They have tons of cool shops and restaurants to browse. Kid favorites include the Disney store with the giant Build a Potato Head exhibit where you can spend literally hours picking out your accessories and all you can fit into the carrying box is $20. The staff will even show you cool tips on how to stuff the box with the most pieces to get the best bang for your buck. Great customer service! Side note: you don't have to buy anything. You can spend time playing in there and leave empty handed if you so choose. 

   Another great place to play for free is the Lego store. They have a huge trough of Legos outside the entrance for your building enjoyment. To beat the heat, we like to sneak inside to the toddler building room where there are play tables with the junior size Legos. 

   Grady is obsessed with Legos right now so this was a lifesaver while we were waiting for our seating time at the T-Rex Cafe. I will confess we splurged on dinner because we had heard awesome things about this place and that the food and experience was worth the wait in line, and the price. 

   If you are on a tight budget, I recommend Earl of Sandwich for an affordable dinner at DTD. There are also great restaurants at the entrance near Cirque Du Soleil, but we came in the Market Place entrance and there is 2 miles between each entrance so we stayed on that side. 

   We had a pretty awesome family fun weekend for under $300. We closed out the trip by visiting Bass Pro - always a good time! - and a cheeseburger at Fudruckers.