Live life - Love the Journey!

Yesterday I got a comment on my blog asking for me to recommend a travel agency. I realize that I am probably going to be going on and on about all the "vacations" I go on, and people are going to think that I am some spoiled rich girl that just goes and plays all the time. To me, travel agencies are way too expensive, and since most of my travel is for business, I would only use a travel agency if I was going overseas or on a cruise.

The truth is, my husband is a contractor which requires us to travel throughout the US a lot. It is a home based business, which means I am stuck looking for the best hotel deals for our stay. With 3 kids that takes a lot of time, trying to arrange for child care and still keeping an eye on our expenses. I realize that not everyone travels so much, but they have similar worries.

When we first got married, all the traveling was exciting! But then the searching, the booking, the crappy hotels, they all starting taking their toll and it wasn't fun anymore, and I wound up just staying home. 
About 5 years ago, when my oldest baby turned 5, we had gone to Orlando.  Money was tight and Disney tickets were expensive for us, but my son wanted to go!  In the hotel lobby, there was a lady selling discounted Disney World tickets. I knew their had to be a catch, but we fell for it anyway. We had to take a 2-hour timeshare tour.  I knew that my son would have been disappointed if I said no, so off we went. 

During the tour, we were told of all the great amenities of the resort we were touring as well as all of the theme parks, restaurants, and shows in the area.  Although we weren't really interested in buying a timeshare at the time (that's for old people, we thought), it really opened up my eyes to what was around besides the four walls of our dingy hotel room.  Suddenly, the business trip became a vacation!

When it was time for the next "vacation", I looked on the internet to see if Gatlinburg had any of these time share deals. I was surprised to see that there was!

After about a year, I had found so many websites that gave us these discount vacation packages for taking a timeshare. One website in particular, Rooms101, seemed to have a lot of locations that we visited, which really cut my time searching.  They seemed to have prices around the same as Expedia and Hotels.com, but the perks for taking a timeshare tour really made this a find!

I guess if I had to recommend a travel website, I would have to say Rooms101 for now. As long as you don't mind taking an hour or so for some sales guy to push you to buy a timeshare, it's definitely the way to go!  But if anyone knows of a travel agency that wants to pay me to go on vacation for them, let me know.