Your last opportunity to enter this month’s PickPackGo Getaway Giveaway contest is December 31 (at midnight).
While you’re there, you might want to take a minute to check out our growing inventory of professionally managed vacation rental homes, condos and villas. With a little planning, you can beat the January 2nd booking rush.
Happy holidays from PickPackGo!
Posted: December 31st, 2007 under Family Vacation, Travel.
Comments: none
As a regular user of PickPackGo, I thought I’d share some of my tips about how to use our site to book a vacation rental. With so many features, we make finding, comparing and booking a vacation rental easier than any other site. Join me as I find our next family vacation rental home.
Our plan is to head to the Orlando Disney area to enjoy some springtime fun with our little one. In addition to our destination, the most important piece of information I enter into my search on PickPackGo is my travel dates. When I enter “Disney” and Travel Starts date “March 10″ and Travel End date “March 17,” I see 718 results. Lots of options, but fewer than the 1,427 that would have appeared if I hadn’t put in my travel dates and only entered “Disney.”
With travel date information, our search engine immediately sorts out all of the homes that are already booked for those dates. We do this because nothing is more frustrating than searching and finding the perfect place only to discover it’s already been booked. With my dates entered, the service only displays homes available for my travel dates.
I have 718 choices, so I want to refine my search a bit further. There are several cities in and around Disney, including Kissimmee, Davenport, Haines City, Clermont and Orlando. Kissimmee is right next door to Disney World, so I think I’ll check out the homes there. By using the “Refine Search” feature at the right hand side of the screen, I can narrow down to just homes in Kissimmee. I’ve still got 283 great choices.
Since I’m going to be traveling with my family and some friends, we’ll need at least 3 bedrooms to accommodate all the adults and kids. I continue to refine my search and now I’m down to 107 homes.
Like all families, we’re on a budget, so I want to see what I can find for around $800 for the week. With fees and taxes, it will be a bit more, but we’ll still be within our budget for the trip. Even with my very specific search, I’m lucky enough to have 39 different Disney Orlando vacation rental homes to consider.
If I had even more specific criteria, I could continue to refine my search based on the number of bathrooms a home has, as well as specific amenities like a pool, hot tub, and internet access.
Using the detailed property listings, I can see a lot of great photos, read a full description, check out the homes’ locations on Google Maps, as well as see the full rates and fees. Then I can save my favorites.
Without even inquiring to a property manager, I’ve easily managed to find the perfect home for my next family trip and I can book it now. I just enter my credit card information…and I get a confirmation from PickPackGo and I’m done.
Now I can cross at least one thing off my “to do” list this holiday season—and at the same time beat the January 2 vacation booking rush.
We’re here to help, so don’t hesitate to contact us about booking your next trip!
Posted: December 21st, 2007 under Vacation Homes, Vacation Rentals.
Comments: 1
We appreciate travelers like Tim and Barb Rood writing in to let us know about their experience with PickPackGo.
They rented a Disney Orlando vacation home on our site and had this to say:
“We booked through PickPackGo.com. Thank you for making it so easy. We searched on line and there you were! Thank you for being so helpful and knowledgeable, we can’t wait to plan the next vacation with you. We have also very highly recommended you to our friends.” — Tim and Barb Rood
Thanks for the feedback!
How about you? Where do you want to go? Search PickPackGo.
Posted: December 19th, 2007 under Vacation Homes, Vacation Rentals.
Comments: none
If you’ve already packed or are booking a last-minute Disney Orlando vacation rental home this holiday season, there’s so much you won’t want to miss once you get here!
I’m the Orlando City Host. Last week, we took our whole family to Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party at the Magic Kingdom Park (it runs until Dec. 21). For us, the magical snowfall on Main Street, U.S.A. was a big hit since we usually only get to see snow when we travel up North. The holiday décor was amazing, and the performance of Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmastime Parade was as entertaining as all of the popular Disney parades. The best part for our daughter though was this year’s new holiday “Castle Light Show” which decorates Cinderella Castle with thousands of shimmering white lights. It looks so beautiful, you just have to see it, but you have to buy advance tickets and they’re separate from the park admission.
Our kids are still too young, but B.C. (before children), we used to head over to the Candlelight Processional at EPCOT where a celebrity narrator—usually a famous athlete, musician or actor—accompanied by a 50-piece orchestra and a choir retell the Christmas story. The show lasts under an hour, and is really neat to hear. It’s free with EPCOT admission, but to avoid waiting in line, you might want to book the Candlelight dinner package, which includes dinner and reserved general seating at the American Gardens Theatre during the Processional. The last show this year is December 30th.
Another must-see for our family this year was the life-size gingerbread house at the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. It’s amazing as usual! Every year, cast members use gingerbread tiles baked in the Disney kitchen to construct it. I highly recommend visiting during the evening because as you walk up to the hotel, you’ll pass by the chestnut stand where they roast chestnuts nightly. In the evenings, there’s also a pianist playing in the lobby next to the Christmas tree and the Gingerbread house.
Although we’ve lived in Orlando for more than seven years now, the holiday season here is still magical to us. I hope it is for you and your family, too!
Posted: December 17th, 2007 under Family Vacation, Travel, Vacation Homes.
Comments: none
Even though I’ve got a holiday to-do list a mile long…plus work that continues to pile up…not to mention a desperate need to vacuum and mop…I’m going to treat myself this weekend. I’m going to see the Titanic Artifact Exhibition at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
One of the reasons I was amenable to moving to Denver from New York was that I knew Denver had a great cultural presence. From the Art Museum to the Buell Theater, from the Children’s Museum to the Museum of Nature and Science, from the Zoo to the Botanic Gardens - I could always find something to do. Better yet, Denver is metropolitan enough that traveling exhibits and theater productions almost always include a stop here.
For example, Spamalot was on Broadway just as we were leaving New York. With a newborn and an impending move, we simply couldn’t manage to squeeze it in - not even a matinee. But we were patient, and we got to see the show here in Denver at the Buell Theater in September. Well worth the wait.
Likewise, I read about the Body Worlds exhibit several years ago in a book about cadavers. The plastinated, posed human bodies had been shown in Europe, but not yet in the US. In mid-2006, we went to see Body Worlds 2 at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science - and none of the Body Worlds exhibits have yet made it to New York.
And now I’m going to see the Titanic Artifact Exhibition. I thought the movie was surprisingly powerful, but I expect to be even more impressed by the exhibition - the actual artifacts collected from the wreckage, the re-creations of parts of the ship, the descriptions of the mechanics of how the ship sank and the logistics of the artifact recovery missions. The movie was wonderfully romantic, but from the exhibition I hope to learn more about the science and history behind this tragedy.
The Titanic Artifact Exhibition closes in January, but if you’re in Denver for the holidays, you can still catch it! Check out the details at the exhibition web page on the Denver Museum of Nature and Science web site.
Posted: December 13th, 2007 under Family Vacation, Travel.
Comments: none
Arthur Frommer, founder of Frommer’s Travel Guides, was asked by a reader recently whether it’s possible to visit any of the great national parks in the winter. His answer, “definitely yes.” (read full response)
He writes: “In considering an inexpensive U.S. vacation in the dead of winter, keep in mind our national parks.” Among his recommendations: Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Yosemite, and Yellowstone.
Hey, what about the Eastern U.S.? It has wonderful parks, too, including the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, America’s most visited National Park at the border of Tennessee and North Carolina, and Florida’s Everglades National Park, the largest subtropical wilderness in the U.S.
If you’re traveling with kids, be sure to check out the National Park Service’s Junior Ranger program. It allows your kids to earn an official Junior Ranger badge or patch and certificate for completing a series of activities during their park visit and sharing their answers with a park ranger.
A National Park adventure in the winter can be both fun and more affordable, particularly if you choose to stay in a vacation rental home rather than a crowded hotel room. On PickPackGo, we showcase professionally managed, Great Smoky Mountains vacation homes, lodges and cabins with a wide variety of amenities, near the park.
So forget expensive hotel rooms where they can’t even guarantee you’ll get adjoining rooms, and instead imagine a couple of families or 10 traveling friends staying together here and enjoying day-trips into the Park. Now that’s my kind of vacation!
Posted: December 10th, 2007 under Vacation Homes, Vacation Rentals.
Comments: none
As our site continues to grow and we gain more online exposure, a few of our users have written in to tell us what they think about our site.
Frequent family traveler and technology product manager, Jen was kind enough to share:
As Jen points out, she’ll make quick decisions about a property based on photos and what she can see on the map. So it is in the best interest of property managers and owners to represent their vacation rentals with clear and visually descriptive photos, as well as provide accurate location information, so we can map their properties.
Mapped results for a search in Orlando:
The design of our site, with its open and clean layout, helps show our properties in a way that users can quickly navigate to find their ideal vacation rental. We are currently working on “Property Listing Tips” that will help managers and owners get the most out of their listings. And for renters, we will soon be implementing “Help Bubbles” to highlight some of our enhanced features on the site.
Thanks for this additional feedback:
We love to get feedback, comments and suggestions about our site. Keep ‘em coming.
Posted: December 7th, 2007 under Property Management, Site design.
Comments: none
It’s the holiday season. And in this giving season, we’re launching our Getaway Giveaway contest.
When you vacation as much as we do, there are certain things you can’t imagine traveling without. Every month, we’re giving away one of them just for visiting PickPackGo, the vacation rental home search site.
This month is your chance to win a gift just for you—a Sony Portable DVD player—something our family packs on every trip.
Be sure to enter today! Then come back next month to www.pickpackgo.com/giveaway to see what else we’re giving away to make vacation travel even more enjoyable.
Good luck!
Posted: December 4th, 2007 under Contest, Family Vacation, Travel, Vacation Rentals.
Comments: 2
