How to get the most out of booking a Sun discount holiday?

How do you spend your Saturday nights?  Well last night I spent the evening watching the money saving forums for the final code to enable me to book a caravan holiday for my family using the Sun holiday deal!

It may be the last thing that most of you fancy doing on a Saturday night but as my six year old is in school the only way that we can afford to have a visit a decent holiday park in the school holidays on the budget we have is to do this.

We've used the sun holiday deals on a few occasions before, having a weekend away at one of our favourite Haven parks ( Hafen Y Mor on the Llyn Peninsula in North Wales ) and also managing to grab  a midweek break in the summer holidays in 2012 to visit Craig Tara in Scotland! 

Both these trips cost us less than half of what they would if we had booked with the park directly,  even though we paid the luxury supplement to upgrade! 

As we had booked before we had a priority booking reference that enabled us to book online a day earlier than anyone who was booking for the first time, but from reading the forums and past experience I knew that the site was likely to be live from the night before and it was just a case of waiting for someone to post the final code! 

At around 11pm last night the code appeared on the forum and the rush to book started, they don't make it easy on you as you have to enter a minimum of three dates and three parks before it will reveal availability. As we were restricted to school holiday dates ( pretty much Easter and May half term) this took a while.

We had decided to visit Cornwall this year, I've never been before but my husband had spent some of his favourite childhood holidays there and held fond memories of these. We wanted a Haven park as we have good past experiences of these, know they have minimum standards of facilities and a variety of activities for the whole family. 

After a lot of fiddling it became apparent that we just weren't going to get anywhere in the areas we wanted for Half term so settled on dates during the Easter holidays instead. As the drive to Cornwall from Manchester is quite a journey we knew we wanted to go for seven days which means booking two consecutative trips. 

The parks we had settled on were Haven Perran Sands and Haven RIviera Sands, both were really appealling to us as they were in beautiful locations and Perren Sands had come highly recommended by friends. 

We couldn't seem to get consecutative availability at one of these parks so have booked 3 nights at Perran and 4 nights half an hour down the Cornish Coast at Rivera, this will mean packing up and moving half way through our trip but it gives us the advantage of experiences two different but both very popular parks! 

As my mum is coming along with us we decided to go all out and have opted for the luxury plus  upgrade, 

We have paid £180 now and worked out we'll have another £100ish to pay to cover entertainment passes, service charge and linen. 

For a whole week  in a luxury plus caravan for three adults and two children in Cornwall during the summer holidays I'm really pleased with that! It's just over half of what it would be too book direct with Haven.  

So are you looking to books discount holiday for your family this year?

 If you've booked before and have a priority booking code then go to www.ukholidaysinthesun.co.uk and book now using the 2013 sun holiday codes of NEON KITE LOOK GOOD ABLE ECHO GONE RACE SHOW and PS61.  

If you are a first time booker then you will need to wait until tomorrow but my advice would be to try first thing! First time bookers need to go to:

sunbookonline.co.uk

If you like the idea of a bargain break but are fond of comfort and little luxuries then don't forget the luxury or luxury plus upgrade options for £4 and £8 respectively! If you want to bring down the costs even further the linen and entertainment passes are option and if you book for certain term time dates you can get the passes for free!

If you are a first timer and are disappointed with your choice tomorrow, why not consider booking a weekend somewhere not too far away? You still get a nice little break that will cost you less than a couple of nights in a hotel and you will then be able to take advantage of priority booking next time! It's worth considering!

Good luck and hope you get the dates and location you want! 

Do let me know if you manage to book! 

So all I need to do now is plan our holiday activities! I really want to visit the Eden project while we're in Cornwall, what other trips or days out can you recommend? I'd 

love to hear your suggestions! 

Family holidays on a budget...

 
As a penny pinching Mummy, deciding where to take your family on holiday can be a difficult decision. Both myself and my husband work full time to cover the costs of living, this means that a holiday, when we can spend precious time together as a family is very important to us!

We want to spend our time away doing things all four of us will enjoy, we're definitely not a 'sit by the pool and relax' family! As long as we can do this, where we actually go doesn't really matter!

So far all our holidays as a family have been in the UK ( Hubby and I did manage to sneak off for a few days in Bruges for our honeymoon 3 years ago though!) The cost of holidaying overseas seems to just mount up. The children's passports alone would cost over £100 and that's not including photo's or postage! And even if we could get a budget self catering apartment the cost of flying has risen dramatically over the last few years. Elizabeth is under two so would be free but for the rest of us we'd be looking at almost £1000 for school holiday dates even on a budget airline! Then there's the cost of food and luggage allowance etc...

For the first few years after Ben arrived we went to centerparcs for a week in September, however when he started school last year, we became restricted to holidaying outside of term time and for 'school holiday' dates even centerparcs had soared out of our budget!

At the beginning of the year, the question on my lips was 'can we actually afford a holiday this year?'

The possibility that the answer could be no really upset me. I really needed something to look forward to, that special family time that made working all the hours god sends and barely seeing my children during the week just so we can afford rent and bills, worthwhile.

Now I know there are plenty of families out there living on and below the poverty line who couldn't dream of affording to take their children away for a few days each year and I don't mean to offend anyone at all. But this time together is precious to us both as a family and for my marriage as I seem to see less and less of hubby with all my commitments at the moment.

One option I considered was a 'staycation' where we all had a week off together but stayed at home and just went on different days out in the local area...

This is a great idea as even though there are plenty of local attractions that we regularly visit there are so many great museums and galleries, not to mention parks and petting farm's in and around Manchester that we just haven't been to yet!

Another possibility was staying with family or friends in another part of the country for a few days to have a change of scene, again this would be low cost but it can also be a bit cheeky to ask, especially as there are four of us now. Although happy to have us for a night or two most of our family and friends just don't have the room for us to stay for any longer!

After doing some research back in February I came across the 'Sun' holiday deals, where you collect tokens from the newspaper then apply to stay in holiday parks throughout the country, including Butlins, Haven, Pontins and Park Resorts, for as little as £9.50 per person!

This is for the 'basic' accommodation, but you can upgrade from just four pound each and even when you add on extras, you are still getting a break away for a lot cheaper than the price to book direct! we decided to break our holidays up this year so we booked a weekend the on the 'Sun' deal to go to Hafen Y Mor in North Wales and a four night break to the Craig Tara Haven In Scotland in August! This way we have had two 'holidays' to look forward to, and even including petrol it has cost us less than £400 in total!!

I'll also be keeping an eye out to see if the Sun bring back their Disneyland Paris offer this year as I would love to be able to take my children there next year as their first trip abroad! Obviously we'd have to finally invest in passports for them, so we would have to factor that in to the cost of any trip...

Now our holiday's are all over for this year, and next year we will be visiting Butlin's in Skegness as a #Butlinsambassador and blogging all about it. I'm really looking forward to it, as are the children (all 3 of them!)