I was hearing stories of such wonderful ways people were using RentAFriend.com . People who travel for a living were making arrangements to meet Friends before they even left to a new city. I didn’t even know this until I read about it in a news article recently that did a story on RentAFriend.com. A father, mother and 2 children drove down to Florida from Virginia for vacation. They were on a strict budget, and the father decided to contact a Friend from RentAFriend.com who lived in Florida to create an itinerary of attractions around Disney that were affordable and cheap. Things like museums, parks, that didn’t have high admission prices, sightseeing, discount shopping, stuff like that. He had planned the vacation the previous year, but because of the economy his company downsized. He was fortunate to be able to keep his job, but had to take a pay cut. He still wanted to go on vacation, but it was going to be on a more fixed budget than they were planning on. He only had $1000 total for 7 days, and wanted to extend it as far as possible. He paid the Friend $40 to make him up a 7 day itinerary with enough activities for the week. The Friend told him the cheapest supermarkets so they could prepare meals, drew maps of off the beaten path museums and things that would take up their time without spending too much.
Once he got down to Florida the family met the Friend for lunch and the Friend gave him a ton of great information. I was shocked to learn from the article that Florida residents get 50% admission to the Disney Parks. Not sure how legal this is, but the Friend offered to be the resident to get their family into Disney. They originally weren’t planning on going, because $300 for the 4 of them was way out of their price range. Not only did the Friend offer to allow them to get the 50% discount, but she also had a buy-1-get-1 coupon for 1 free admission. It actually cost him around $100 to get into the park. The Friend also told them about attending a day of timeshare presentations to get free breakfast and 4 free passes to another park. Information that the Friend offered was common knowledge to people down in the Disney area, but not widely advertised to people traveling there. Once I heard this, it was extremely clear that the best way to learn about new areas is from people who live there. Locals are the best way to learn about the best restaurants, best shopping areas, and can tell you things that you would have never read about.