For once in my life, I am extremely late in fulfilling a promise, or rather a Christmas gift from 2011. I purchased my wife tickets to visit Colonial Williamsburg thanks to a fantastic Cyber Monday sale last year. So to say I am cutting it a little close is an understatement.

Hey, lay off, I took her to Hawaii, Disneyland, and even Sauder Village for Mother’s Day. I think I am still on her InACent side.

So all year we have been picking our brains on the perfect time to go to the Virginia area, and finally we settled in on Thanksgiving. Both of us will be off of work, and the extended weekend is a perfect time to get away. After all, one of our favorite vacations was when we snuck away to Disney World a couple years ago. If history repeats itself, the crowds will be down and we will get to celebrate Thanksgiving with our colonial brethren.

The most difficult part of the planning has been there is very little information published by either Williamsburg or Busch Gardens with the schedule of activities. However, after a couple of phone calls, we made the decision Williamsburg will be perfect Thanksgiving day, followed by Busch Gardens the day after Thanksgiving for the start of Christmas Town.

Besides those activities, we will look for recommendations from the travel community for other things we should try not to miss in the area. I would love to spend Saturday heading down towards Virginia Beach, if not just to see the coastal towns and the Atlantic Ocean.

Planning for a Thanksgiving Hotel

Here is one thing I have learned about planning travel over the Thanksgiving holiday. Maybe I should not share such a secret as it will possibly flood the market with new reservations, but heck, I write this blog to help the readers, so here we go.

Nearly everyone travels to see family over the Thanksgiving holiday. It is true the airports can be nuts. However, the secret, at least in our experience, is less people actually do touristy things during that time.

Disney World was a perfect example of how the crowds were down, the weather was perfect, and we enjoyed a great day giving thanks to the Mickey shaped turkey. So our recommendation is to absolutely see if you can convince your family to celebrate somewhere that great memories can be made, and it does not have to be Disney.

With that planning, I have realized hotel rooms tend to be really reasonable over the Thanksgiving holiday. When we visited Disney, we paid less than $100/night at the Holiday Inn on Disney property. Sure enough, as I began searching for hotels over the holiday this year near Williamsburg, the rates are fantastic, and I do not need to consider dipping into our mile and point savings.

So I want to quickly document the type of incredible offers we have been finding.

Club Carlson

The Club Carlson group of properties was not really much on my horizon until we were really impressed with the several hotels from this summers great free night giveaway promotion. So I had no problem looking at what they had to offer over the Thanksgiving holiday around Williamsburg.

What surprised me was it was all Country Inn and Suite properties, which we were rather fond of from previous experience, and the rates were all under $70/night except one. The only problem was the reviews were not that great for all but the expensive property (still only $130/night).

Point redemption was ridiculous and not even worth considering. Either they wanted 28,000 points per night (they should be around 9,000 points to align with the price) or 5,000 points plus ~$50.

In my opinion, a $70/night hotel room was not worth redeeming points. Lets see what else is available.

What really bothered me this time is I called up the more expensive property to see if they were willing to negotiate their price down to close to where their adjacent properties were, and I was declined. Even with Gold status with Club Carlson, I got no where when calling the property directly. I read so many stories of people getting great rates when calling a hotel directly, yet I have never been able to replicate, outside of when we had to move our reservation over from one property to another in Indianapolis.

Priority Club

My old buddy Priority Club has always been reliable, and after quite an enjoyable free stay in Hawaii, I am always willing to give them some more business.

Once again I was fortunate to find several under $100 options in the area, and the reviews were decent. We carry Platinum status with Priority Club, so any upgrades would be great, although not very grand at low tier properties. I kept looking after nothing popped out at me.

Hilton HHonors

My long time standing with Hilton always leave them as an option when traveling, despite typically being a little more money. I also carry silver status with HHonors due to the American Express Hilton card, and have more points than ever due to the card. Although I have a problem getting a good night rest on their beds, the consistency of their properties always strikes a good balance with our family.

I was delighted to not only see a great selection of properties available, all under $100/night, but there is also a promotion going on, where I was able to stay 3 nights and get the fourth free.

So in the end, we pulled the plug and reserved with the Hampton Inn & Suites Williamsburg Historic District due to excellent rate/sale on a suite, free breakfast, great reviews, and close proximity to everything.

The moral of the story is not only will Thanksgiving travel be affordable again this year, but by shopping around our loyalty and finding the right sale, we were able to locate the best property for our family.

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