Adding the beach to our Disney vacation

[ScottyP]

I wonder if any of you can offer some advice...
We are planning to take our family down to Disney in August 2007 (Aug.26 to Sept3.) and we are staying at the AKL. We would like to spend a couple of days at the beach before hand, and I am in the middle of researching some hotels online. We would prefer the St.Petes area, but we are also open to the Atlantic side. Any suggestions of where to stay with out 6 yr & 4yr old daughter, and 1 year old son? We just want a clean, comfortable hotel on the beach. We had a bad experience with bugs and mildew at a very dated hotel in Clearwater a couple years ago, and would very much like to avoid that again.

[Bruegge]

We have family just south of Tampa so when we go to disney we stop (afterwards) to wind down and see the beach and visit the fam.

We stay at Tradewinds on St. Pete Beach. It's a resort and has two buildings on the strip... We like the Island Grand best .. Sorry it's not cheap or basic ... but after leaving Disney it's a great place to relax

It's worth a look

Scott

[Christine]

We drove down a few years back, and stopped at Destin for 3 days before going on to Orlando. We loved it and found it very family friendly and clean. We stayed at the Sheratin on the beach. Don't know if that is further out than you were wanting to go, or if it is in you path, but thought I'd throw it out there.

[c&d]

May I suggest Disney's Vero Beach resort. It's Disney without the theme parks. We went down a couple of years ago and loved it. The campfire with s'mores. They also had a great kids program.

[murphy1]

Hi, I'm from St. Pete (live in GA now) I know they have remodeled the Sirata and the Alden recently, Tradewinds is great, my friends and I got a couple rooms there a few years ago. Passagrille is right next to St. Pete and has some cute inns right on the beach, too. You might want to look into the condos that are owned by the Don Cesar, they are a little less than the rooms at the Don, but that is the most expensive hotel in that vicinity (we had HS stuff there and a couple of my friends got married there) Make sure to go over and check out Ft. DeSoto around the corner, they have a big fort and great beaches and you will feel like you're in Pirates of the Carribbean.

[BashfulMom]

I would highly recommend the St. Augustine area. It is a wonderful area.

[missouridisney]

When we combine beach and Disney we always go to Daytona, we love that area, can't recommend a hotel we have stayed at several, but the one that was our favorite and we stayed at a lot was destroyed by the hurricane.

[mudpuppysmom]

We sometimes mix Disney and the beach. Daytona is our beach of choice because I really like it there AND we have family in Port Orange (right across the bridge basically).

I can say that I have heard good things about the Hilton, but we usually stay with our family there, so I can't say with certainty how any of the hotels are -- but we usually play out in front of the Shores or the Daytona Beach Club......they look like they are pretty decent from the beach.

I will say that weekends are usually a bit more crowded in the summer there as the local "kids" come out and hang out, but really it's not like going to the mall on a Friday night!!

One more cool thing about Daytona -- you can drive on the beach there if you choose to do so.....I quit doing that a few years back when it was $9 per day to do so.....now we park at a public access area and walk down the steps.