Thursday, February 28, 2008 5:06 PM CST
Disney World most popular spring break destination for families; college students seek out Mexico locales
By NATHANIEL WEST, Staff Writer
nwest@jg-tc.com
It’s a small world of spring break destinations after all.
While Mexico remains the preferred locale for collegiate spring breakers, vacationing families are flocking to Walt Disney World Resort like mice to a depressed princess.
Local travel agents report record interest in packages to the Orlando, Fla., theme park.
“Oh my gosh, it’s amazing,” said Kelli Inboden, owner of Arrow Travel in Charleston. “I’ve just done gobs and gobs of Disney World for families.”
As for the college kids, Puerto Vallarta, Cancun and Acapulco are still kings of the spring break hill, although students on a budget are opting for domestic spots such as South Padre Island in Texas and Panama City and Daytona Beach in Florida, said Karen Taylor, agent with Cross County Travel Agency in Mattoon.
Locally, it’s tough to pin down exactly which destinations stateside are most popular, as area travel agents said the business of domestic spring break planning instead is gravitating toward companies that cater to the party crowd.
Unless, of course, the student’s parents are paying for the spring break excursion and demand the intervention of a travel agent, said Inboden.
Students “get it cheaper from different companies that advertise on campuses,” she said. “I don’t have a lot of domestic destinations that give me good spring break packages.”
That said, Arrow Travel still has lined up about 15 spring break packages to Puerto Vallarta and one to Cancun for Eastern Illinois University students in Charleston, according to Inboden.
But the vast majority of her spring break work — about 25 packages as of this week — is devoted to families headed for Disney World. Why?
“Maybe children are hitting an age where their parents are taking them to Disney, like a Baby Boom,” Inboden speculated.
Taylor concurred that Disney World is more sought after than ever by families this spring. The agency has booked between 75 to 100 trips to Orlando.
“A day doesn’t go by that we’re not working on a Disney package,” Taylor said.
She wondered if a deluge of television advertising for Disney World is “driving a lot of people” that direction, she said.
And Cross County Travel also is handling a fair share of college students, about 60 percent of whom are headed for Mexico — Cancun in particular, where the drinking age is only 18, Taylor said.
Interestingly, she added, “quite a few” families have expressed an interest in Cancun as well, albeit a safe distance from the college spring break crowd.
Taylor said most college students begin talking about Mexican destinations and then work their way down.
“If it doesn’t fit their budget, then they go, ‘Well how about Florida?’” she said.
Contact Nathaniel West at nwest@jg-tc.com or 238-6860.
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