My favorite time of the summer is traveling to the shore for our family vacation. I love watching the kids play in the ocean, ride the tram car, play games at Mariners Arcade and hit the rides after dinner but over the years, it has become so expensive. The expense, both financial and emotional, of it seems equivalent to a trip to Disney! To help combat some of those expenses, I've searched out ways to save without giving up the things we love!
Buy Wristbands
Morey's Piers are no longer offering wrist bands on the piers but did you know you can buy them through your AAA membership? For $49 you can purchase a wrist band from AAA. If you are not a AAA member, check out your local park and recreations departments. They will often have discounted tickets to sell as well that are way less expensive than buying on the boardwalk.
Have Groceries Delivered
One good thing that come from Covid this year was that I learned about grocery delivery. It has been a game changer for me. We started having groceries delivered out of an abundance of caution but we now use it simply because it's super convenient. Instead of loading up the car with bags and coolers full of groceries and letting them sit in the car until check in was available, we now put our order in with Walmart a week a head of time, schedule a time slot around 5-6pm so that we know for sure we'll be in our unit, and then that's it. If you are interested in saving yourself the stress of buying the groceries ahead of time, packing them in the car, unpacking them into the unit - then check out Walmart grocery delivery. You will get $10 off your first order too!
Make Reservations
This year many hotels and condo's are sold out which means there are a lot of people at the shore this summer! Everyone is so excited to return to normalcy but unfortunately not all of the restaurants are fully staffed which is leading to excessively long wait times. For us that is a challenge - my kids get hangry, I get hangry (yes, my poor husband -lol) so we decided for sanity sake that we were going to make reservations where we could. For our favorites restaurants that didn't accept reservations (and we couldn't go a full week without eating at), we've decided to just go earlier, say around 4pm for dinner before the crowds show up. If you are now thinking, "well what restaurants take reservations and which do not", check out our website for a list of family friendly restaurants where we have noted all of them that accept reservations.