It was only a matter of time, and now the next chain has announced they are closing. Illuminations, a small chain owned by Yankee Candle which also sells candles is also going out of business, along with its website. It looks like the stores will all be closed by the end of April. As of now there hasn’t been any mention of when the website will close.

Right now, the Illuminations website has a lot going on. Everything is on sale, with many items 25% or 50% off.

Now through February 5th, you can book an Iberostar Resort and get up to $600 off per person.

Back in 2003, I stayed at an Iberostar in Puerto Plata, and really enjoyed it.

Travelzoo had a great offer in their newsletter on Wednesday. You can get airfare (from California) to Hawaii, plus 3-nights hotel for just $299.00 per person. Don’t live in California? That’s not a problem. Airfare is pretty cheap from almost anywhere in the country right now, so the whole trip shouldn’t cost too much.

It’s a nice way to get away from the cold and snow, and go somewhere warm and inviting.

Looking to plan a Walt Disney World Vacation? Back in November, I wrote about how Disney had a promotion going on where if you buy a package for 4-nights at Walt Disney World, you’ll get 3 free. A package includes both a hotel as well as Magic Your Way park tickets. Talk about a huge discount.  Well it’s still going on, and is still just as good.

You can book this anytime now through March 29th, 2009, and travel between now and June 26th, 2009.

It gets even better than that though. If you travel now through March 29th, you’ll also get a $200.00 Disney Gift Card.

You can also piggyback this deal with another one. For 2009 if you travel during your birthday, you can get free entrance into the parks on your birthday, or if you have a package, you’ll get a gift card equal to the amount of a 1-day park ticket. Considering how much a park ticket costs, that could get you a nice souvenir or birthday meal.

We’ve had a lot of people asking us how we did our Legoland trip last year, and how we saved so much money on our admission tickets…so I wanted to go over it and give more details on what we did, and what we got out of it.

When visiting theme parks, your costs can really add up. If you’re going to be visiting Legoland in California in the upcoming year, you’ve probably started looking online to see how you can save money on your tickets. Most likely, you found a coupon to get kids in for less. What would you say if you could get everyone in for less, plus get a lot of extra free stuff?

Last March, we went to Legoland, and before we went, we spent a lot of time online trying to figure out how to get the best price. We were very happy with the deal we found, and as we mentioned last year, this is how we did it.

On the LEGO website, you can get a 1-year LEGO Brickmasters Subscription.What does that include? It has 6 LEGO toys, mailed to your house. You get one every other month, so for an entire year you’ll get new fun LEGO toys to put together. You’ll also get 6 BrickMaster Edition LEGO Magazines, 2 LEGO shop at home coupons, and…the real reason you are doing this, a FREE LEGOLAND® California Admission Ticket.

Yes, it is completely free. I even called up before I ordered to check…and they did say that an adult could use the ticket as well. Now, if you notice, it says limit 1 per customer on the site. I had mentioned that I wanted to buy 2, and was told to go ahead, just do each one separately, and under our own names. The cost of everything above (which is also pictured below) is $39.99. This is less than the price of an adult ticket to the park (which is currently $63.00 per person), PLUS you get all of the other free stuff listed above. Not bad, right?

If you’re looking for a catch…you do need to figure this out a few months before your trip. You can’t order this the week of your trip and hope to get your ticket in time, it just won’t happen. But as long as your trip is still a little while away, you’re set.

Here is a picture showing you everything you’ll get over the next year. It’s great to be back from your amazing vacation, and still get LEGOS in the mail to put together! We just finished getting our 6th set of LEGOS, and we really enjoyed getting them and had a lot of fun putting them together. While this set is probably intended for kids, it’s great fun for adults too…plus you save even more money when using it for an adult ticket instead of a child. So if you get one for each member of the family, not only will you get to all go to the parks for less, but for an entire year you’ll be able to have fun making LEGOS together as a family. If we go back, we’d definitely do this again, and we’ve had fun telling others to do the same.

Walt Disney World has a great package that came out at the end of last week. It’s basically Buy 4 Get 3 Free, meaning that if you pay for a package of 4 nights at a Disney World hotel plus tickets, you’ll get a total of 7 nights hotel plus another 3 free days of theme park tickets.

This can be booked now, and you can travel now through June 27th. The thing is if you travel now through March 29th, you’ll also get a $200 Disney Gift Card.

If you’re wondering if this is a better deal than the August/September Free Dining plan like I was, it depends. The price of your package will vary now through June, so it depends on when you go. When free dining occurs (which there is no guarantee it will happen this year, although it has gone on for at least 4 years now), you have to pay full price for the rooms. Now through June, you’ll probably pay a lot less for the rooms, so it depends on when you’re going if it’s a better deal or not.

Also, if you have a birthday coming up in the first half of next year, remember that you will be able to get a free park ticket for your birthday – or if you are part of a package that includes tickets (like this package) they will give you a choice of a “birthday fun card” in the amount equal to a 1-Day pass, a special birthday fastpass, or a 1-day magic your way base ticket for use in the next year.

Here are two places you can price out a Walt Disney World vacation including your 3 free nights.

Now that it’s starting to get colder (Parts of NJ/NY even had snow yesterday!), you might be thinking about taking a vacation. The good news is, because of the economy, prices are a LOT lower than you might expect. The price of oil has gone down quite a bit, and since not many people are booking trips right now, companies are really giving great prices as an incentive to get you to travel.

Not sure that the prices are low? Take a look at a cruise that The Travelzoo TravelZoo had in their Top 20 email today. You can take a 7-night cruise on Norwegian Cruise Line to the Caribbean for just $234.00 per person, and that includes a $50 credit for once you’re on the ship! That’s just incredible. I’ve taken 2 Norwegian cruises before, and while I got a great deal, it was more than double $234.00 per person! You can even get a balcony for under $500 a person. It’s just crazy.

If that wasn’t enough, on American Airlines right now you can book a round-trip ticket to Hawaii starting at just $249. I tried it with airfare from NJ, and where it usually costs over $1,000 per person, going in November would cost just $436.00 per person plus taxes. Not bad right?

This is just a small sampling of the types of deals available now, and assuming nothing changes in the next few months, the deals will either stay as good, or get even better! So if you’re already sick of the cooler weather, it might be time to book that winter vacation, and not have to break the bank!

Looking to go to Disney World or Disneyland in the next few months (through the end of January)?

If so, you might want to take a look at Orbitz. Right now they have a deal where if you book through them, and stay at least 5-nights, you’ll get $150.00 off of your vacation. That’s pretty good, especially considering it can be hard to find discounts to Disney!

The code is ORBDISNEY150, and you’ll need to put that in before you do your search.

I will let you know, until you actually CLICK on a specific vacation, you won’t see the discounted price. When I saw the matrix-results that showed me all my different choices, it pointed out which hotels would give me the discount, so I assumed that the prices reflected the $150.00 off. It did not. Once I clicked on a hotel, it showed the lower price, so be sure you’re looking at the lower price!

I’m already planning on going next September, otherwise I might have taken a second look at this! Hope this helps someone who is planning a trip for the next 3 months. You have until November 23rd to book the trip, so you don’t have to rush too much.

When going on vacation, there is a good chance you’re going to do a lot of the attractions in the area. For example, if you’re going to Los Angeles, you might be going to Disneyland as well as Universal Studios. If you’re going to Toronto, you might be going to see the CN Tower, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Ontario Science Center, etc. Since this is the case, a few companies have come out with packages where you pay once, and get tickets to many of the attractions in a city at a great savings.

For example, when we were in Toronto, for one price, we got an entrance into the CN Tower, Royal Ontario Museum, Ontario Science Center, Casa Loma, the Hockey Hall of Fame, and the Toronto Zoo. It would have cost a lot more to buy tickets individually to each of these. This was known as the Toronto Citypass, and if you were going to at least 4 of the attractions, it made sense to buy the pass.  We had no intention of going to the Zoo as we didn’t have enough time, but since we were planning on going to 5 of them, it was still a savings for us to buy the pass.

Citypass is not the only one to offer such passes to different cities. There is also the Go Card which has similar passes for other cities. There are even some that are not part of a program, and just have a pass for one location, such as the Niagara Falls Adventure Pass, which included the Maid of the Mist, Journey Behind the Falls, White Water Walk, Butterfly Conservatory, and the People Mover Bus.

We did that one as well, although we skipped out on the White Water Walk due to lack of time.  We still saved money, and got to see everything we wanted to see.  It was also great since these count as tickets, so you don’t have to wait in line at each location…you can go right in!  So that was an extra little perk.

So if you’re going to a city that has a lot of well known attractions, first take a look to see if they have some sort of savings pass where you can pay once and get into many of the attractions.  You’ll be surprised at how much you can save.

When traveling to another country, you will have to convert your money one way or another. There are many options to doing so though, and the amount of money you save or lose can be huge.

You can convert it before you leave, or once you get there. You can also just use an ATM at your destination, and you’ll get money in the currency you’ll need while there. Another method is to use your credit card, and you won’t have to worry about physically changing your currency. Which is the best though?

While traveling to Canada last week, that was something that was on our mind. What I recommend is that before you leave, find out the different costs for each method. You might get a better exchange rate from one place than from another.  Plus, credit cards sometimes add fees.

Another thing to take into account is your own bank. It turns out that some banks have deals with bank chains in other countries, so that you can use them just like you would your own. So for example, when we used an ATM in Toronto, it was just like using our bank back home, and we didn’t get charged any fees.

What ended up being the best for us? Well, when we used the ATM, it automatically gave us Canadian money, and we didn’t get charged any fees at all, so that was the best. When we used our credit cards, we got charged about a 3% fee each time. So for us, it was best to pay cash for as much as we could

It’s definitely something to check out before you leave though, as you can end up spending a lot more money than you originally thought if you have to pay a fee or don’t get as great of an exchange rate.