Last week I attended the Family Travel for Real Life (#FT4RL) conference, which was a great time. It’s organized by Dia the Deal Mommy over at Saverocity, and featured several speakers talking about their experiences with family travel. Even though it’s marketed (and is) a travel conference mostly focused on traveling with families, there was definitely a lot of information, even for those without kids.
don’t recall which blogger encouraged me to attend this conference despite not having a family, but whoever you are I am grateful ☺️ #FT4RL
— Whitney (@WhiskiBravo) March 8, 2015
- Live blogging the FT4RL conference (with intro)
- Bonnie the Frugal Travel Lawyer on "the new Frontier" (and Southwest and JetBlue and more)
- Leslie from Trips with Tykes on Mastering the International House of Mickey (Disney)
- Jason Steele - current events and sweet spots in miles and points
- Kenny from Miles4More - National Parks and destinations off the beaten path for families
- Shawn from Miles to Memories - immersive travel, family adventures, educational experiences, and ways to give back
- FT4RL Conclusion - what did you learn?
- My first 5 star hotel
I live-blogged the entire conference, and if you missed any of those posts, here they are:
- First speaker was Bonnie from Frugal Travel Law. She said that she’s an admitted “hotel geek” (and judging by the fact that she had literally the nicest room in the entire Hyatt House, I’m sure she has some huge status with Hyatt at least!), but her presentation focused on some of the lesser-known US Airlines, like Frontier, Southwest, Jet Blue and others.
- Following that was an amazing presentation from Leslie from Trips with Tykes. She talked about “hacking Disney“, which was relevant to me at least since we’re planning a trip to Disney next year. I feel like she gave us a ton of information about Disney but still only scratched the surface of how a true “Disney expert” would plan a trip. I’m excited!
- Jason Steele talked about the different strategies to get multiple award tickets when traveling together as a family. He also then talked about ways to save money when “on the ground”, including some great tips on rental cars.
- Kenny from Miles4More started off with some great info on some of the “off the beaten path” destinations he and his family have been to recently. But then I think he brought the house down with his talk about the Citi Executive card and the picture his son drew of Manufactured Spending (see below)
- Shawn from Miles to Memories finished things off with talk of immersive travel, education on the road, voluntourism and other ways to give back while you travel.
Manufactured Spending according to a 10 year old
Because FT4RL is a smaller conference (about 30 total people attended), it has a smaller feel – after the conference, just about everyone there went out to dinner together, and we then went back to Bonnie’s giant suite at the Hyatt House and just hung out and swapped stories. I had a blast and am definitely planning on coming back if/when there’s a new one
You might also be in the recap posts written by The Deal Mommy, Chasing the Points, Trips with Tykes, or the podcast that we all made at the after-party on Saturday night.
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
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