You guys are going on a Gold Coast family holiday? Why don’t you just go overseas…it is just as cheap. It’s too expensive to holiday in Australia.
There were so many people telling us we were mad to even consider a holiday in Australia, especially a Gold Coast family holiday. As some of you may know Marley has had this as her bucket list destination for so many years that even though so many people said we were mad it was a place we had to do. It was also a promise that I made to my mum before she passed away that if we planned on long-term travel we had to take the girls before we went.
But I must admit I was amazed at most people’s reactions to our Gold Coast holiday plans. So I set out to make sure we could prove to our friends that you could have an amazing, affordable, holiday right here in Australia…and on the Gold Coast. One friend told me if I could get away with it for under $5000 I was doing well…I had to recover from the shock. $5000 for 8 days, was this a joke? My mind was made up…I was going to do the lot AND for plenty less than that.
Gold Coast family holiday – Accommodation
There are so many accommodation options on the Gold Coast for your family holiday. You can stay in a hotel or you can have nights at a self-contained apartment, there are so many different Gold Coast deals. Whatever you do choose it should be best suited for you. We choose to rent an apartment for the week that we were there as there were so many options for us to do things close to the city but we had also hired a car so we wanted a place for it to be parked safely. We searched for a long time to find the best Gold Coast accommodation specials for us and our needs.
For 8 nights we paid $898 for a 2-bedroom apartment.
- Meters from the beach (one road was all we had to cross and we were there)
- Fully self-contained with laundry as well.
- Undercover and secure parking
- Indoor and outdoor pool
- Sauna
- Bbq facilities
- Free wifi
- Short walk to the centre of town
The apartment was fantastic for us. The girls had a single bed each so they were happy that they were not sharing a double bed. The balcony was absolutely fantastic to sit out at night and even in the morning to listen to the waves rolling in. We all ended up out there throughout the day. Marley even slept on the couch for the last few nights to listen to the waves; I can tell you it is a highlight of her Gold Coast family holiday. The big sliding doors made it seem like the beach was in our lounge room even though we were 9 storey’s up.
We were even able to hire beach towels from the desk downstairs for the week we were there. This was fantastic as we were considering taking some with us or having to buy them when we got there.
There was some laundry powder already in our apartment for the first load so I had enough time to shop before having to do a load of washing.
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We stayed at the Seacrest Apartments in Surfers Paradise.
These fully self-contained apartments had 2 bedrooms, cooking and laundry facilities. Balconies overlooking the beach. A pool, spa, sauna, tennis court and bbq area onsite for you to use. The Seacrest is central to many things to do on the Gold Coast. We enjoyed our stay and would certainly stay at the Seacrest again.
For more information and prices at the Seacrest see here![/box]
Gold Coast Family Holiday – Food
There are all the big supermarkets close to the city centre. We shop normally at Woolies so we went there as much as we could. It was an easy walk there after dinner to get supplies for the next day. I must admit though I was not too keen on cooking after a huge day of site-seeing so most of the time we ate out for dinner.
On our first night, we bought a few supplies for the week.
Bread: $2.00 Milk: $2.00 2L
Coffee: $4.60 Butter: $2.00
Nutella: $3.75 Savoys: $4.00 (2 boxes)
Rice Crackers: $3.96 (4pkts @ .99cents ea) Yogurt: $4.50 (6 @ .75 cents ea)
Pringles: $6.00 (3 tubes @ $2.00 ea) Chips: $3.28 (2 pkts @ $1.64 ea)
Water: $3.00 (3 1L bottles @ .99cents ea) Muesli Bars: $1.99 (1 pkt of 6)
I also bought some bananas, grapes, apples and nectarines.
Food Tips:
- I bought a green bag and put the snacks in a bag to keep in the boot of the car so I wouldn’t forget them.
- There were sugar packets in our apartment so we did not have to worry about buying sugar for our coffee
- If you have a freezer at your apartment you can do one shop and then keep it in there
- I didn’t see an Aldi Supermarket close in town but there was one out of the city
- Convenience stores are everywhere but they are crazy expensive
Our first night we ate at Fiddlers Green and it was fantastic. They had a great menu and deals on for most of the nights there. It happened to be a Tuesday when we ate there so kids ate free with a full-price adult meal. They also had a cheap steak night!
Due to the Gold Coast being a high tourist spot look out for deals that restaurants have. They may have early bird specials or a meal of the week. We found because we ate earlier with the girls there were specials on most nights that we ate in the city. Just make sure there is something for everyone!
We did not pay over $20 each for an adult-sized, main meal on any of the nights we were there. We looked around for the best places with the best deals.
Gold Coast Theme Parks
Saving money on the Gold Coast theme parks was one way to cut costs. They are so expensive and there are so many sites that offer Gold Coast theme park packages. But which one will give you the best Gold Coast deals?
Tickets
We decided to get our tickets from our local RACV shop before we went on our Gold Coast family holiday. They have a discounted rate if you book them and you are a member. There are two options for you if you plan on going to all of the Gold Coast theme parks (otherwise you can purchase individual park passes):
- 3-day theme park pass
- 7-day theme park pass
Theme Park Tip:
- We decided to purchase the 7 day theme park pass as we had 8 days to do activities on our Gold Coast family holiday and we thought that if we liked a park we could return if a day freed up while we were there.
- Having the 7 day theme park pass also allowed us a fair amount of freedom as to when we attended the theme parks. We did not have to do them all close together.
- Because we got the 7 day theme park pass if the weather was bad on one day it didn’t matter at all.
- If you are not an RACV member you can also check out Groupon or Webjet for Gold Coast deals they may be having on entry prices. We know a lot of people that have saved a huge amount of money just by knowing when they are going and keeping an eye out for Gold Coast theme park deals.
Food
Food is expensive in theme parks. If you can take your own then that is a brilliant idea. To be honest there were a heap of families that took their own food to all the theme parks that we saw. There are lockers that you can store your items in and also areas that if you are lucky enough to snag a spot you can leave it there. We did have one spot at Wet ‘n’ Wild where we left our towels and our bag with snacks while we had a go on some of the rides but we had hired a locker for our valuables.
*We do not recommend that you leave any valuable items in any of the bags if you plan on doing this. There are lockers to leave your valuables in and we highly recommend hiring one.
Food Prices in the theme parks:
In the theme parks you can get:
- Family meal deal for $54.99. (This was either 4 burgers with chips and a drink each or 4 small pizzas, garlic bread and 4 small drinks.)
- Individual meals like fish and chips, burger and chips or hot dogs and chips sometimes came with a drink. These started at around $12.99 each.
- There were sandwiches and salads and I think they started at around $5.99 each
- There are vegetarian options but I am unsure about vegan options.
Drink Saver Tip:
We found the days to be really hot when we were there and bottle of drink did not last very long. Frozen bottles were really heavy for me to carry around in my handbag or lunch bag for a long time too. Buying a cold drink for us all 2 or more times during a visit seemed crazy to me so we purchased a refillable drink. It was $13.99 and it came filled with a frozen coke on the first fill (there are other flavours) We could go up and re-fill it at certain points all around the park on that day. At the other parks we paid $8 to re-activate the drink bottle and we could again get unlimited refills. This was fantastic in a hot day and as we only bought one for us all to share it was brilliant value for money. It is one of the best Gold Coast theme park deals we saw. At one point as I thought we had had enough soft drink and I just f