Fantastic news for Disney fans: It's suddenly become much more affordable to book an Adventures by Disney all-inclusive escorted tour package, the most exclusive and perhaps least-known way to vacation with Disney. Launched in 2005, Adventures by Disney offers guided, VIP-style tours for families to a wide range of destinations, including the American Southwest, Europe, China, and Costa Rica. Trips are known for delivering top-notch service and unique, VIP-style experiences for families, such as zipling through a Costa Rican jungle, pizza-making at a family-owned farm in Italy, or going backstage at Disney's The Lion King in London. Groups are kept small to ensure an intimate experience, and feature activities geared to adults and kids 8 and up.  And the price? A family of four will typically splurge $13,000 or more for a dream trip.

Want to soften the splurge? Adventures by Disney has just introduced a new line of itineraries, called the "Gateway Collection," that travel to three of the most popular destinations but cost up to 25% less. Here's how these new itineraries stack up:

• Costa Rica: The "Path to Pura Vida" itinerary costs from $3,309 to $4,409 for adults and $2,979 to $3,669 for children, depending on travel dates. Comparatively, the new "Gateway to Costa Rica" costs $2,489 for adults and $2,239 for children regardless of travel dates. Bottom line: A family of four would pay at least $3,201, or 25%, less for the Gateway itinerary.
• London/Paris: The "City of Knights & Lights" itinerary costs from $3,809 to $4,699 for adults and from $3,429 to $4,249 for children. The new "Gateway to London/Paris" comes in at $2,959 for adults and $2,659 for children. Bottom line: A family of four would pay at least $3,240, or 22%, less by going with the Gateway option.  
  
• Italy: The "Viva Italia" itinerary ranges from $3,699 to $4,619 for adults and from $3,329 to $4,159 for children. Comparatively, the "Gateway to Italy" trip costs $2,999 for adults and $2,699 for children. That's a difference of $2,660, or 18%, for a family of four.

Why the difference in price? Guests have more unscheduled time during the day, which is great for families that welcome less structure and the chance to spend some time exploring on their own. The good news is that the Gateway trips still offer access to the one-of-a-kind activities for which Adventures by Disney is known. The price difference between the two kinds of itineraries ranges from just under $1,000 to over $1,500 for each traveler, depending on travel dates. 

The first Gateway itineraries depart this summer from June to August, 2010.

This winter is turning out to be a great time for a weekend getaway, thanks to big sales at two of the largest hotel chains. Last week we posted about Hilton's mega January sale, which offers winter weekend savings of up to 33% across its chains. 

Now Marriott has stepped up to the plate with a  Global Rate Break promo that lets you save 20% on weekend rates stay at many of its hotels—and claims to up the ante to a 40% discount at a few resorts. The deal applies to various Marriott, JW Marriott, Renaissance, Courtyard, Fairfield, SpringHill, Residence Inn, and TownPlace Suites hotels all over the world. 

We checked rates at several properties and found that, indeed, the deal typically delivers a 20% price cut. At Desert Springs, the JW Marriott in the Palm Springs area with requisite pool, lawn games and kids club, we found rates of $327 a night for a room with two beds and a balcony—down from the desert’s high season rate of $409. In Hawaii, the deal offered up the Kauai Marriott  for just $194 a night, down from $240.

But don’t get your hopes too high on the 40%-off lure that's said to be available at select resorts in the Caribbean, Latin America and Hawaii. When we test-booked a stay at a handful of properties for a February weekend getaway, we couldn’t find any availability at the 40%-off rate.  More commonly, we found that this deal led to a 20% discount.

The sale applies to weekend stays (Thursday to Sunday), and some hotels require a two-night minimum. You must book by January 22 and complete your stay by March 21. Use promo code F5X when booking online.

This sale delivers tons of weekend destination options for traveling families. Want a city break? Consider Hilton properties in San Diego (the Hilton San Diego Resort & Spa is just one mile from SeaWorld), Boston’s super-convenient Back Bay neighborhood, or the family-friendly Doubletree Guest Suites in Washington DC. 

Hoping to escape the cold? At the Hilton Longboat Key Beachfront Resort, the January Sale offers nightly rates starting at $288 for a double room on February weekend.  By comparison, the resort's best available bed-and-breakfast rate for that stay is $429 per night—which does indeed translate to 33% off your bill.

You must book before January 31, but you can travel anytime before December 26. As always, there are some blackout dates and other restrictions. The sale rates are pre-payable and non-refundable, so you should be confident of your travel dates before booking.  

Compare prices and dates at various properties carefully. Plenty of hotels have blackout dates. At some hotels, this deal is only available through January 18, while other hotels are keeping it on the table for stays as late as April 25.

To get this deal, you must book by November 10. Use the promo code LTNOVN when booking online, or mention the deal when calling 888/625-5144. Rates are pre-paid and non-refundable. 

Little more than a decade ago, taking a Disney vacation meant heading to a theme park in Orlando, Anaheim or Paris. But nowadays, the company that Walt built can show you the world. You can sail with Disney Cruise Line to Alaska, the Bahamas, Europe or even the Panama Canal. Or take a VIP-style guided tour of the American Southwest, Europe, China, or Costa Rica with  Adventures by Disney, all-inclusive vacations known for delivering one-of-a-kind experiences such as zipling through a Costa Rican jungle, pizza-making at a family-owned farm in Italy, or going backstage at Disney's The Lion King in London. 

Right now, families have an exceptional opportunity to snag two premium Disney vacations for the price of one. Book a tour to one of Adventures by Disney's most popular destinations and you'll receive a free three-night Disney Cruise to the Bahamas in an oceanview cabin. To take advantage of the offer, you need to book by January 15, 2010, and take your Adventures by Disney tour by October 2, 2010. You can take your cruise between January, 2010, and December 15, 2011.

More on Disney Cruise Line:
Disney 3-night Cruise to the Bahamas

Waiting for a good deal on a family cruise? Consider Norwegian Cruise Line, whose  NOW sale runs through Friday, September 18. The sale offers ballpark savings of about 20% off regular rates on three- to 29-day sailings through April 30, 2010. Sample pricing includes:

•  7-day Hawaii interisland cruise on Pride of America, roundtrip from Honolulu, starting at $799 per person (regularly $999)
• 4-day Bahamas sailing on Norwegian Sky roundtrip from Miami from $159 (regularly $199)
  
•  7-day Bermuda sailing on Norwegian Dawn roundtrip from New York from $499 (regularly $579)
  

Those are decent savings, but the best—and most family-friendly— part of this sale kicks in when you bring not only the kids but grandparents or other friends or family members.  The NOW sale offers discounts of as much as 60% for the third through eighth berths. For instance, Grandma can sail to the Bahamas for $99 (down from an already great starting rate of $129), the Caribbean from $129 (down from $319) or Europe from $299 (down from $499).

The NOW sale also chops the required deposit in half and gives you up to $250 in onboard spending credit, which can be used for shore excursions, spa treatments, fitness classes, or even gift-shop purchases or casino chips. The amount of your credit is based on the length of your cruise and cabin category. (Reality check: With an inside stateroom on an itinerary of five days or less, you might get only $15.)

Book online or call 866/234-7350 and use promo code PGNOW. The sale does not apply to one- or two-day sailings.

Sometimes you don't know exactly where to head on your next family vacation, only that you absolutely, positively want to play on a beach. Or hike in the mountains. Or be within striking distance of some first-rate golf courses. That's a perfect time to check out Deal Finder, a tool from the smart folks at FareCompare.com. Deal Finder helps you find cheap flights from your home airport to destinations based on your interests.

The upside: This tool reminded us in some ways of Airfarewatchdog.com, one of our all-time favorite fare-finding sites, in that both sites suggest destinations you might not have otherwise considered based on flight prices from your home airport. But while Airfarewatchdog.com simply pumps out a roster of airfares to a list of cities, Deal Finder goes one step further. After plugging in your departure airport, you click on a category, such as "Family Fun Destinations" or "The Great Outdoors," and Deal Finder generates anywhere from 15 to 30 filtered suggestions, ranked in order of airfare price, from least expensive to most expensive.

The downside: When we tested Deal Finder, the results tended to focus on major destinations without any surprises, and in some categories we thought the cities were too skewed toward regional pockets. (In comparison, one of the aspects we love most about Airfarewatchdog.com is that it pulls a wide variety of off-beat destinations and smaller-sized airports into the mix.) With Deal Finder, the roster of "Family Fun Destinations" was a mixed bag of all the big-name usual suspects, with everything from Orlando to Cody, Wyoming, to San Diego. (Read: Fun but expected.) Inexplicably, the "Great Outdoors" category steered us firmly west (Colorado, Montana, New Mexico), while seemingly dismissing the myriad natural beauty spots east of the Rockies that were closer (with presumably less-expensive airfare) to the New York-based departure airport we were using in our test.

Verdict: Deal Finder is a solid addition to your arsenal of money-saving travel tools. It's intuitive and fast and we love that it churns out solid destination ideas while making it a snap to gauge and compare airfares to different cities. While it's not likely to give you any out-of-the-box suggestions, it can surely play a useful part in your travel-planning process.

Note: If you have yet to discover FareCompare.com, take some time to explore it. The site is a gold mine of helpful information about flying and advice on how to find great deals.

Are you skeptical about opaque travel sites on which you book a hotel without knowing its name upfront? That kind of blind adventure can give some travelers pause, and yet a $10 rate is pretty compelling.

LastMinuteTravel.com has introduced a $10 Tuesday feature that offers "undercover hotels" for crazy-low rates. The first catch: As on all opaque sites, you don't find out the name of the hotel until after you've already booked it. Before then, you're given descriptions of the hotel's size, amenities, and location. Meanwhile, the $10 rate is only good for a handful of dates and, when we looked, on a fairly short list of places. The second catch: You can't book just one night at $10. You have to book a second, more expensive night, too.

Still, when we checked out the page recently, we were intrigued to see listings for Vegas, Montreal, and New Orleans.  So we tested the booking engine to see how far we could get in learning about the  "4.5 star hotel in New Orleans" without actually booking it. One hotel was .2 miles from the French Quarter, two miles from the Garden District, and featured a gym, restaurant, and outdoor pool. The clincher: a three night-stay (including two of the $10 nights) came to a staggering, almost suspicious $84 total. So how good (or bad) could it be?

We coudn't resist the temptation, and went ahead and booked. Turns out, the mystery hotel was none other than the Hotel Intercontinental on St. Charles Avenue—which, for the same dates we checked, would normally start at $109 a night. So our adventure turned out way, way better than we imagined—and we will be back on Tuesdays to come.

It’s scary enough to think about getting separated from your child at a crowded theme park or beach—and terrifying to consider that your young child might not be able to offer your contact information to a police officer or helpful stranger.

Safety Tats offers a solution: Not so much a tattoo as a super-strong band-aid-style sticker on which you can write on before applying to your child's arm or leg. A mom of three came up with the idea while shepherding her own kids through an amusement park, writing (and then re-writing, when it smeared) her phone number on their arms in case anyone should get lost.

The brightly colored stickers  feature a classic line—for instance, “If Lost Please Call” with space for your cell phone number. They are decorated with gender-friendly icons such as flowers or lizards, and there's a skull-and-crossbones sticker for aesthetically-finicky tweens. Another series specifies allergies or special needs.

We tried out Safety Tats on our 4-year-old, who wears her band-aids with the same pride that bikers show off real tattoos. She particularly liked the "If Lost" flowers. And, for better or worse, that “tat” stuck on her skin well. It may have elicited a brief ow-ee moment when it came off, but we were glad that it didn’t shrivel away on its own—you probably wouldn’t need to apply a new one every day of a trip. We even soaked a written-on sticker in the sink for a few hours, and its ink never smeared.

Best for: ages 1 to 9

Retail price: A box of 30 tats costs $19.85. The stickers are available at some retail stores and in many AAA branches—and you can also buy them online.

Exclusive offer: Safety Tat is offering WeJustGotBack.com readers a 15% discount on any online order of $15 or more. Use promo code WeJustGotBack (which is case sensitive and must be typed exactly as seen). The code will expire on July 31.