We have decided to travel during the Off Season for these reasons:
Reduced Crowds
Comfortable Weather
Reduced Rates (these are significant, especially for airfare from the US)
The reduced crowds made a big difference to us. If we wanted to fight crowds we'd just go to Disney World it would cost us a fraction of this trip and we could use Express Passes (well, maybe with the cost of Disney ticket prices these days you never know). From what I understand this is a great time for reduce crowds.
Comfortable weather....well we're from Florida so anything not HOT will be comfortable. We understand the rain can be a bit unpredictable but we'll take our chances for alittle cool weather.
Reduced Rates were the number one reason we went ahead with this trip. We purchased two round trip tickets out of Orlando for $1500 (flying into London and out of Rome). I suppose they have to make up for the lack of people traveling due to the very high exchange rate and maybe this is how. We had friends who traveled during Season in Italy and paid $1100 to $1300 for ONE ROUNDTRIP TICKET. WOW!
These are our reasons for traveling in the off-season. If these are 3 factors that you are able to accept this is a great time to travel. From what I hear Paris in Fall is AMAZING!
