Annual Passes While Traveling

While in Fort Myers the end of January, we visited a favorite spot of ours, the Ford and Edison Winter Estate. As native Floridians, we’ve been several times and always enjoy it. On this visit, we decided to get an annual pass. We love exploring all of Edison’s inventions, Ford’s cars, and the grounds are beautifully landscaped.

We always keep our State and National Parks passes active, but try to add other options, too. We’ve had passes to many places over the years (yep, Disney, too!) , and in RV life, we have found it helps us get more bang for our buck.

We had zoo passes our first year traveling and loved getting to visit zoos and aquariums that are AZA members, and taking advantage of membership discounts for additional experiences, like a tree walk zip line we once found. We thought about that for this year, but our 13YO isn’t as excited about those as he used to be.

Not only do we get to come to this location, but there are so many more all over the country! Before purchasing, we went online to see who all they had reciprocity with and found many gardens and museums on our wish list for this year’s travels. Places like Bok Tower Gardens and Lew Gardens in central Florida, Sunken Gardens, The Holocaust Museum and The Salvador Dali Museum in the Tampa Area, the Hershey Museum in Pennsylvania and so many more! This is also a great way for us to supplement our son’s education–he learns so much better through experiences and hands on learning than textbooks and lectures!

With reciprocity, some places allow free admission as though you were a local member, others it may be only a 50% discount. But for a family pass at $110, after 3 trips we are already saving money.

So what kind of places are on your annual pass wish list? And what are some other museums and gardens we should add to our list around the country this year?