The reason a lot of families now plan Thanksgiving around Lakeland instead of the coast is simple: the coast is a parking lot by 10 a.m., and Lakeland is a lake by 8. Same holiday, completely different experience.
Four days of no schedule. A house instead of a hotel room, which means a kitchen, a yard, a dock, and a place for the kids to actually move. And a town that is not performing its holiday for a tourist audience. You are not in a line for a beach chair, you are on a dock in 70-degree air.
The food is the obvious one. Cook the meal at home, in a kitchen that is actually a kitchen, and you spend the day instead of the afternoon. The houses we manage all have full kitchens, and that is not a small thing on the one day a year the kitchen matters.
Day one is the meal. Day two is Bonnet Springs Park, a 168-acre park with live oak trails, a spring-fed creek, and a canopy trail. A whole morning and part of an afternoon, free. Day three is the lake, a slow boat morning and an early dinner. Day four is coffee at Black & Brew and a loaf from Born & Bread before you fly out.
That is the whole week, and none of it is crowded.
If your family includes a golfer, Thanksgiving week is the middle of the Polk County golf off-season. The Club at Eaglebrooke, a four-and-a-half-star Ron Garl links design, has tee times that you can actually get. An early morning round before the family gathers is the move.
The local tip: book the week, not the weekend. The rate for a full seven-day stay in November is almost always better than a three-day one, and the extra days are the best part.
Send us your dates and your group size and we will match you to a house. We manage seven of them and we will tell you honestly which one fits a Thanksgiving week best.