Where Long Islanders are going this holiday season, according to travel agents 

Which destinations are Long Islanders are longing to visit over Christmas and New Year’s? The holidays fall mid-week this year, giving would-be travelers an extra cushion of time for an extended vacation.  

"People are just anxious to travel and see the world, and they’re going for it despite the airfares," said travel agent Mellissa Perkins, of Garden City’s ET Family Travel. "They’re especially interested in everything from Costa Rica and Belize to the Caribbean and Europe." 

Travel agent Lindsay Margolis said she has clients going to Paris and London, and she is also seeing a lot of interest in all-inclusive getaways for families.

"Cruises continue to be super hot, especially over that holiday weekend," said Margolis, of Bellmore.

Disney World and Universal in Orlando remain perennial favorites, the pair agreed, but the rest of Florida is increasingly affordable and within reach as well, especially now that the four airlines leaving from Islip’s MacArthur airport fly nonstop to seven — and soon eight — destinations in the Sunshine State. Even more affordable — for those with larger families and a late-model vehicle, that is — is a trip on the I-95 Express, a drive that can take anywhere from 15 hours (Elmont to Jacksonville, say) to 24 (Montauk to Key West). "Some people just prefer it," Perkins said. "We have lots of clients who drive down and just need hotels."

With the window for planning holiday travel rapidly closing, here is a deep dive on ET Family’s most popular destinations.

And as moms who are travel agents, they’re big on gifting kids with holiday trips. "Travel memories are the best kind of memories," Perkins said. "My kids don’t even remember what gifts they got for Hanukkah last year, but they’ll never forget the trip to Florida."

London

If a British Isles holiday is your dream, wait until January, when fares for nonstop flights from New York airports will be as low as $400 round-trip. On the other hand, if nothing less than a Christmas out of Dickens will do, flights across the pond over that period currently start at $800, although with multiple stops. New hotels in the famously pricey city run the gamut from expensive to second mortgage, which is to say from the Hyatt Place London City East (280 rooms, twin beds, $200 a night) to the Mandarin Oriental Mayfair (50 rooms, hand-painted wallpaper, $1,300 a night). Reasonably priced new restaurants include Goldies  in Soho (named for its pilgrimage-level fries), while the special-occasion crowd will thrill to the French cuisine at Cornus in Belgravia. As for sites, Windsor is worth a train trip if only for its Castle bedecked in Christmas finery, while Warner Bros. Studios’ behind-the-scenes Harry Potter tour celebrates the holidays with a Tannenbaum-lined Great Hall and flaming Christmas puddings. As for New Year’s, London’s spectacular fireworks show is a tickets-only event, all the more reason to view the colorful bursts in the air from a dinner cruise on the Thames.

Paris

Still basking in the afterglow of its gold-medal staging of the Summer Olympics, Paris should be marginally quieter at Christmas, and while flights there will also be cheaper in January ($273 nonstop on French Bee round-trip from Newark), $800-$900 fares can still be found over the holiday. New hotels to target include the chic Le Grand Mazarin in the Marais (61 rooms, canopy beds, $600 a night) and the funky Walled off Paris Hotel near the Gare du Nord (21 rooms, Banksy street art, $186 a night). Gastronomically speaking, get there early before they sell out of $17 cheeseburgers at Ferdi on the Right Bank (an alleged Kardashian favorite), while on the left, there’s Ambos, a hot European-Thai bistro near the Luxembourg Gardens. Don’t miss the Tuileries Gardens Christmas Market, featuring rides, foods and a Champagne hut, the over-1 million lights holiday display on the Champs Elysees, or — especially — the landmark Surrealism exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou. The museum, a temple of contemporary art and an architectural marvel will close for five years for renovations starting in 2025.

Cruises

When it comes to holidays on the high seas, "we know which lines are good for families, and which aren’t," said Margolis, adding that agents also often hear about deals that the public doesn’t. Four major lines offer cruises leaving from the metropolitan area during Christmastime. Dec. 22 and 29th sailings on Royal Caribbean’s Odyssey of the Seas — a ship whose amenities include bumper cars, roller skating and a skydiving simulator — start at $1,364 a person double occupancy for a seven-night cruise, leave from Cape Liberty in Bayonne, New Jersey, and visit the Bahamas and Florida. (Note: It’s $500 cheaper if you can leave on Dec. 15.) MSC Meraviglia’s seven-night journeys, which leave from the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal on the same dates and also visit Florida and the Bahamas, start at $930 night per person. A Christmastime 10-night sailing on the NCL Prima, which leaves from the Manhattan Cruise Terminal and travels to St. Thomas, the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean hot spots, starts at $1,082 a person for an inside cabin. And prices for a 13-night cruise on Cunard’s Queen Mary 2, which leaves from the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal on Dec. 21, start at $2,199 a person. As for river cruising? Well, you’ll have to wait for winter to end, at least if you want to leave from a nearby port.

Caribbean

Before trading Currier and Ives for turquoise seas, you should know that deals to the tropics are few and far between this time of year, although reasonable flights are still available for destinations like Bermuda ($428 on Delta). There, spend Christmas Day with the locals raising a glass of Champagne at sunrise at Elbow Beach, and New Year’s Eve in the town of St. George, where a giant onion drops at midnight. The next cheapest on the list is the Bahamas ($581 to Nassau on Delta), where Christmas Day often means music, dancing and dishes of souse, a variation on chicken noodle soup. In Grand Cayman ($617 on Air Canada) Christmas Central is around the tree at Canama Bay, or at gingerbread house classes at the Ritz-Carlton, while New Year’s Eve is for fireworks over Seven Mile Beach. A final place where deals can crop up is the Turks and the Caicos ($630 on American), where the resorts at Grace Bay Beach compete to out-decorate each other (and where there are fireworks on New Year's Eve), and one of the biggest celebrations of the year is on Dec. 26. It’s called Maskanoo, and it features a masquerade parade, festival and lots of junkanoo music.

Central America and Mexico

Flights to Belize City can be bargain-priced in early December ($287 on JetBlue), although you should expect to pay three times as much to visit during peak holiday times and enjoy Belizean traditions like burnt molasses Christmas cake and rum popo, a local take on eggnog. They decorate cypress trees and stage their carnival (on Dec. 27) in San Jose, Costa Rica, while Christmas marks the beginning of the season for so-called bullfight games (no bulls are harmed). The Central American hot spot is usually a dependably cheap destination — with flights hovering around $260 — except at Christmas when you’ll pay almost $800 round-trip. Fireworks display at midnight on Christmas Eve and glasses of hot fruit punch are two ways they celebrate the birth of Jesus in Guatemala City, where one-stop flights start at around $740 (on Spirit) during the busiest times. But the cheapest of all are Mexico’s Yucatan destinations, particularly Cancun, where flights departing Dec. 19 are still less than $400 round-trip (on JetBlue) and around $750 a few days later. As for hotels during Christmas week, Cancun’s run the gamut from boutique properties like Casa Tortugas ($181 a night) to resorts like the adults-only Hyatt Zilara ($669) and beyond.

All-Inclusive resorts

"Not only are these resorts well-priced, an agent can help with upgrades and amenities," said Margolis, noting that agencies, which can help with everything from complimentary resort credits to dinner reservations, often have established relationships with all-inclusive companies. Of Beaches’ three resorts, the Jamaican property in Ocho Rios (which boasts a large waterpark), offers the best value for families, with a price of $216 per adult a night (children are $60 each), including all food and drink, equipment rentals and more. Dreams resorts, Hyatt’s all-inclusive brand, operates several properties in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere, with one of its newest hotels, the Dreams Mazatlan, starting at $388 a person per night, a relative bargain, while the Riviera Cancun is the cheapest all-inclusive among several Dreams resorts on the Yucatan. "And some places may not be all-inclusive but can feel like it," said Margolis, mentioning the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar in the Bahamas, where Christmas week rooms go for around $800 a night, or half that earlier in December. And don’t overlook aggregators like Hotwire, which at press time was offering stays at the all-inclusive Sunset Marina Resort & Yacht Club in Cancun’s hotel zone for $209 a night, or Priceline, where oceanfront rooms at the DR’s Emotions Puerto Plata resort start at $150.

Orlando

MacArthur Airport in Islip is served by three airlines with nonstop service to this Florida hot spot, and the competition can make for deals. Flights on Frontier during Christmas week are still as low as $187 on Frontier (serious baggage restrictions apply), with seats on JetBlue and Southwest running around $353 and $414, respectively. What’s new at Disney et al.? Hotel-wise, the year’s biggest opening was the nearby Conrad Orlando inside the mammoth Evermore resort, which contains two golf courses and is dominated by an 8-acre lagoon with a zero-entry beach area. Rooms start around $450 a night, or $673 during Christmas week. Food-wise, a new Indian restaurant, Eet, by celebrity chef and resident "Chopped" judge Maneet Chauhan recently opened to positive notices for its fusion cuisine (tandoori chicken poutine?) in the shopping and entertainment complex Disney Springs. Parks-wise, December brings the Epcot Festival of the Holidays, featuring a rotating cast of celebrities (e.g., Whoopi Goldberg, Gloria Estefan) narrating the Christmas story in a candlelit setting with a 50-piece orchestra. December is also a good time to catch up on the year’s new Disney rides, from the Tron Lightcycle Power Run coaster to Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, a racially sensitive rebranding of the Magic Kingdom’s Splash Mountain. And don’t overlook the other parks, like SeaWorld, whose Penguin Trek is a new metal coaster with snowmobile-like cars and an Antarctic expedition theme.

Rest of Florida

Besides Orlando, there are seven other destinations you can fly to nonstop from Islip: Tampa ($238 on Frontier during Christmas week), Sarasota ($278 on Breeze), Fort Myers ($292 on Frontier), Vero Beach ($258 on Breeze), West Palm Beach ($433 on Frontier, $457 on Southwest) Fort Lauderdale ($378 on Frontier) and — as of Nov. 21 — Miami ($408 on Southwest). And no matter where you go or how you get there — fly, train, drive — there are several Sunshine State hotels to consider that are new for 2024. There’s the Moxy Hotel in downtown St. Petersburg ($134 a night during Christmas week), the Palihouse in Tampa’s historic Hyde Park neighborhood ($311), the Amrit Ocean Resort in West Palm Beach ($1,079), citizenM in Miami’s South Beach ($179), a new Margaritaville on Fort Myers Beach ($430), and yet another Moxy, this time in Miami’s trendy Wynwood Walls area ($205). As for Florida eateries, new hot spots include Ash, an Italian restaurant in Tampa; Tom’s Watch Bar in Orlando, a sports bar with more than 150 on-premises TVs; and a trio of places in Miami, the Patagonian Amalfi Llama, the Latin RosaNegra, and Lucky Cat, a new Japanese restaurant in South Beach from celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.

By Scott Vogel

scott.vogel@newsday.com

Newsday writer and restaurant critic Scott Vogel aims for a refreshing, gimlet-eyed take on the Long Island food scene, often while drinking a refreshing gimlet.