Spring Training Family Vacations

Spring training gets into full in March in Florida and Arizona, and for families who have a passion for our national pastime, spring training is the ideal time to see your favorite players at their pre-season best, willing to sign autographs and meet the fans, and not feeling the pressure of a mid-season slump. You can watch players like Derek Jeter take morning batting practice in settings so intimate, it feels as if he could just as easily be at your neighborhood ball field.

Interested in planning your spring break around spring training? Here are the basics to get you started.

The Leagues
Whether you head to the Grapefruit League in Florida or the Cactus League in Arizona is most often dictated by where your favorite team plays. The Braves, Yankees, Red Sox, Astros, Twins, Marlins, Devil Rays, Blue Jays, Nationals, Phillies, Pirates, Cardinals, Tigers, Orioles and Mets all play in the Sunshine State. The ballparks fall into four hubs: the east coast, central Florida, southwest Florida, and the Tampa area. So if you follow the Astros, you'll be catching games at Osceola County Stadium in Kissimmee, where you're so close to the action you'd swear you were at your kid’s little league game.

Nearby, the Braves play at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Park in Orlando, owned by Disney. The Yankees can be seen in numerous small fields around George Steinbrenner (Legends) Field in Tampa, where the Yankees play their pre-season games. If you head to Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland, Florida, where the Tigers play, you'll get a good chuckle when you hear the temperature back in Detroit before the first pitch.

Cactus League spring training is much more compact, with many of the teams playing within an hour of Phoenix in Scottsdale, Tempe, Surprise and Peoria. A two-hour drive will take you to the facilities in Tucson, where the Rockies, White Sox and Diamondbacks play. The other teams training in Arizona are the Giants, Dodgers, Cubs, Indians, Reds, Royals, Angels, Brewers, A's, Padres, Mariners and Rangers. With intimacy comes perks. For example, at Camelback Ranch in Arizona, you can often find Dodgers great Sandy Koufax, a recluse most of the year, mingling with the latest ballplayers as they warm up.

Money Savers
While getting up-close-and-personal with your favorite teams, affordability is also a key component to planning a family vacation around spring training. A family of four watching a game at Fenway Park is lucky to leave the game spending less than $500. At City of Palms Park in Fort Myers, where the Red Sox train, tickets range from $10 to $26 and seats are so close that you can hear the ball smack the glove of the third baseman after a line drive. The extra cash you save can then be spent on the better luxuries of life, like a nice hotel with swimming pool in the warmth of the south.

Planning the Getaway
The first thing to do is find where your favorite major league ball team plays. Florida's Grapefruit League and the Cactus League have stadium locations for each team, updated schedules and links to buy tickets. You can also find tickets at MLB.com and StubHub.com. Major League Baseball offers many spring training packages. Simply click on your team and the games you want to attend, and a list of hotels will come up with deals that include tickets, breakfast, shuttles and other options like taking batting practice at spring training ballparks.

However, you can plan your vacation yourself by selecting hotels near the ballparks, using Family Vacation Critic to find the right hotel for your family. You can spend your vacation to the Cubs ballpark in Mesa at one of the family-friendly resorts in nearby Scottsdale like the Fairmont Scottsdale or watch the Braves play at Disney and have fun at the 24-acre Nickelodeon Family Suites in Orlando.

Remember that this is your vacation and you won’t be at the ballpark all day. You'll be swimming, hitting the desert or beach, and seeing other sites besides the ball field, so plan accordingly. People seeing the Braves in Orlando will be spending the bulk of their time at the Disney Parks, while Red Sox fans heading to Fort Myers will want to spend at least one day scouring for sea shells and looking for alligators in nearby Sanibel Island. They'll also want a hotel with a good pool where kids can unwind after sitting for three hours watching a game. These are not games that count, however, so you might only see the best players in the first four or five innings of each game. If you go later in the spring training schedule, the well-known players see more action because teams need to reduce the number of players on the roster. So if the kids have had enough after the fifth inning, split and head back to the hotel.