Endless Summer Florida is an independent Florida travel and Florida living site, written by a multi-generational Florida family that has lived in Palm Beach and Broward counties since the 1970s and never really left summer behind.
Home sits a few minutes from the beach, with boats, paddleboards, and WaveRunners always in the mix, plus more weekends than anyone can count on the water or in the Orlando parks.
Our passes, then and now
Florida’s big parks and attractions are simply too large to see in a single day. A one-day ticket barely scratches the surface, so instead we invest in annual passes, which let us come back again and again, take things at our own pace, and really learn each place.
Today our family holds a Universal Orlando 2-Park Premier Pass, a Walt Disney World Pirate Pass, and a SeaWorld Orlando Silver Pass. Over the years we have also held passes for Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, and the Florida State Parks system. That is why so many of our guides come from repeat visits rather than a single rushed day.
This site is how we share what actually happens here: the hotel rooms walked through, the lakes and beaches, the parks revisited, and the little local places visiting family gets taken to. We pay for our own stays, passes, and travel expenses, and we have no sponsors. Universal, Disney, and the hotels we review do not review or approve what we publish.
What you will find on this site
The guides aim for what would have helped before pulling into a resort driveway or anchoring off a sandbar.
- Hotel and resort tours: room layouts, pools, noise, fees, and whether the stay was worth repeating.
- Theme park and entertainment days: practical notes from passholder years, not encyclopedia dumps.
- Beaches, boating, and waterways: from Bird Island on the Butler Chain to John Pennekamp and home waters near Jupiter.
- Getting around: including how Brightline fits a South Florida to Orlando trip.
- Florida towns and “what it is like” pages: for places with real time on the ground.
If a page sounds like we were standing there with a camera bag and sunscreen, that is because we were.
Some of our favorite Florida days
Dinner table favorites still include:
- Boating along the South Florida waterways and the Butler Chain of Lakes in Orlando
- Mardi Gras and Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando
- Enjoying a cocktail at the Elbo Room in Fort Lauderdale Beach
- Epcot’s International Food and Wine Festival
- Snorkeling at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park
- Climbing the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse
- Watching the sunset at Mallory Square in Key West
- A white-sand afternoon on Marco Island
- Airboating into Everglades country
- Exploring Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral
Boats, parks, and a lot of weekends
Living close to the Atlantic and the Intracoastal Waterway spoiled us early. A good Saturday might mean meeting friends at a sandbar, or pointing the car toward Orlando and using our annual passes.
Not every trip is perfect; traffic on I-95 and the Turnpike is still traffic. The useful version still matters: where to stay, what we liked, and what to skip next time.
A note on Florida real estate
Our family has been connected to Florida real estate for 25+ years through a long-running, family-owned company. Soft links sit within our content for anyone who wants to learn more.
What we are not
Endless Summer Florida is an independent site run by one Florida family. To clear up some common mix-ups:
- We are not affiliated with Universal Orlando or Universal’s Endless Summer Resort (Surfside Inn and Suites and Dockside Inn and Suites). We stay there and review it like any other hotel.
- We have no connection to The Endless Summer, the 1966 surf documentary by Bruce Brown, or the films and brands that grew out of it.
- We are not connected to any other business, product, or website that uses the “Endless Summer” name.
- No theme park, hotel, or tourism board sponsors us or reviews what we publish.
About the Author: Jerry Joyce
Jerry Joyce writes Endless Summer Florida with his family. When you read “we” on this site, that’s us: the same Florida-resident passholder family on every trip.
Thanks for riding along
The hope is simple: Endless Summer Florida helps plan a better day with family, in the Sunshine State or closer to home.
Endless Summer Jerry