Can anyone recommend a great place to stay for a family with two young boys (8 and 5) at $300 or under per night? Looking for a place where the gray hairs won't be mad at the kids....

Thanks!

We always stay at Acadia Hotel in bar harbor....walking distance to downtown and the shuttle stop into Acadia national park.

I'd recommend looking at AirBnB or VRBO

Lots of good locations available on AirBnB and VRBO up there. We are looking for a 5-6 bed house in July and they are running $325-595, so I would assume you could get well under 300 for a 2BR on Mt Desert Island or in Trenton.

The KOA on Mt Desert has camper cabins....its not the Four Seasons but it would be great for the littles because you have all the activities that the campground offers for your down time as a supplement to the rest of what the area offers.

https://koa.com/campgrounds/bar-harbor-oceanside/site-type/lodging/

We use them all the time, but haven't used the cabins at that specific campground (although we have tent camped there)

I'm interested in this area, but trying to figure out the cheapest flight to the area. Go into Boston and train or drive there. Just bite the bullet and book a more expensive flight to at bar harbor? Any help would be great!

We're flying to Boston....cheap flights from DFW...

From Houston, just using Google Flights, it appears to be about $60-100pp cheaper to fly into Boston than Portland, ME. However, by the time you get a car, get out of Boston, and get to Acadia, you are losing at least half a day each way. So how much is that worth to you?

ETA: Portland, ME only puts you about 2 hours closer, but it is a cool town with lots to see and if you need to spend the night, it is easier to find a decent place near the airport cheap than it would be in Boston.

txags92 said:

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Lots of good locations available on AirBnB and VRBO up there. We are looking for a 5-6 bed house in July and they are running $325-595, so I would assume you could get well under 300 for a 2BR on Mt Desert Island or in Trenton.

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This. My in-laws have gone there every summer for the last 30 years. I've stayed with them and rented places myself. Always been in a cabin or condo. Tons of great options up there with many of them on the water. We usually stay in the Bass Harbor area.

We've always flown into Boston and driven....taking Route 1 up the coast of Maine is one of those iconic American drives

Depending on where you stay in Bar Harbor, you may want the car. There is a shuttle bus that takes you all around town but we prefer to drive ourselves - it saves a lot of time

As mentioned Portland it self is worth a day or two if you have the time. You can fly through Baltimore a handful of times a day with Southwest to Portland. The flight might be a bit more expensive but getting and out is obviously much easier. Rental cars are cheaper as well.

We looked into staying in Bar Harbor, but honestly it can get really crowded when the big cruise ships come in & it is expensive.
Because I had a rental car & I'm cheap, we just stayed at a Comfort Inn in nearby Ellsworth. Cheaper rates, cheaper food, grocery/liquor store etc.
The drive wasn't bad and there are some lobster shacks along the way you can pull in & eat.

I also recommend going out & doing one of the fishing boats. We saw tons of eagles, dolphins, seals, and even an oceanic sunfish. not to mention the fish we caught.

Colony Cottages at Hulls Cove. They're small, but less than $200/night depending on the cottage you pick. A/C is also kinda...underpowered, but just sleep with the windows open. Or go later in the year. Wife and I stayed last September for about 6 or 7 nights, and while it is NOT the Ritz, we plan on going back this year sometime.

Their website sucks, so if you have any questions let me know.

We have three families and two families with two kids each. Kids are between 1 and 8. Looks like we are going to try the Atlantic Oceanside for $200 per night. Flying into Boston then driving up...

I stayed at this place last summer and it was a pretty good location, especially for the price. Had 7 people in (6 adults, one child). Took about 10 minutes to get to the park.
We flew into Portland before and drove to Boston after. I would pay the extra and fly to Portland for sure.

Came here to start a similar thread. Going in June with 2 other couples. Staying away from town a bit on bailey's island and making long day trip to Acadia for a day.

What other things are must do/see? Planning to hijack the car away from the ribs at some point for trip to Bissell Bros

Ton of great beer in Portland: mainer.co/portland-maine-brewery-map/

IronRed13 said:

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Came here to start a similar thread. Going in June with 2 other couples. Staying away from town a bit on bailey's island and making long day trip to Acadia for a day.

What other things are must do/see? Planning to hijack the car away from the ribs at some point for trip to Bissell Bros

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You realize that's going to be about 6-7 hours worth of driving to and from the park, right? And if you take Maine hwy 1, that's probably an optimistic guess. I'm not trying to be rude, but that's a really, really long day. Not sure I'd push myself that hard on vacation. Assuming you left at 8 am, you'd get there at about 11, maybe eat a quick lunch, get your park permit, and you can (theoretically) be in the park by 12:30. If you do the Park Loop road, and stop like a normal person and hike around a bit, you're probably looking at 5 hours, and even then I think that's rushing it. Cadillac Mtn is going to be busy no matter when you hit it, so add another hour for that. So now you're at 6:30, which means you're not getting back to Bailey's until 9:30, maybe 10:30-11 depending on what you do for dinner. Which, incidentally, my favorite dinner was a picnic lunch that my wife and I did at Otter Point. Hard to beat a lobster roll and blueberry soda watching the sunset right there.

Yup. Unfortunately not the one doing most of the planning, this is actually one of the other couples anniversary trip the rest of us are crashing. Anticipate taking full advantage of the latitude and summer sun to fit it all in a very long day. It'll be right in the middle of our time there (weather permitting) so we'll have a few buffer days on either side to psych ourselves up then recover

i would offer an alternative. rent a house on Great Cranberry Island. kids can run all over the island. a lot of the houses have bikes. local lobsterman will deliver fresh lobsters to your house. their are wild raspberries and blackberries to pick all over the place.

easy ferry ride to the mainlands.

peace and quiet at night.

http://www.cranberryisles.com/visiting.html

We've been to Acadia twice, staying at a vrbo in Bar Harbor one time and a cabin on the water in Southwest Harbor the other. Pros to Bar Harbor were proximity to restaurants and the ability for teenagers to get out and go on their own, but if I had younger kids or if just my wife and I go back we enjoyed the quiet atmosphere over in Southwest Harbor and would gravitate towards there or one of the other quiet villages on the water.