OP, you will need to visit UCF and ask some hard questions of the honors program. We really enjoyed our visit to campus, but my D was interested in a particular program of study for which UCF is widely known (character animation). On the more academic subjects, particularly something as broad-based as liberal arts, it’s a different story. UCF is not the same school as a top state flagship like UF or UGA, and the caliber of student even in Honors won’t be quite the same. UCF does attract a good number of NMF’s to campus but most showing up are very likely interested in engineering or business or health sciences (decent professional programs for which UCF has built a reputation). Your interests lie in a different direction, and your prospective majors tend not to have a good outcome unless one either goes on to a professional graduate program or attends a highly-selective liberal-arts-based undergraduate. You should take a look at the recently-released College Scorecard by major for UCF https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/fields/?132903-University-of-Central-Florida My main concern would be that honors college won’t be enough to bump that compensation by much. However, if UCF is as selective for honors liberal arts as they are for more professionalized fields, then you might be fine. Alternatively, if your eventual goal is something like law school or an MFA in creative/screenwriting, then saving your money for that endeavor makes total sense.
If you get into NEU or other higher-ranked school than UCF, then even if a tad more expensive you should strongly consider it, although - again - check out the liberal arts because it’s known more engineering and business and so forth. Fordham, which you mentioned earlier, is known to be more dedicated to the liberal arts; the number of graduates in things like history and english are just a tad lower than UChicago (when normalized for size of class) and I think they have a liberal arts Core.
Sometimes you get what you pay for, and this tends to be true in higher ed as well.
Good luck to you!