Everything & Anything New York City

M4RKM

!!!!, I just had loads typed and my pressed the wrong key. Anyway... lets start again.

Hi Katies Mum!

Flights - I've found £511 from MAN - AMS - JFK which makes it slightly cheaper than what you've already found, searching on kayak.

We would like to do all the touristy things but havn`t a clue which area to stay. Would like a nice clean hotel, that is modern`ish and not too pricey, I see that some of them even provide breakfast, please can anyone recommend an area / hotels to look at so we can get around easily to see all the sights.

Hotels - What is your exact budget? With only a vague not too pricey, being mentioned, it doesn't put it in perspective. I think what you need to be doing is looking for a hotel that fits your budget, rather than which is the best area. All the hotels I'm mentioning below are near a subway station, so you can easily hop on the Subway and navigate New York City.

The Sheraton in Long Island City, Queens, has special offers on via Travelzoo, which means you can get a room with 1 king bed for $140 per night including taxes. This gives you a total of $280 per night, as you'll need 2 rooms. For 7 nights, in british money that is £1225

The Verve Hotel, also in Long Island City, Queens, has a room with 2 queen beds, and that is an average of $260 a night, meaning a week stay is £1138. You'll all be sharing 1 room.

The Cosmopolitan Hotel, Tribeca, Manhattan, is a great budget hotel. Doesn't have the "modern" requirement box ticked, but it is functional, super clean, and comes highly recommended, not just from me, but others on this board have also stayed there. This I found on Quikbook.com for $225 (before tax) a night for a room with 2 double beds, meaning a weeks stay would cost around £1132.

Your final option I'll recommend is a bit more expensive, but gives you the benefit of a full kitchen. All the other rooms are just hotel rooms, So, the Eastgate Tower, is $311 before tax per night, for a room with a king bed, sofa bed, and full kitchen. This works out to be £1589 for the week stay

Are we best trying to book transfers from the airport to the hotel - don`t think they are as close as I thought (we have stayed at the end of the runway on some holidays!) have been reading up that transfers can be quite expensive.
Any websites I should be looking at for flights / hotels / or am I best booking both together?

Ok, Onto Transfers. They're not that expensive. The most expensive way is to jump into a taxi. Into Manhattan this costs $45 plus toll and tip, giving you a roundabout total of $60. The cheaper option is to use the Subway and Airtrain, which costs $7.25 per person, both will take around an hour. A pre booked car service may save you a dollar or two, but not that much from JFK.

The airports are miles out of anywhere that you'll want to visit as a tourist, so it's not recommended to stay anywhere near there.

Now, onto websites. kayak.co.uk for flights, hotels either the hotels own website, travelzoo.com, or quikbook.com and as for packages, I don't think they're going to get you anything better than what is listed here, but it's worth a search, just make sure you know what you're getting out of the hotel first.

If you have any other questions, just ask!

M

kweelo

Ok guys - big day is here and I just wanted to pass on mine and my wive's appreciation for all your help.

We depart Thurs for our 5 day trip, have an itinerary of sorts which ticks our boxes, but also gives us some flex should we want to do other things that either pop up or we didn't think about.

We have decided to get the Subway and Airtrain into Manhattan, check-in and then straight up TOTR to see NY at it's finest! We have decided on our last day to go up ESB to see all the places we've been, in between we have purchased a City Pass as this ticks most of the places we want to go.

We have tickets for Billy Elliot on Broadway and needless to say we are giddy kippers and very much looking forward to our dream trip - we will hopefully check-in next week when were back and let you all know how it went.

Thanks once again, especially Mark.

Kweelo

eng123

I was wondering if somebody could help me out. I read on the previous Anything and Everything New York forums that the best time to book flights is about three months before travel.

Well, I have booked my holiday to New York for next March. I have already booked a flight for £380 return from Heathrow to JFK with Delta Airlines. Wondering if this is a good price? Could somebody please put my mind at rest or tell me to do it differently next time? I read the advice to book flights three months in advance, after I came across these threads and advice.

I haven't been to NYC in a long time and I've done the obvious touristy things last time and this time want to do some of the museums and Ellis Island again. Also planning to take the train out to Boston and have a trip to Atlantic city booked too. BTW, hotel already booked, staying at The Pod Hotel.

M4RKM

I've booked for the Beginning of March for many years on the go now, as I normally head out to NYC, and my previous trip to NYC was for March, so I know what kinda price I've paid over the past few years that I've been heading out.

I don't know what you want us to say really, If you've booked your flight from LHR to JFK with Delta, and you're happy with the price, then awesome, have a great holiday.

If you go through some of my posts (yes, I waffle a lot), but you'll see what I paid for March this year, I'm sure I've just recently mentioned it.

eng123

M4RKM wrote: »

I've booked for the Beginning of March for many years on the go now, as I normally head out to NYC, and my previous trip to NYC was for March, so I know what kinda price I've paid over the past few years that I've been heading out.

I don't know what you want us to say really, If you've booked your flight from LHR to JFK with Delta, and you're happy with the price, then awesome, have a great holiday.

If you go through some of my posts (yes, I waffle a lot), but you'll see what I paid for March this year, I'm sure I've just recently mentioned it.

I've already read some of your posts, and your blog. But nothing specific have I found relating to price, apart from you would consider £350 a good deal. Would it be fair to say I have got the flight a bit over the cheapest of the cheap but I have not been stung?

I've booked so far in advance because I want something definite to look forward to :rotfl:

eng123

M4RKM wrote: »

I've booked for the Beginning of March for many years on the go now, as I normally head out to NYC, and my previous trip to NYC was for March, so I know what kinda price I've paid over the past few years that I've been heading out.

I don't know what you want us to say really, If you've booked your flight from LHR to JFK with Delta, and you're happy with the price, then awesome, have a great holiday.

If you go through some of my posts (yes, I waffle a lot), but you'll see what I paid for March this year, I'm sure I've just recently mentioned it.

I've already read some of your posts, and your blog. But nothing specific have I found relating to price, apart from you would consider £350 a good deal. Would it be fair to say I have got the flight a bit over the cheapest of the cheap but I have not been stung?

I've booked so far in advance because I want something definite to look forward to :rotfl:

M4RKM

I thought I put it on this forum. Oh well. Anyway.. .Last March, I paid £ 345.90 for a direct return from Manchester. When I booked that, I could have got Heathrow for £295, but the cost difference wasn't enough to warrant travelling to London from Yorkshire.

If you look at your booking confirmation, it'll show a class (K, Q, L, U, T, etc etc), and that denotes how cheap the ticket actually is. Looking at Delta.com today for random dates in March, they're showing a class T (which is the cheapest) at £400, so by that notion alone, yeah, you've probably got a good price.

thanks for the reminder about my blog, it's awful right now, and needs some work to brush it up a bit.

M

eng123

Yes, thanks for that. I am not going to lose sleep paying slightly over the odds, as I didn't read the advice until after I'd booked. I have the Easyjet mentality that the earlier you book, the cheaper price you will pay but I know for next time. I have dipped in and out of all the Anything and Everything New York threads, all three of 'em and the prices to seem to be creeping up year on year. My impression of Delta is that they are okay. Nobody seems to have to bad a word to say about their flights. Is this what you have found?

I've looked at the SkyTrax reviews and noticed that the negative comments are mainly regarding their internal flights in the US and that the Heathrow-JFK-Heathrow route is by and large a good experience.

When I look at the reviews, I compare the number with the total number of passengers every day they probably carry, and why they're given bad reviews, and I reckon a small number proportionally have a bad experience.

M4RKM

No fault found here at all. Actually I can compliment them. Before the times of free beer on Delta, I've had free beer (did that make sense?). Had a few minor delays, mainly coming back from NYC.

The worst that happened was March this year. I had booked a flight direct from MAN - JFK, on the cheapest possible ticket. This means, no changes, no refunds. Now, I always like to keep checking the seat map, and as a solo traveller, aim to get a middle seat free (the layout from MAN is 3 - 3), this means a bit more space for me, and whoever has the window seat. At one point, the seat map disappeared online, and I couldn't check the seats any longer, it was rather weird. Then, the flight stopped showing up when I tried booking a ticket for it. I asked, and was told it was fully booked. Hmm... It still seemed a bit odd, the seat map should still show.

Anyway. Late one evening, I checked on my delta account again, and noticed that my flights had been re routed. I was now flying later from MAN to Atlanta, and then up to JFK, but not getting into JFK until midnight. This is around 12 hours later than I had originally scheduled. I was LIVID. Mainly because, I had already booked (albeit free) flight to San Francisco with Jet Blue, and paid for extra leg room seat too!

This is where I tried the power of twitter, the beauty about booking with a US airline, is that at 11pm at night UK time, it's still only 6pm Eastern Time. I got helped with minutes of tweeting, They apologised, and were looking what they could do. I'd already had a thought, which I said, Book me on this DL flight to AMS - then from AMS to JFK (quoting dates and flight numbers to make it easier). I decided to fly out a day earlier.

The reply I got back from them was "deal" and within about 5 minutes, could see it in my online account that the booking had been changed. Wow!

Now, the reason this is exceptional customer service, is that even though my ticket was "non changeable, non refundable" that Delta should have only changed me to the MAN - AMS - JFK for the day I had booked, and NOT change me to the day before, that should have incurred a $250 charge (woah!) that they waived.

So, all in all, I can't fault Delta, their customer service is excellent, and I will encourage you to follow them on twitter @Delta_Assist as they do customer service twitter, which is very useful, and quicker than phone or e-mail.

Now, if you've made it to the end of this story, I applaud you. Boring stuff eh?

M

eng123

Not at all! Thanks for the advice. Also for the seats! I've provisionally reserved a seat but getting a middle seat free is good advice! The configuration is 2-3-2 for the Boeing 767 from Heathrow. I will keep checking and see if any come free. I want an aisle seat regardless. Nothing worse than having to keep clambering over somebody to get to the loo, especially on the red eye back.