Everything & Anything New York City

Annie021063

bb69 wrote: »

Do you need to be there for NYE?

please yes
xxx

bb69

bb69 wrote: »

Do you need to be there for NYE?

Annie021063 wrote: »

just to throw spanner in works we have now looked slightly further afield and appear to get better deals. IS it hassle to be say 30 mins away from central NY??

Others on the forum will be able to give opinions. Personally I prefer to stay in Manhattan. I know you had thought about Mamara. Would you consider that option? I know you looked at it before?

Annie021063

marmara looks fab but a little worried about how far away iot is from central ny, we have dd who has ME so walking huge distances unecessarily is an issue, unsure about how easy it is to travel about using public transport etc?

bb69

Annie021063 wrote: »

marmara looks fab but a little worried about how far away iot is from central ny, we have dd who has ME so walking huge distances unecessarily is an issue, unsure about how easy it is to travel about using public transport etc?

They were doing subway work when I was there that was in 2008. Not sure if its all completed yet.

I favour buses and there is a bus stop nearby, and didn't have to wait long taking a bus will take you closer in as a base or if you are leaving very early in the morning take a taxi to somewhere like East 40-60th and 5th Avenue then begin your day from there.

There is a lot of ground to cover to see the sights on foot if you were staying for example on 34th Street. Bloomingdales is on 59th Street and museums are in the upper side of Manhattan.

I'd say the travelling further in possibly would be the same from the upper east and staying out of Manhattan.
Check out this hotel: Hotel Wales. Again the upper east side. They had a decent price on lastminute.com from 26th-1st Jan - Decent flight times too. I'll post the full details in a min.

bb69

Annie021063 Here are a few I have found on Lastminute.com:

Departs:Wed 26 Dec 12 09:40 Arrives:Wed 26 Dec 12 13:05
Economy - Direct flight
John F Kennedy Apt (JFK) - London Heathrow, Uk (LHR)
Departs Tue 01 Jan 13 19:25 Arrives:Wed 02 Jan 13 07:40
Economy - Direct flight

Hotel name and star, rough location room type and Price Options:

Hotel Wales 3* - Upper East side (90's) - King Suite with living area £4294.31

The Benjamin 5* Mid Town (50's) - One bedroom suite Queen Bed £5009.49

Omni Berkshire 4* Mid Town (East 50's) - Berkshire Suite - 1 King Bed with living room £5198.62

I'd say the next thing to do would be to look at the hotels and reviews.

Edit - I have priced up one separately on Ba/Virgin flights (The Benjamin only) and the package price on Lm.com is working out better currently.

RachVG

Can I just ask, is there a particular reason people recommend not getting the NY Pass? Obviously I understand if it's just that for a lot of people it ends up costing more than it saves. My mum and I are going for 4 nights (7-11 Nov) and over the last few months we've been planning out the things we'd like to do, and worked out the cost to do everything on our list - taking into account free nights and scheduling it all the best we can. Then we went onto the NY Pass website and checked how many of our activities are covered by the pass - it should save us $20-30 each in total if we get a 3 day pass and use it over our three full days in the city, doing free stuff the afternoon we arrive and the day we leave (we have an evening flight).

Granted not a massive saving, but for convenience sake (having it all paid for in advance) seems like a good idea to me. Yet I've seen a few posters saying it's not worth it. So I just wondered if I'm missing something, or if those warnings are more about making sure you don't overspend unnecessarily if you don't want to do enough of the activities that the pass covers?

Thanks!

Annie021063

bb69 wrote: »

Annie021063 Here are a few I have found on Lastminute.com:

Departs:Wed 26 Dec 12 09:40 Arrives:Wed 26 Dec 12 13:05
Economy - Direct flight
John F Kennedy Apt (JFK) - London Heathrow, Uk (LHR)
Departs Tue 01 Jan 13 19:25 Arrives:Wed 02 Jan 13 07:40
Economy - Direct flight

Hotel name and star, rough location room type and Price Options:

Hotel Wales 3* - Upper East side (90's) - King Suite with living area £4294.31

The Benjamin 5* Mid Town (50's) - One bedroom suite Queen Bed £5009.49

Omni Berkshire 4* Mid Town (East 50's) - Berkshire Suite - 1 King Bed with living room £5198.62

I'd say the next thing to do would be to look at the hotels and reviews.

Edit - I have priced up one separately on Ba/Virgin flights (The Benjamin only) and the package price on Lm.com is working out better currently.

brilliant thanks, just doing dinner then I'm onto these to take a look

mahoney

Expensive!

To save me trawling through this thread (again) could you give me your recommended NY hotels? Near the attractions nice but not too expensive. Trying to keep it max £200 pn

M4RKM

Annie021063 wrote: »

hi guys
getting a tad frustrated with this booking malarky
we need 2 rooms (suite??) with the sofa changing to bed, nice relaxing area with tv etc. 2 x adults, 2 x teenagers (15 & 17)
central to times square etc
really hard to find hotels that offer this or am I not looking properly?
would prefer package with say virgin or other but happy to book seperately if it means we get what we want. The room descriptions etc are very confusing and I just need a little help please
been offered flatotel by virgin but cant find 'family apartment' on website
any ideas???
or am I searching for something not there?

Your problem is the requirement to be "central to times square"

Unsurprisingly, there are few suite hotels in NYC in the first place, but then to put a limitation of an area such as Times Square makes it even more difficult.

If you remove that requirement, look at the following hotels.

Affinia Hotels
Sancarloshotelnyc.com
Blakelyhotelny.com
Beacon hotel.com
Kimberlyhotel.com

Booking separately is probably the best so London based agency https://www.apartments2book.com has contracts with many of these and can often get better pricing than the hotels themselves.

M4RKM

RachVG wrote: »

Can I just ask, is there a particular reason people recommend not getting the NY Pass? Obviously I understand if it's just that for a lot of people it ends up costing more than it saves. My mum and I are going for 4 nights (7-11 Nov) and over the last few months we've been planning out the things we'd like to do, and worked out the cost to do everything on our list - taking into account free nights and scheduling it all the best we can. Then we went onto the NY Pass website and checked how many of our activities are covered by the pass - it should save us $20-30 each in total if we get a 3 day pass and use it over our three full days in the city, doing free stuff the afternoon we arrive and the day we leave (we have an evening flight).

Granted not a massive saving, but for convenience sake (having it all paid for in advance) seems like a good idea to me. Yet I've seen a few posters saying it's not worth it. So I just wondered if I'm missing something, or if those warnings are more about making sure you don't overspend unnecessarily if you don't want to do enough of the activities that the pass covers?

Thanks!

You don't actually save money? You become a slave to the pass and see New York Tourist attractions (rather than New York itself), just to get value out of it.
You don't jump queues, (apart from the one to buy tickets, which most of the time are short).

I'm sure some of the "stuff" you want to do, there are discounts you're not taking into account, or other ways to do the same things cheaply.

The only pass I can even begin to attempt to recommend is the "Go Select" pass, where you choose your attractions and gain a discount.

M