California Road Trip!

catz1ct

I want to book a holiday like this for our honeymoon for April next year but I don't know where to start with booking hotels, flights & car hire

lil.smartie

I was going to say Groupon and Living Social (same thing!) A lot of Best Western type hotels include breakfast of cakes/cereal/waffles/yogurt and juice & coffee.
Buffets in Vegas are great and if you play in the casino (even slots) drinks are free, just tip the server a $1 or 2 per drink
Car rental can add up insurance4carhire do a policy that will be cheaper than the rental co, use quidco too
Check charges on your bank cards too, Fairfx/caxtonFX may be a better deal for you and any UK debit cards get run as credit cards so expect to get ID out & sign for things over $25

Kate

Sumpong

Doing similar now.
Flew in to LA, drove down to San Diego, now in Vegas. Flying to San Francisco tomorrow, then drive back to LA.
Tip for San Diego is to pack ear plugs, trains go through the night straight through downtown blowing their air horns & the barrier warning bells ring out.
Not good if you are light sleepers.
We stayed in the Holiday Inn on the bay.
The aircraft carrier USS Midway is pretty cool.

misa.blue

catz1ct wrote: »

I want to book a holiday like this for our honeymoon for April next year but I don't know where to start with booking hotels, flights & car hire

Hi
Start with looking for flights on Kayak.co.uk.

When booking hire car, make sure you use third party UK broker, that way you will have all the insurance you need included in price and avoid being ripped off by sales people at desk in hire company in US. Also it is much cheaper with third party then with hire companies direct.
We used usrentacar.com. People also use netflights.com or ebookers.com and carhire3000.com.

Make sure you set yourself up on Quidco cashback website, we got £100 cashback on this trip bookings.
We booked most of hotels with Hotels.com (10% cashback + book 10nights get 1 free).
Have fun!

Murphy_The_Cat

Sumpong wrote: »

The aircraft carrier USS Midway is pretty cool.

Absolutely agree on that and a harbour trip around the Naval bases is good stuff as well :beer:

tarkytarks

zagfles wrote: »

Yes, we booked our trip about 5 months in advance, we didn't pre-book any hotels except near Yosemite as we were advised that there's limited accomodation in the park and it is always booked up well in advance. We couldn't get anything inside the park at all, so we stayed just outside at El Portal

When we visited Yosemite last year we stayed at one of the hotels in Oakhurst and used a tour company (http://www.discoveryosemite.com/index.html) to go up into the park. Our guide was a retired park ranger and really had so many stories to tell and you could tell he had a lifetime of experience and knowledge of the place. We were the only people being picked up from Oakhurst so driving up towards the park he was our dedicated tour guide We both felt that we got more out of visiting with a guide (not something we usually would ever do) and as we were staying out of the park saved a good amount on the hotel for 2 nights and meals etc to put towards the tour - and let someone else deal with driving the winding roads so we could look at the beautiful scenery

Murphy_The_Cat

zagfles wrote: »

Well it was a few years ago - maybe things have changed. We tended to have a big breakfast and dinner, just a snack for lunch. Breakfast about $10 with tip for 2 of us, dinner maybe $30-40 for 2. We stayed in some very nice hotels for prices well under $100, and motels for under $50. Initial prices were much higher but with a bit of haggling you can get big discounts particularly off-peak in places with competition.

But not as cheap as Florida when we went 15 years ago - stayed in a very nice (but basic) motel for $15 a night

possibly the exchange rate was especially favourable a few years ago. I've been at $2 to a £1 and at $1.40 to a £1 and the difference over a holiday is enormous ! (which makes me laugh whe some MSEers seem to go to great lengths to save a few cents ).

Hotelwise I seem to end up at around the £100 per night mark (incl breakfast & sometimes a light evening meal).
Mealswise, it probaly wouldn't be fair to give an accurate guide as we travel with two small children, but as Neil said further up the thread, if you can avoid restaurant alcohol, it can gave a very refreshing effect on your bill !

catz1ct

misa.blue wrote: »

Hi
Start with looking for flights on Kayak.co.uk.

When booking hire car, make sure you use third party UK broker, that way you will have all the insurance you need included in price and avoid being ripped off by sales people at desk in hire company in US. Also it is much cheaper with third party then with hire companies direct.
We used usrentacar.com. People also use netflights.com or ebookers.com and carhire3000.com.

Make sure you set yourself up on Quidco cashback website, we got £100 cashback on this trip bookings.
We booked most of hotels with Hotels.com (10% cashback + book 10nights get 1 free).
Have fun!

Thank you for this, I think it might still be a little too early took book for April next year but I am off to investigate.

tarkytarks

catz1ct wrote: »

I want to book a holiday like this for our honeymoon for April next year but I don't know where to start with booking hotels, flights & car hire

For general info and ideas have a look on http://www.roadtripamerica.com/ and also search this forum for california or west coast usa as there have been a few 2page+ threads about just this type of trip over the past few months which are a good place to start with.

Flights for next April will probably start being released sometime in May I believe so start having a look for flights anytime soon, but keep your eyes open

We booked our flights and hotels etc seperately, we flew into SFO and out of Vegas so I used those places as my start and end points. I bought a massive road map from Amazon and also spent hours pouring over google maps and reading ideas online. I booked hotels in SFO and Vegas quite early on and made sure I had a refundable rate (I used expedia) and cancelled and re-booked quite a few times as the price dropped etc. These were the only 2 hotels we actually had booked when we arrived, I just booked the other places once we had decided (OH is very undecisive and it took us being there before he'd agree with my route!) when we were in America!

Part of the fun about this sort of holiday is working out where you will go and what you'll do

We're going back next April too - this time flying into LA so we can see some of Southern California and then will end up in Vegas for the final few days. Can't wait already but have no idea yes exactly where we will go, although I have an idea this time !!

Murphy_The_Cat

catz1ct wrote: »

I want to book a holiday like this for our honeymoon for April next year but I don't know where to start with booking hotels, flights & car hire

ok, here we go.
Flights are generally available 330 days prior to flight date. As soon as your dates become available, start the hunt. A quick mooch around MSE travel will give you the pointers for good flight bookers/agents, plus which airlines are good to book directly with. You'll also soon get a feel for when flight sales are on and how good the sales actually are.


There are several car rental companies that regularly get a thumbs up from MSEers, my personal favourite is USRentacar.

Hotelwise, thats way to big a minefield for me to get into.

One thing that I did notice is your April travel date, so you'll need to take a combination of clothes for the differing climates. Differing parts of California can be surprisingly different regarding temp & rainfall.