Southwest USA & The West Coast (California, Arizona etc) - General Thread

Murphy_The_Cat

Vikki_74 wrote: »

Please Murphy, put me out of my misery - what are the 7Ps?!? I feel like that's some kind of riddle which is completely going over my head

Prior Planning and Preperation Prevent P1ss Poor Performance;)

Vikki_74

catz1ct wrote: »

Thank you for this post. I am a little worried about booking everything independently when it is so much money but I really like the idea of booking everything myself.

I have found a flight from Heathrow into San Fran then out from Las Vegas and into Gatwick for roughly £1300 return for 2 people. I don't think this is too bad.

I think we have decided to do the holiday in this order:
San Francisco (will pick up a hire car here)
Santa Barbara (stay here 1 night on the way down the pacific coast)
Los Angeles
San Diego (Really want to go to the zoo)
Las Vegas

So excited but also quite nervous about booking hotels and getting everything in order

£650pp for the flights is, IMO, on the high side, although I don't know when in April you're looking to go - does it coincide with Easter (8th April 2012 apparently)? If not, and you're talking about more the second half of April then I reckon you could beat that price if you can hang around a bit - I was originally getting prices around that level for our trip in September but ended up with flights for just over £500pp. I wouldn't bite their hand off at £650 each, but having said that, as it's a honeymoon trip and your dates are presumably pretty fixed then if you're happy with the price and it's in your budget then book it (just don't go back and check the prices afterwards - how to torture yourself in one easy step!!).

I'm assuming as you're looking at flying out from Heathrow and back to Gatwick that that's with Virgin? We flew with them last year LHR to SFO and had no complaints but just be aware that the Virgin flight to and from Las Vegas is notoriously bad - have a read through the Las Vegas sticky at the top of the travel forum for more info.

The order of places you're looking at will definately work, although not sure how many days you have or what you were thinking for each? We did 2 stops down the coast (Monterey and Pismo Beach) and thought the driving was about right - one overnight is do-able but if you have an extra night I'd break it up a bit more. Santa Barbara would be a bit far south for you to really enjoy the day travelling from San Francisco so I might look at tweaking that and staying somewhere a bit further up the coast instead if you do only have one night.

Vikki_74

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

Prior Planning and Preperation Prevent P1ss Poor Performance;)

:rotfl:

And I have to say, I completely agree - particularly when it comes to holidays!

I've just read this book on the Kindle about a guy who did a road trip around the US and moans all the way through about staying in crappy hotels and not knowing where to eat - it was all I could do not to shout out PLAN YOU MORON whilst reading it on the train!

Vikki_74

LillythePink wrote: »

Well, we go next week and we can't wait.

I will be studying the links more closely to get some extra tips, but the info is great.

We fly into La - stay there for a few days
drive up to Monterey for a few days - Moto GP on the sunday :):)
Up to SF for a few nights
Drive out to Vegas (via a stop off in Bakersfield) for two nights
Out to the canyon for a night
back to LA for Disney/Universal Studios etc and a Baseball game!

Soooo looking forward to this

I'm getting excited for you just reading that - wish I was going next week, still got just over 2 months left! Remember to come back and give us a trip report when you get back

catz1ct

Vikki_74 wrote: »

£650pp for the flights is, IMO, on the high side, although I don't know when in April you're looking to go - does it coincide with Easter (8th April 2012 apparently)? If not, and you're talking about more the second half of April then I reckon you could beat that price if you can hang around a bit - I was originally getting prices around that level for our trip in September but ended up with flights for just over £500pp. I wouldn't bite their hand off at £650 each, but having said that, as it's a honeymoon trip and your dates are presumably pretty fixed then if you're happy with the price and it's in your budget then book it (just don't go back and check the prices afterwards - how to torture yourself in one easy step!!).

I'm assuming as you're looking at flying out from Heathrow and back to Gatwick that that's with Virgin? We flew with them last year LHR to SFO and had no complaints but just be aware that the Virgin flight to and from Las Vegas is notoriously bad - have a read through the Las Vegas sticky at the top of the travel forum for more info.

The order of places you're looking at will definately work, although not sure how many days you have or what you were thinking for each? We did 2 stops down the coast (Monterey and Pismo Beach) and thought the driving was about right - one overnight is do-able but if you have an extra night I'd break it up a bit more. Santa Barbara would be a bit far south for you to really enjoy the day travelling from San Francisco so I might look at tweaking that and staying somewhere a bit further up the coast instead if you do only have one night.

Thank you. Yeah we are pretty fixed with the dates, I want to go when it is easter so I save some holiday allowance. lol. I'm looking at going from 31 March 2012 - 15 April 2012.

I think we are doing something like 4 nights in San Fran, 1 night in Santa Barbara, 3 Nights LA, 2 Nights San Diego, then 3 in Las Vegas. Not sure if thats 100% correct but thats roughly what we are thinking about.

I have found a Ford Mustang hire car for £325.56 on https://www.usrentacar.co.uk . Not sure if this is a good price but I thought it was reasonable.

The next step will be finding hotels. I'm thinking about booking the excalibur in Las Vegas but I have no idea about the other cities yet unless someone can suggest some where cheap, comfortable and clean?

Above_and_Beyond

Hi,

If you want a package holiday cost to compare prices to what you are looking at message me and I will happily look at it for, we are generally very competitive and your holiday will be protected under the package holiday rules

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Incapuppy

Above_and_Beyond wrote: »

Hi,

If you want a package holiday cost to compare prices to what you are looking at message me and I will happily look at it for, we are generally very competitive and your holiday will be protected under the package holiday rules

I am a registered travel agent

In which case please abide by this code of conduct:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/497690

iainp_2

We did much the same trip last year booked our hotels and motels on the way,i think travelling from san francisco to santa barbra in the one day could b quite tiresome
.Down that coast you are getting the best scenery ever we stopped at Santa Cruz then drove on to Monterrey stayed overnight,then drove down big sur then stayed 1 night Santa barbara there is a lot too see down that coast and you would miss a lot driving too much in one day

realised

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

Good luck with Phoenix - it was a place that I never warmed to. Perhap consider a couple of days there and then a couple of days in Sedona (gorgeous, but quite dear) or nearby Cottonwood (not as pretty, but quite a bit cheper & close enough to explore Sedona, Jerome & surrounding area.
If you do stay in Cottonwood, the Blazin M Ranch is different, great fun and very memorable. Plus, you've got a headstart on your drive to the GC.)

Yes there isn't much to do in Phoenix but to be honest we'll only spend about 3-4 days there (including the trip to the GC and probably sedona) I wanted some sun and time to laze around and do nothing!

tarkytarks

I wouldn't say that the flight from LAS to Gatwick is that bad, it's just on an old plane that could do with some updating inside. It's a night flight so once they've fed you they leave you alone to sleep for the duration. If you can afford it you might prefer to book premium ecconomy seats in the bubble part of the plane though.

We flew LHR-SFO and back LAS-GAT last year, and paid around £1300 for over Easter 2010. TBH I hadn't researched flight prices before hand so we didn't know what was good or not. However if your dates are fixed and you're planning to go in the easter hols I'd want to get them booked sooner rather than later too as those flights will only ever fill up!! At least if you book now you've a chance to save up for the rest of of your holiday

Book your hotels on a refundable basis - the prices for the hotel in SFO and Vegas both dropped by quite a bit nearer the time of travel.

Oh and watch out for the jetlag when you get back! I found it a killer - when were you planning to go back to work after you get back?

You won't need a car in SFO so I'd book to collect it on your last morning (we trundled our cases from the hotel over to the hire car places!!), we ended up keeping the car for 1 week.
And for vegas I'd suggest looking for a good price hotel a bit more mid-strip than the excallibur but only because you'll be a bit more central and not get as fed up with walking around Maybe consider Ballys or the Flamingo one as they are very nice and central.


Final edit: This was some more details on our trip https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/40472550#Comment_40472550