Travel dilemma - Family treat.

[english1]

We will be visiting united states - easter 2011 for 10/11 days.

However - i will have to travel to texas and ohio for this visit. i am going with two kids - 9 and 10 year old. I am in process of getting the ESTA. I want to do this cheap as best i can.

1. How do i make this cheaper. I would need to pay for the flights as well as maybe accommodation. How much will this cost me?

1. Can i book flight to texas - stay for 5 days and then fly to ohio for another 5 days and back to uk - what is the better way of doing this - kill 2 birds with one stone.

1. what are the most do, see and buy there?

1. How much would this cost - need to start planning - flight and hotel. Might need a hotel or might not depending on friends availablity over there.

Please help somebody.

Look at something like an Open Jaw ticket, so to fly you into Texas and out of Ohio. Then look at cheap airlines of the internal bit (does South West still fly?).
Don't panic about hotels. You actually want a motel as they are cheaper, get a cheap one in an okay area (Motel 6 for example). You will almost certainly need car hire unless friends lend you a car or ferry you everywhere.

Register the ESTA now for all of you with the US authorities before September 8th because this is when they will start charging for applications (fee will then be $14 per application made).

Only use the official US government website for the ESTA as well:-
esta.cbp.dhs.gov

Which routing are you looking at from the UK?. Think BA for instance fly direct into Dallas. AA may be worth looking at as well.

US internal flights are not as cheap as they once were. Fare discounts are not usually applied for children on flights made within the US so its going to cost you a fair bit.

Somewhere to stay like the Embassy Suites or some such suites hotel chain would be nicer to use than a Motel 6 and would not cost a great deal more either.

Searching for an open jaw ticket does not guarantee that your flights will be non-stop - for example, you might find yourself flying out from London to Orlando via Atlanta and back from Miami to London via Cincinnati (both of these cities are hubs for Delta airlines). However, it might be worth basing your search around two cities which are major hubs for one of the main US airlines, as this will increase the likelihood of getting a reasonable value direct flight on each leg of the journey.