California - need help

[Hownoobrooncoo]

Maybe some of you could help. Thinking of taking a 3 week trip in Aug to California with husband and 2 children 10 yrs and 7yrs old. Never been before but have heard of a few places that sound great.

Ideally, would love to fly to New York spend a few days, fly west and love the idea of San Francisco and Carmel. Have heard good things about San Diego and the kids might want to do some of the theme parks for a day or two but that's more to the south. Las Vega and the Grand Canyon sounds good.

Need some advice and input as we have never been and know it's a big trip to organise and realistically will have to streamline and keep it simple so what would be your must sees given the ages and time limits. Thanks to any replies.

Realistically, if you have three weeks, then thats a week in NY, a week in San Diego (it is fabulous, and loads to see there, the zoos are fab, the Midway is a must, and you can do SeaWorld), then maybe a week in Anaheim/LA to do Disney etc.

LV will kill you in August - it is far, far too hot. Remember you'll need plenty of relaxation time too - pick a hotel like the Marriott in SD with a sea front pool so you can all chill out every day

Las V is over 100 degrees c in August at 9.40am (yes, that early) so its far too hot to walk around in. SF in August can be a bit chilly first thing in the morning and the Bay Area can be enclosed in fog.

Would also suggest that you reverse your intended trip i.e do the west coast first and then fly back to the UK via the east coast. It makes more sense to travel to the furthest point initially so you will spend less time spent in the air back to the UK. You will only have to contend with a 5 hour time difference and around a 7 hour flight back to the UK flying back from either Newark (preferred choice) or JFK (an awful dump of an airport) rather than an 8 hour time difference along with a flight of around 10 hours in duration.

One thing you would need to bear in mind is the internal flight airfares; no discounts are usually offered to children and internal flight costs can be steep.

Las Vegas is over 100F not Celcius in August, that is 41 C. Hot but not quite as ridiculous. It is dry heat which helps a little.

Quite a trek to Grand Canyon from the other places. What would you do there?

We are planning something similar for next year but I have no interest in Las Vegas so was going to split time between San Francisco, LA and San Diego, hiring a car to get around.

Pre DCs, DH and I did a road trip from San Fran to Las Vegas
We stayed in SF, then Napa Valley, Yosemite National Park, Death Valley, Grand Canyon and finished in Vegas

Yosemite is amazing and you can camp in the park which would be great fun with DCs I imagine. Grand canyon also amazing. Death valley worth seeing but no point in staying there. Napa was fantastic but all focused around wine so probably not for a family trip. And SF is a great city, very friendly, can visit Alcatraz on a boat trip.

I hated Las Vegas, streets are full of men handing out prostitute calling cards, everywhere is soo expensive and the people very false.

We are doing California this summer with a just turned 6 year old and a 3.5 year old. Like you we want to spend a week on the east coast as well (to visit family near Boston) but we are doing that on our way back because expereince has taught me that jet lag is tougher heading east so I want to break it up.

We are going to a wedding in Santa Cruz (on the coast between San Fran and Carmel) so we are flying into San Fran and going straight down to Santa Cruz for the wedding. We are then heading to Monterey for 4 days. We decided on Monterey over Carmel as I find Carmel a bit pretentious and stuffy, plus the kids can't wait to see Monterey aquarium and we are also going Whale watching. We will hire a car and drive down the coast a bit. After Monterey we are going to San Fran for 5 days as I know there is a lot to keep us amused there (alcatraz, cable cars, boat trips, great museums plus friends of ours). Next we are going to Yosemite for 5 days staying at a very child friendly looking place called Evergreen Lodge. Finally we will go to the giant redwoods for a couple of days.

So we are avoiding too much travelling by skipping Southern California. Even the journeys we are doing will be long and I felt LA/San Diego etc was a step too far. Other reasons for this decision include the fact that I detest theme parks and my children hate intense heat so the misty Bay Area coast followed a hopefully shady Yosemite and Redwoods seemed good options for us.

Just to add that I agree with others that Las Vegas would be hell in August. So hot. I do like Las Vegas but cannot imgine going with kids. If you want to see the Grand Canyon then think about visiting some other places in that area. We loved Sante Fe in New Mexico and after the Grand canyon we drove up to a great town on the edge of the Rockies called Durango, then we drove to Mesa Verde national park (ancient native American dwellings in the rock face) followed by Zio national park (stunning) and Bryce Canyon National Park (very odd lunar landscape).

Thanks all, have taken note about the heat etc. Will probably scrub LV and The Grand Canyon for this trip. Also noted that might be better to do NY on the return leg. I love the idea of SF, Yosemite and the Monterey/Carmel area. Think husband would prefer Southern Cal and have heard good things about San Diego. Really need to start getting cracking, just a bit overwhelming as we usually do it ourselves. Have any others done similar recently and how much did it cost and did you use a company or book yourself?

We're doing a similar trip in August, staying at the Evergreen in Yosemite too!! Their swimming pool is up and running now apparently.

We're booking it all ourselves - I reckon it's much cheaper that way and you can control your own itinerary. Have posted our plan on other threads on here. Picked up some useful tips from others on those.

Can't wait!

We flew out to the canyon from LV there is very little accommodation out that way.

And what there is is expensive. And gets booked up quickly.

We flew with virgin and they booked some of our accommodation for us, they have a website where you can build a fly drive trip. I have a virgin credit card so got a discount on the flights and hotels

Btw wrt insense heat, we don't have it in coastal San Diego. We have about two weeks a year when we wish we had air con (usually September) but otherwise we don't miss it.

We spent last August doing SF, Santa Barbara and Sonoma County. SF was really really cold; we drove in from bright sunshine and the whole city was under a huge cloud the 4 days we were there. It was nice, but you have to be prepared to wear your woollies even in August.

Santa Barbara was really lovely, we stayed in a spectacular house with beautiful grounds and pool, Carmel was v cold but only stayed for one night. Good restaurants.

Sonoma Valley was really beautiful, we hired a house on the river with kayaks and did hot air ballooning, zip wiring through the redwoods, tons of activities.

DS (17) really wanted to go to LA but we didn't as it just doesn't inspire us.

Would like to go back to California maybe for Christmas and would then do more of the desert towns, Yosemite etc

If you can afford it I'd definitely recommend flying business class - it's a 16 hour direct flight iirc and it would have been hell in economy.

Nah direct is about ten hours. We always fly economy and do just fine. I don't usually fly direct though, I prefer to break up my flights.

Actually thinking about it, we were on the plane at LHR and then they decided there was something wrong with it so we swapped to another plane but it took four sodding hours for BA to find a spare plane, and we were all sitting on the origninal one, which is why I remember the 16 hour thing. I thought then that I would have been climbing the walls if we were in economy, it was bad enough upstairs because bastardBA wouldn't feed us.

That makes more sense. This time I'm avoiding lhr completely and going to Bristol via ams and then leaving via cdg with a three day layover. I hear cdg is complete crap though.

Looked at flights from LHR to SF today and it said 16 hours, it's a mighty long trip in economy.

Keep looking, hownoo. Some are that long (with stops so including time spent in airport), some even longer, but you can get shorter too. Price varies.
Try skyscanner, then go direct to the airline. We found an option of getting dd a child fare which wasn't available on skyscanner.

I don't get the 16 hour thing. I have done LHR to SFO about 20 times and direct flights are always around 11 hours (which is still way too long but with young kids there is no way I'd waste money on the rip-off that is business class).

My virgin flight was 11 hours from heathrow to San Fran.

We did it a few years ago with our 4 year old and did San Diego-PalmSprings-Joshua Tree National Park-LA/ Disneyland/Santa Monica/Malibu in ten days. I agree with others that unless you have a lot of time you should choose SoCal or around SF.

Saying that next time we plan to fly into LA and do Disneyland and Venice Beach and then get the train up.

It takes more time if you have layovers. 10 hrs is the shortest regular LHR->LAX I could find.

I'm going to have insanely long flights this summer over to blighty. I purposely did that so I would a day in Atlanta to visit with friends, a day in Amsterdam and three days in Paris. I personally prefer longer flights with a chance to get off and stretch my legs, but if you don't then look for a direct flight.

Business vs economy, well it is all about priorities, I'd rather have longer away or better hotels, some would rather upgrade their flights, some would rather save the money for something else.