Hawaii and Texas trip planning
 

Hi all,

I’ve never written any type of trip report before, but as we are venturing to Texas for the first time (and Seattle is new to us too!), I thought I’d start a little pre-trippy, incase anyone has any valuable tips!

This is the plan...

July 31st: fly to Seattle and land at 11.35am. Afternoon/evening in Seattle
Aug 1st: fly to Honolulu
Aug 1st-4th: outrigger beach resort on Waikiki
Aug 5th-11th: Aulani
Aug 12th: overnight flight to Dallas
Aug 13: Dallas - visit south fork and JFK museum
Aug 14: Fort Worth stockyards for rodeo
Aug 15-17: Omni La Mansion Riverwalk hotel in San Antonio
Aug 18: evening flight home from Austin

Booked so far:

BA flight to Seattle and home from Austin

Westin Seattle for one night (although this one is cancellable as payable at the hotel)

Outrigger Beach Resort for four nights (stayed before and loved it)

Omni La Mansion Riverwalk for three nights. (Loved the look of the Riverwalk views rooms!)


Still to book:

Internal flights from Seattle to Honolulu and Honolulu to Dallas

Thinking of changing the Westin Seattle to the Sheraton Grande (they are the same price but I can pay now for the Sheraton and use Tesco Clubcard vouchers on hotels.com)

Aulani - awaiting 7 month booking window to use DVC points (we want an ocean view again - hopefully we have a good chance as looking for a one bed this time rather than a studio)

Dallas - thinking of booking the Magnolia Hotel which is walking distance to the JFK museum - any thoughts? (I believe someone on here has stayed there?)

Fort Worth Stockyards - looking to book the Hyatt as it’s walking distance to the rodeo, but it’s very expensive for what it is, but I guess that’s because it’s the only real option to walk to the rodeo?


Plans:

Seattle - whistle stop visit, just want to see the fish throwing at Pike place market and the space needle, also want my Starbucks mug and to eat at the Cheesecake Factory! (The Sheraton is right next door, so that is a bonus for staying there!)

Honolulu - using Waikiki as our base to go to the south coast beaches, revisit byodo-in temple etc (we visited in 2015 but DH has snapped his Achilles so we didn’t explore as much as we would of liked). Boys also want more surfing lessons and to try an outrigger canoe off of Waikiki beach!

Aulani: plan to stay in the resort for the majority of the time, although will take a picnic to the north shore one day to revisit turtle beach which I loved

Dallas - just want to visit south fork and the JFK museum (doesn’t seem to be much in Dallas for us aside from those things tbh!)

Fort Worth - staying on a Friday night so that we can do the rodeo (wanted a taste of the Wild West of Texas!)

San Antonio - the main reason for the stopover in Texas, for some reason the Riverwalk is my one ‘must dos’ left for the states (don’t get me wrong - there’s lots id still like to see, but this is the ‘must do’!).
So we have three nights there to mainly chill, although one day I think we will venture up to do some rivertubing somewhere - any recommendations? (We rivertubed in New Hampshire last summer and absolutely loved it - so relaxing!)

So that’s my current plans - any thoughts/advice would be much appreciated 👍

Sounds fabulous! Texas and Hawaii are on our bucket list so will be following.

Sounds like you've got an amazing trip planned. I've been to Hawaii and stayed in Waikiki and also to Dallas so might be able to help a little.

We drove from our hotel in Dallas (we stayed in a hotel by the AT&T Stadium as we were there for an event) to Fort Worth Stockyards for the rodeo. There was lots of parking and it was an easy drive. Not sure I'd move hotels unless the drivers really want to make a night of it!

There is plenty of sport in Dallas and we saw an event at AT&T stadium, went on a stadium tour (very interesting), a baseball game and a basketball game. We also went to the observation deck at Reunion Tower. Six Flags Over Texas that will be open when you go. We went in April and it was only open on certain days through the winter season.

I've stayed at a Magnolia Hotel but that was in Houston. It was a lovely boutique hotel but quite expensive if I remember rightly. I would definitely consider other hotels within that brand if the price was right.

That’s really helpful - thank you so much, I was wondering about just driving to the stockyards, so that’s really helpful to hear 👍

Sounds amazing. I am trying to plan a trip to Hawaii staying at Aulani at the moment but have come a bit unstuck as I can only have 2 weeks off work at a time. So jealous!

Aulani is so worth the flight - what else were you planning to do? You could still have an amazing time in two weeks 👍

I have just booked a Cruise to Hawaii , so just having a nosey . We did Dallas the other year ..I loved the place .Was a massive fan of Dallas so did Southfork and also JFK . But we also managed to get a stadium tour of the The AT&T Stadium ..Wow what a building .Well worth a visit

We returned from a 3 week road trip around (some) of Texas yesterday. We are well used to US Highways, especially Florida, but the size and scale of the state is huge!
We travelled from Houston to Galveston Island (was okay not great!) then Sugarland (beautiful) then San Antonio (fabulous - we stayed in Hotel Contessa right on the river walk and we were within walking distance of the Alamo and we walked to the Pearl area - which was an old beer distillery area now renovated to a smart area with hotel, restaurants and bars) and then we travelled to the capital, Austin and stayed in Tarrytown (an upmarket area near downtown where we visited the state buildings, went to congress bridge at sundown to see the bats and swim in the deep eddy natural spring pool).
We drove over 1000 miles and got a real flavour of the lone state. Texas is well worth a visit.

We did tubing this year down the Comal river near New Braunfells, They also do it on the Guadalope river in the same area. It is around an hour north of San Antonio on the way to Austin so it may be worth sacrificing 1 night in San Antonio.

Aah wish I’d had this post before as I’ve now booked and paid for all of my accommodation!

Just wondering whether it’s worth attempting the rivertubing on the way to the airport? Are there changing facilities at the end?

Would mean we’d be flying with wet swim suits etc though! 😂