Pre trip chatter; west coast sept/Oct 2020
 

Hi everyone:wave:
I have never done a pre trip report before, well to be honest I've only ever done 1 trip report before:blush:
I thought by writing this all down it might help me to look forward to my trip a little more and perhaps start to get a little excited. I have been swinging between... well that's it we aren't going to days when I'm convinced we will get there all be it not the trip we originally planned.
Going on this west coast trip is me Tina, 55 year old lover of travel and Disney. Coming with me is my daughter and travel/ Disney lover Charlotte 29. My DH isn't coming with us this time as he had a bad motorbike accident last year which has left him with pain/difficulty walking for long, so it's just mother and daughter. We travel together a lot, we are both AP holders for DLP and try to get there 4 or 5 times a year (Pre covid) and we did WDW together last Sept which was amazing.
We are both nurses and work in front line roles so this is now a much needed holiday!

We booked this trip in Feb when Covid was just happening in wuhan... little did we know then how this was going to pan out for everyone! In hindsight perhaps we shouldn't have booked but we don't have access to a crystal ball, we are covered by travel insurance as booked before everything shut down.

Holiday plan;
Sept 27th virgin Atlantic direct flights Heathrow to Las vegas.
Pick up hire car and drive to Venetian. Stay for 4 nights.
Plan to take a tour to grand canyon south rim with 'my vegas' points I've accumulated. We were going to use for buffets but think they may still be closed at that point.
Oct 1st, drive to LA where we are staying at the Garland Hotel for 5 nights. we have 2 day tickets for universal and also plan to lots of touristy things here.
Oct 6th we drive to Anaheim and stay at Hilton Anaheim for 5 nights. We have 5 day hopper tickets for Disney.
Oct 11th we fly home from Lax to LHR overnight.

We booked with Charter Travel who so far have been great.
Sean contacted us a few weeks ago and advised we could cancel trip at that point and get our £500 deposit back, we discussed between us and decided that we had such a good deal, if we rebooked for next year the price would likely go up a lot. We decided to stick with it and hope we could travel by then. If we can't travel then we will rebook but would rather wait and see what happens.
We pay balance at end of June.

We know it will not be the holiday we planned but as Disney is only a part of it, as long as flights go and trump let's us in... we will be there!
Any Disney to us is better than no Disney at all. If it is only rides as no fireworks, parades or character meets we will still be there... it just means we will have to go again when things settle down ;)

Now we wait it out, hopefully we hear soon about plans for re opening in California. Vegas is starting to open up again and we still have 4 months to go so today I am hopefully.
Just writing this gets me excited again, I may even start doing some more planning:d:

I will come back and update when we have anything to add or any news.

Sounds like a great plan. Fingers crossed it all goes ahead. Have you been to the West Coast before? I'm assuming you've been to Vegas... If that's what the Vegas points are to do with. Not asking for any any reason in particular. Just being nosey 😂

It makes me excited about it all for you. I so so want to go back to California again.

Hi DisneyMadAng.
Yes I have been to Vegas before and loved it. The my vegas is an app you play slots on and the more you play the more points you get to exchange for anything from drinks to comp nights in hotels. It's free... you can spend money buying extra coins if you want but I never have.

I havent been to the west coast before though so all new to us. I am a huge research and plan traveller...I think I enjoy that almost as much as the trip itself.
Thankyou for your excitement too...it means a lot. Do you have any recommendations for us. Any advice will be very welcome.

We went to LA for the day in 2009 and did the hop on hop off bus. Other than that no LA tips.

2018 we went to San Diego, Palm Springs and Anaheim.

My one tip for Anaheim is go to Mimi's Cafe for pumpkin spice pancakes if you like pancakes. Omg. They were the best. Go there anyway. Their breakfasts are fab.
It's all very walkable from where you hotel is.

I'm so jealous. I'd go back and re-do our last trip in a heartbeat.

Update... and not a good one I'm afraid. Trip has been cancelled by TA as they are not willing to give VA any more money for u certain flights and no refunds. Can't say I'm surprised. All money to be refunded. We could rebook DIY but with all the uncertainty I'm not going to. We are going to look at going in March 2021 and go to Disneyland Paris a couple of times this year when we are able to as we are annual pass holders. So trip just shelved for a while, I will update when rebooked.

Interesting that Charter won’t give VA the flight money, we were going to Disney August this year, onsite, thru Sean at Charter, he phoned us before balance was due in May and we are rescheduled to October 21 🤞Sean has been excellent, so disappointing isn’t it when you can’t go.

Sean has been great all the way through. It's all down to charter paying back refunds to customers but not getting that money back from virgin! They just cant keep doing it. I can totally understand. Hopefully we can rebook for march 21 🤞