Yoohoo! I’m back!
I can’t believe I started this pretrippie almost a year ago – keen!
Anyway, my mini update a couple of weeks ago confirmed that we have indeed booked and we’re super excited! Well me moreso than Matt, he apparently can’t get excited about holidays until we’re 1 week ago from leaving. So that leaves me to do all of the excitement for both of us! I’m fine with that, I definitely make up for him anyway
Anyway, before sharing the details of exactly what we have booked right now, let me update on life over the past 10 months.
Firstly, we went on our lovely summer holiday on the Disney Magic Westbound Transatlantic cruise from Barcelona to Miami. We cruised with lovely friends and made some fantastic memories, although I did sadly lose my lovely Grandad while we were away.
We then drove up to Orlando for 6 nights to take in the magic of our favourite Disney parks. We sure packed a lot in but have absolutely no regrets about that! Actually, what it did teach us is that our hearts will always be there but we do love exploring new territory these days so we don’t have any immediate plans to return to WDW in the next few years.
When we returned from our holiday, we were back to work and pretty much counting down to the arrival of one the most important things in our lives…our baby niece, Molly Pops. She is absolutely the light of our world and an absolute treasure. We still have no desire to have our own babies but Molly truly has changed our lives. Every second with her is just magic <3
She is very spoiled by Matt and I to say the least – we love buying her lots of presents!
And then not long after our beautiful Molly arrived, Matt and I headed off on a mini break to Berlin. He has a massive interested in 20th century war history so it was an opportunity to take him to see some of the key sights. I’ve been to Berlin twice before but this was his first time and he loved it.
So that brings us up to now really, which those who remember my first post, will have remembered is my 30th year! I can’t actually believe it but I’ve become actually not that bothered by this milestone. I feel fairly accomplished to be honest – we’ll be buying a house in a couple of years, we’ve travelled well (hence the delay in buying the house haha but I wouldn’t change it for the world), we have a comfortable lift, our little Molly, and work is going well for me (recently ‘graduated’ from a tough 18 month training programme). My main goal right now is to make my 30th year the best yet, so we have lots of exciting stuff happening over the next 12 months, which I’ll share as and when they come up on this pretrippie, which should help me with our countdown.
The purpose of our big trip this year is to really hit 30 with a bang and to tick off one of my bucket list items – to visit Hawaii. I can’t really put my finger on its appeal; I can only put it down to it being the epitome of paradise in my eyes. Plus I’m fascinated with the culture – leis, luaus, Aloha, Waikiki (reminds me of Agadoo). So now seems like the perfect time to go!
I’ve played around with our itinerary over the last couple of months as something didn’t feel quite right. My heart has been aching to go to New York but we couldn’t stretch to a separate trip, and going to San Diego just wasn’t really sitting right with me so we swapped them out and managed to get an additional day’s leave booked for Matt, so the new planned itinerary was New York, Disneyland, Oahu and Las Vegas. That felt better.
Next step was to wrok out how long in each place so I pulled toghether my hit list and came up with the most sensible split of our time for Matt and I. Yes, I’m aware that we’re squeezing a lot in the time we have but I’d rather come home tired and also, these places will still be here in 10 years’ time for us to revisit if we take a particular liking to them.
So the next step was to start the booking process, and I had every intention of doing this DIY, so I monitored flights for months and months, and at our 11 month window, managed to secure some DVC rental points from a lovely Dibber to get a studio at the Grand Californian. Eep! We loved this hotel and being right in the heart of the action is just the icing on the cake!
Next up was flights, and I was just one payday away from getting those booked, when I popped a post on Facebook in a Californian/Hawaii group asking whether getting the flights to and from Oahu for less than £1000 was actually feasible, when I was contacted by a Virgin Holidays rep who asked if I would consider allowing her to pull together a quote to compete with my DIY numbers but allowing me the protection of Atol/ABTA protection. I was unconvinced but let her do it, and 24 hours later, we had booked! She truly managed to match my costs, except for New York hotel, which we agreed to exclude and I would booked DIY alongside the Grand California.
So here goes…
Flying out of Heathrow to JFK with Virgin Atlantic on Saturday 10th September
Hotel to be confirmed but plans to spend 1 day visiting Statue of Liberty, 9/11 Memorial and Financial District, 1 day exploring Midtown and Chelsea, and 1 day visiting Central Park area. We also want to go to a sports event which will likely be a Yankees game.
We then fly on 13th September to LAX where we have 3 nights at the Grand Californian booked and will spend 2 days hammering Disneyland and Californian Adventure, and food will include Goofy’s Kitchen character breakfast, cocktails at Trader Sam’s, pizza at Naples, Earl of Sandwich (obvs), and an Ultimate Tailgate at ESPN Club.
On 16th September, we fly from LAX to Honolulu where we will stay at the Coconut Waikiki for 4 nights. I tried to get Dibb DVC points for Aulani even at the 7 month window but it was not to be and I’m ok with that as actually, the location of this hotel being in Waikiki works well for me. Plans here include Pearl Harbor, Dole Plantation, Diamond Head, Downtown Honolulu, a Luau, and a day exploring the north side of the island including a quest for turtles!
Our final stop will be Las Vegas from 20th to 25th September at the beautiful Vdara hotel. We fell in love with this place and actually quite like the idea of no casino, plus the suites are so spacious! I’m hoping to bag a fountain view room. Plans here are largely unchanged, and we plan to see Penn & Teller, Boyz II Men, Neon Boneyard, Fremont Street, Scoot City, and maybe a ride in a pink Cadillac with Elvis!
So that’s it, our whirlwind trip in a nutshell!
There has, however, since been a couple of spanners in the works – firstly, perks of renting, we might be forced to move in the next couple of months, the expense of which I haven’t factored into our plans; our first bonus payment of 2016 has been reduced (I know it’s a bonus, and I am grateful, but hadn’t factored in that we might get less than 100%), and just generally, the trip is more expensive than anything we have ever done before and it is going to be tight to pull the money together to pay for all of our desired activities and the amount of spending money we would ideally want to take. I am therefore playing with the concept of pushing it back by 6 months. Not ideal but I would rather do that and do it in style than be penny pinching for the next 7 months. We would of course have to pay an admin fee with Virgin but it would be worth it I think. I’ll report back on where we end up. The only thing it would mean is no diamond castle but we may be able to see basketball instead of baseball in New York! I guess we’ll see, these things always find a way of working themselves out and I just feel lucky being able to go! And it wouldn’t all be lost, we’d just take a smaller trip this summer, perhaps Rome/Venice/Pisa or Disneyland Paris, to tide us over
So the next 7-12 months will be spent researching and getting the most out of our trip so watch out for a myriad of posts on the boards asking lots of questions!
Thanks for reading!