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Disneyland California and West Coast Trip Planning Disneyland California and West Coast Holiday Planning Questions, Suggestions and Tips.

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Old 22 Jun 19, 10:43 AM  
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#1
Batman1
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Mobile So much information. Where to begin ?

So, thinking of a west coast trip for our next adventure either next summer or 2021.

Initial idea looks like flying to San Francisco and taking it from there.

I have read lots on this forum and there is so much to take in I became lost as I'm not familiar with the areas.

Other than Yosemite, we have no must haves in our plan.

So far I have seen that San Francisco is expensive for accommodation and parking is a premium.

Could anyone offer any advice on where to go or how long to stay at each place based on ideas below?

Fly to SFO. Should we fly home from here or somewhere else given we plan to drive?
Where to stay or where to begin looking?
Visit to Yosemite for a night or 2.
How long are the drives between different areas?

After that we don't know.
We are not interested in Disney etc but perhaps some sort of theme park, a few beach days and LA or city area.

We are looking at 2 weeks (ish).
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Old 22 Jun 19, 11:58 AM  
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Colette-S
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Originally Posted by Batman1 View Post
So, thinking of a west coast trip for our next adventure either next summer or 2021.

Initial idea looks like flying to San Francisco and taking it from there.

I have read lots on this forum and there is so much to take in I became lost as I'm not familiar with the areas.

Other than Yosemite, we have no must haves in our plan.

So far I have seen that San Francisco is expensive for accommodation and parking is a premium.

Could anyone offer any advice on where to go or how long to stay at each place based on ideas below?

Fly to SFO. Should we fly home from here or somewhere else given we plan to drive?
Where to stay or where to begin looking?
Visit to Yosemite for a night or 2.
How long are the drives between different areas?

After that we don't know.
We are not interested in Disney etc but perhaps some sort of theme park, a few beach days and LA or city area.

We are looking at 2 weeks (ish).
I had the same questions as you when I started looking at our 2018 trip. Flight prices and times had us flying in and out of SF - we had 4 weeks there so plenty of time to explore and get back. We decided to do a loop - sf, Yosemite, Vegas, San Diego, LA/Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, pebble beach/Carmel/Monterey before driving back to SF for flight.
If I was going for 2 weeks I’d probably see if it was possible to fly back from elsewhere (San Diego/LA) to maximise time and I wouldn’t consider Vegas. Accommodation in SF is expensive as is the west coast generally- much more expensive than Florida. However it was the best holiday we have had and SF is an amazing city. Parking is extortionate so we got a taxi from the airport to our hotel and only collected the hire car at the end of our SF trip before driving to Yosemite
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Old 22 Jun 19, 11:59 AM  
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Colette-S
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Just to add we didn’t do Disney either
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Old 22 Jun 19, 12:57 PM  
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kateb78
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Hi! We’re doing 2 weeks in March.

Flying into SF (but not spending any time there as we’ve been before) then driving down Highway 1/PCH. We’re staying 2 nights in Monterey, 2 nights Santa Barbara, 1 night Burbank, 2 nights Anaheim, 3 nights San Diego then flying to Vegas for 3 nights there. We’re flying home from Vegas. We’ll have a car until we leave San Diego.

I’d love to go to Yosemite but the weather in March makes it a no go. I’ll save that for a summer trip another time!

You have plenty of options so it just depends on what you’d like to see most. There are some excellent trip reports on here of west coast trips - Cornishfrogboy’s and Miked1e’s were really helpful for my planning.
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Old 22 Jun 19, 01:44 PM  
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Mrs Red C
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One tip would be to fly into San Francisco, get the train into the city or a Lyft/Uber. Stay however many days and THEN pick up a car hire. This saves on parking/driving in the city. We did this and got our car hire from the airport, very easy.
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Old 22 Jun 19, 03:33 PM  
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cornishfrogboy
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Hi. Can I suggest that you investigate the trip report section. There are many trippies with great detail and information that may help you. I did this trip last Easter and would never have contemplated it without the reading of the trippies and the advice given on various aspects by DIBBERS. It all went swimmingly well and was the best of our US vacations to date.. thanks to that help.

Where to start.

I cannot assist with Yosemite as it is pretty much ruled out in planning an Easter due to the likelyhood of snow (thankyou DIBBERS for warning me as you were right).

My trippie is 'California N to South at Easter' and i made it all a single thread with an index in the opening entry. This was done with the deliberate intention that a person could see a whole trip report in one hit as a starter to their own research, pick what they liked and did not and then expand it into their own plans. Some of my stops were standard 'must sees', some were relatively common and I hope that a few were unusual and 'outside the box'. I would also agree with Colette that Miked1e's report may well help you. I certainly enjoyed it. It is called 'A suitcase and a dream' and comes in 17 threads that are all pretty close to the top.

Having read mine, there are absolutely dozens of threads that list individual locations and then cover them both in greater detail and possibly from different viewpoints to our own. We are all different!

Hoping this helps on what is a brilliant vacation location.

P.S I do not rate Disney either, but my better half insisted as we had never been to this one. You may find that section of the trip report rather enlightening.
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2005 onwards.. lots of times!

Index of all my Trip and Pretrip reports..https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/sho...6#post15662196

Edited at 03:50 PM.
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Old 22 Jun 19, 06:26 PM  
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jdouds
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Hi first of for the basics, how long is your trip. What are your must locations.
On our first trip we flew in and out of LA as it was much cheaper.
1 n Santa Barbara.
4 n Monterey
3 n San Fran
3 n yosemite
4 n vegas
2 n Palm Springs
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Old 22 Jun 19, 07:44 PM  
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Batman1
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Our trip will be in and around 2 weeks/16 nights, depending on flights etc.

Yosemite is on our bucket list but after that it's open for planning.

Most likely fly SFO
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Old 22 Jun 19, 09:12 PM  
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jdouds
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Hi have you considered Lake Tahoe or dare I say yellowstone . Did it last year after watching so many programmes on tv, just awesome .

Edited at 07:42 AM.
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Old 24 Jun 19, 09:43 AM  
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Batman1
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It will I guess come down to what's reasonable in our timeframe.

Looking like definitely 3 days in SFO, then onwards probably down the coast at this stage and end up in San Diego for a few days.
Yosemite looks both expensive to stay within the park, and appears limited in availability, even a year out.

Would like to do LA to see the famous sights but not interested in parks, but universal might be on the cards, or some sort of theme park day.
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