West Coast high & lows...

[daytonababe]

Landed today after 3 weeks on the West Coast.. slightly different trip this year as neither of the kids came along..

Highs

American Airlines / British Airways couldn’t fault either flight
Avis car rental..got what we booked, no hard sell..no mystery charges
South Point Las Vegas never disappoints , fab stay as always and the owner gave us a 2 free nights stay for later in the year ..

Red Rock/Green Valley Buffets ..Excellent value, very good food equal to any on the strip and half the price
Egg Works Las Vegas ,A must for us every trip fab value and a excellent breakfast
Vegas in general we love being there and just wandering around the strip doing whatever we please. We walked miles over the days we were there/

Country Inn & Suites Ontario Mills. We stopped there at the beginning and end of our trip and its a lovely hotel in a nice area

Best Western Goodyear Phoenix.. Been here several times and would recommend it

Rudy’s BBQ Goodyear, one of the best meals we’ve had .

LA... Had a lovely last day wandering around Beverly Hills/Rodeo Drive/Wiltshire/Griffiths Observatory

Hooters went there 3 times in various places over the trip and each time it was good value and good food

Red Rose Tavern Disneyland.. Had a lovely meal here.

In n out burger.. went a few times over the trip in various places it was around $13 for the 2 of us.

Spending time with friends.. We were fortunate this time to be able to spend a lot of time with good friends which we really enjoyed.

Averages.

Castle Inn & Suites Anaheim.. Room was clean, location good by my god was it noisy. The doors are all external and from 6.30am you would hear people talking and running about. Parking is free which is a plus but we wouldn’t stay there again.

Shopping .. No real bargains.. exchange rate doesn’t help but things in general aren’t cheap there. The latest Adidas shoes my kids wear are far more expensive than here.

Disneyland...My tickets were free so I wasn’t too fussed but ..

California Adventure was a 1/2 day park... if it wasn’t for Carsland we wouldn’t have bothered.. All of the Pier area is closed bar Toy Story and there are no parades at the moment. There were a lot of people complaining as we left.

Disneyland we liked much better but it was heaving , I was there for spring break last year and it was much busier last week. I’m sure its not helping with their being so many closures in the Adventure park. Again no parades or fireworks ..

Downtown Disney. World of Disney is undergoing a massive refurb so its tiny now compared to how it used to be..And a large area of shops are cordoned off again I assume for renovations.

Weather , we had a couple of colder days the rest warmer , t-shirt and shorts weather but not as hot as we are used to it March. The day we went to California Adventure it rained hard for a good few hours.

Margaritaville Las Vegas, meal was ok but portions tiny, I had Fajitias and it was a much smaller portion than the last time we ate there..

Low
IHOP Anaheim... $42 for breakfast and it wasn’t worth it.. I’m not a fan anyway but this just confirmed why i’m not.
Steak & Shake Las Vegas.. Rubbish service just like the last time and food nothing special.. tried it twice now there won’t be a 3rd.
Coming home ;-)
Fremont Street ..total dump and gets more strange people by the year..I see no appeal in a clearly mentally ill lady sat topless in a wheelchair posing for pics.
Container Park.. A waste of a walk very little there and many of what were there were closed ago 8pm
Ricks Pawn Star Plaza.. All that seems a to be open is Ricks BBQ place, most of the other units are closed / empty.
Hollywood Blvd... Still a dump, possibly more dirty than last year definitely more CD “sellers” there..

Observations.

American Casino Guide well worth the 15 I paid for it... Far too many vouchers for us to use but the one’s we did saved us a fair bit of money.
There are vouchers for on/off strip as well as Fremont Street.

Parking..Many a time it comes up on here about parking in Vegas. Well I parked on the strip every day and never paid once.. Miracle Mile is free self parking I parked there one day from 10am -11pm..

Security, far greater Police presence on the strip than I’ve seen before Both on foot and in cars

Disney Security, This too has been stepped up, bag check is much stricter now , you have to open your bag yourself and they look in every pocket. Plenty of sniffer dogs around and I noticed they sniff around pram /pushchairs. Bag check does take a bit longer mostly because people aren’t organised but if it makes the parks safer I’m all for it.

Vegas was much quieter than previous trips. 10th time we’ve been always at the same time of year and we’ve never seen it so quiet on the strip. And from talking to people that work there neither have there. I was there over NASCAR weekend and there was a UFC fight so two big events but they made little difference. General opinion of those that live / work there is the ever increasing resort and parking fees are keeping people away.
I know in previous years the NASCAR race team have left the crews in Vegas for a week before going on to phoenix but many flew them home this year as its becoming to expensive to keep them in the hotels .


We had a fab trip as always and we will be back next year ..Likely have a week in Vegas later in the year to use our 2 free nights. But first we have 9 nights in North Carolina in 7 weeks time

[carolynne67]

Welcome home, wow that went so quick! Sounds like you had another great holiday, did you miss your kids? Glad to hear your stay at the Ontario Mills Hotel was in a good area, we’re staying in the Hyatt there for two nights for the Pomona Swap Meet and Fontana Drag Racing later this year.
Carolynne

[buryboy]

3 weeks without the kids. Where do I sign ?
Can't remember ever even having one night on our own
Bet you did missed them occasionally though.
Shame about DCA , it is just renovations, and the lack of parades / fireworks just a seasonal cost saving measure . I too wouldn't be happy if I didn't know in advance.

[YorkshireT]

$42 for breakfast at iHop! I was always under the impression it was a cheapy place.

[nursetina]

Fab, concise highs and lows, Thank you. I agree with you on Fremont st, to me there was nothing appealing about it at all... just very sad and tacky 😞 we spent about 1 hour there and couldn't wait to get back to the strip!
Glad you had a great time and I'm very jealous of your plan to return... i need to discuss when I can go back

[tocpe321]

Another great trip. Must have felt very different without the kids.

North Carolina was somewhere we thought about - the Outer Banks - so will be interested to see a highs and lows of the State if you get the time.

Thanks for posting.

[Guest]

Welcome back!
Sounds like you had a good trip overall.

Disney, I was considering skipping California Adventure because of the closures, but we're doing it, there are rides there that we can't miss, just gutted now that we didn't go for a hopper ticket. I think there should be some discount offered when there's so many closures in one park, especially when they are big ticket rides.

The weather, I've been watching this daily for weeks now wondering what it's going to be like, it seems like many places have been experiencing colder than average temps. It seems to be picking up though, but it is what it is.

You mentioned parking, and The Miracle Mile, can you tell me more please? Is the LA or Vegas?

[daytonababe]

Originally Posted by carolynne67

Welcome home, wow that went so quick! Sounds like you had another great holiday, did you miss your kids? Glad to hear your stay at the Ontario Mills Hotel was in a good area, we’re staying in the Hyatt there for two nights for the Pomona Swap Meet and Fontana Drag Racing later this year.
Carolynne

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We stayed there last year for 3 nights too , it’s about a 10 min drive in traffic to the drag strip / speedway which is where we go . The Hyatt is very close to our hotel .

It was strange without the kids but I spoke to them daily either via messenger or on the phone .

Originally Posted by buryboy

3 weeks without the kids. Where do I sign ?
Can't remember ever even having one night on our own
Bet you did missed them occasionally though.
Shame about DCA , it is just renovations, and the lack of parades / fireworks just a seasonal cost saving measure . I too wouldn't be happy if I didn't know in advance.

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I’ve been away before without them but never for so long it was ok though .
There will be parades again at DCA once it’s all finished , I believe the Paint the night parade will be there and a Pixar parade of some kind .

Originally Posted by YorkshireT

$42 for breakfast at iHop! I was always under the impression it was a cheapy place.

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I’ve never found it to be cheap as say Denny’s .. but the price probably explains why we got seated straight away and Denny’s almost next door had long waits . Meal wasn’t even that god .

Originally Posted by nursetina

Fab, concise highs and lows, Thank you. I agree with you on Fremont st, to me there was nothing appealing about it at all... just very sad and tacky 😞 we spent about 1 hour there and couldn't wait to get back to the strip!
Glad you had a great time and I'm very jealous of your plan to return... i need to discuss when I can go back

See more...

I’m lucky that as long as the NASCAR racing is there yearly we will go

I can’t see the appeal in Fremont at all . I went back in the day this year as my husband wanted to go to a motor racing event and it was still a freak show .

Originally Posted by tocpe321

Another great trip. Must have felt very different without the kids.

North Carolina was somewhere we thought about - the Outer Banks - so will be interested to see a highs and lows of the State if you get the time.

Thanks for posting.

See more...

Thank you , I was in North Carolina in October too. To cut a long story short my son wants to work in NASCAR and most teams are based there and many of our friends live around there ..

Your money will go far further in the carolina’s Than other areas everything is just so much cheaper ..

Originally Posted by gail35

Welcome back!
Sounds like you had a good trip overall.

Disney, I was considering skipping California Adventure because of the closures, but we're doing it, there are rides there that we can't miss, just gutted now that we didn't go for a hopper ticket. I think there should be some discount offered when there's so many closures in one park, especially when they are big ticket rides.

The weather, I've been watching this daily for weeks now wondering what it's going to be like, it seems like many places have been experiencing colder than average temps. It seems to be picking up though, but it is what it is.

You mentioned parking, and The Miracle Mile, can you tell me more please? Is the LA or Vegas?

See more...

The Miracle Mile is a shopping mall in Vegas attached to Planet Hollywood . In Hollywood we used the valet parking at the Hollywood & highland Center which is $15 for the day and also the self parking behind the shopping Center which was $2 for 2 hrs if you get your parking ticket validated in a shop .
For Rodeo Drive we parked in a self park multi storey and it was something like $4 for 2 hrs .

I wasn’t cold and I’ve got a good suntan just not the temps like previous years , last year same time we had over 100 in Vegas and Phoenix , Vegas was around 70 this year maybe less on a few days .

I agree about Disney .. they actually increased prices a few weeks ago and that’s a joke imo . In hindsight we should have paid $50 each and upgraded to hopper passes because we were bored in DCA.

[tocpe321]

Originally Posted by daytonababe

Thank you , I was in North Carolina in October too. To cut a long story short my son wants to work in NASCAR and most teams are based there and many of our friends live around there ..

Your money will go far further in the carolina’s Than other areas everything is just so much cheaper.

See more...

Sounds good. Hope your son is successful.
Thanks.

[Colette-S]

Sounds like you had a great trip. Some great tips and pointers for our trip this summer. Great help as always - the Dibbs West Coast expert!