My family is looking to go to California (Los Angeles) on a week vacation in March (or around there). We will be going on a budget of about $3,000 or so, maybe $3,500. We also plan on driving. Can anyone reccomend either going thru a travel agent or a discount site such as orbitz? Has anyone made this trek? What did you spend, roughly? We plan on going cheaply, no 5 star hotels are needed. We are a family of 3. We are also thinking of renting a good gas mileage car, such as a Honda Element or a Toyota something (I have a Durango and he has a Mustang, so those are out, lol). Any advice anyone could give would be helpful, Thanks.
Hi Amanda,
We did something similar to what you are talking about except we flew out and spent three weeks driving and touring several of the national parks. As for renting a car that is cheap on gas would recommend the Toyota Prius as we currently own one and get good gas mileage on the highway we can average around 50mpg. As for the hotels try picking up the hotel discount books that you can usually find at certain resturants, roadside rest and at Flying J. When we did our trip we did not look for 5 star hotels as we were not spending much time there, would check in late at night and out early the next day as we would drive to our next destination. Do you know where you will be going? We found that several hotels now offer wireless internet so if you have a lap top would recommend taking it with you as you could use it to look for your next hotel. Here are a few other useful bits of info look into purchasing a power convertor that plugs into cigarette lighte or receptable outlets in the car and the kiddos can bring along their DVD player to help pass the time away, you can also purchase a maps program for the computer that works just like a GPS another good thing to have.
If you are able it would also be helpful to use credit cards that give you money back on purchases that are conected to gas such as Hess or Marathon. Feel free to contact me if you would like any more information. If you do not belong to triple AAA or another roadside service would also reccommend joing one prior to your trip.
Mary S
As far as renting a car goes, we have rented from Enterprise, Avis and Dollar, and all three were pretty good, but the only thing about renting from Enterprise is that you have to watch out and make sure that they give you unlimited mileage if you take it out of FL. We almost rented our last car from them because they were the cheapest, but then found out that it didn't have unlimited mileage if we took it out of state, so we went with Avis instead. Also, when looking for a rental car, try looking up their specials/deals. We rented a minivan last for $500/10 days from Avis. It would have been a lot cheaper had we needed it not so soon (death in the family). The further out your rental dates, the cheaper it gets.
Also, one more tip, take a cooler (even a smallish one)in the car (if you have the space), and take drinks and snacks for the family. We have found it to be a lot cheaper than spending $1.50/drink at each gas station, plus snacks. There's usually always a dollar general store or walmart close by that you can stock up at. And, if you're staying at motels, you can always use their ice machine to keep your drinks cold that day.
Good luck and happy travels!!