What other trip planning, travel websites do you use to plan travel (other than WDW)

[Sandeep1]

TripAdvisor is good for finding hotels and restaurants. I generally use Hotels.com for booking hotels because of their rewards program and the fact that you can usually get discounted gift cards on the web.

 

[bananasplitkids]

I recently took a 2 week trip to London and South Africa. I used Trip Advisor to research hotels and activities, Kayak to search for and book flights.

I also spent lots of time on Fodor’s South Africa forum researching the South Africa portion of my trip. Some very helpful posters helped me fine tune my budget and pick out the perfect classic safari camp that fit that budget. I ended up changing a couple things in my original plan because of the terrific advice I got there.

How was your trip? We're slowly getting everything together for our trip in December. The airfare is crazy, but we may just have to accept the crazy pricing.

 

[RUDisney]

I google the visitor bureau websites for the places I want to see. They give good ideas for places and things to see.

I use Tripadvisor for reviews when I'm booking lodging, as well as Expedia for reviews.

I also try to find Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube videos of the places I want to see.

 

[Mrs. Ciz]

How was your trip? We're slowly getting everything together for our trip in December. The airfare is crazy, but we may just have to accept the crazy pricing.

It was absolutely AMAZING!!! I was a little stressed about it because I planned it 100% by myself with some help from the Fodor's folks, but no travel agent or tour company, so everything was 100% my responsibility. It went flawlessly with the exception of 2 minor car issues. 1) After an overnight flight from London to Johannesburg, we picked up the rental car and drove the 4 hours to our hotel in Hazyview just outside Kruger Park. It was around 5:15, starting to get dark and we were about 15-20 minutes away from Hazyview when a tire blew. We called Budget Roadside Assistance, but got no help. They just told us to put on the spare, turn the car into the closest Budget office (45 min away) the next day, and pick up a new car. The next thing we knew, a truck load of Afrikaners stopped to help us. It was a dad, his son, nephew and a friend. They changed the tire! They stopped because they could see we were tourists and it was getting dark. They didn't want us out on the side of the road after dark; they wanted us to truly enjoy our visit to their country. We tried to buy them some beer as a thank you, but they said no. We did take a big group picture with all of us though! They were such nice people! 2) After 25 hours of travel back to the US, we got to our car at the airport. It was about 100 degrees outside and the battery was dead. We saw a sign for airport car assistance in the parking lot, called, and were on our way home in about 15 minutes. So all in all, things went very well.

Our flights were about $2000 over budget (my original trip budget for everything was $10,000 - pretty small), so I get what you are saying about airfare. When I priced things out for Summer 2018, flights were around $1250 each, so I budgeted $5000. I couldn't find anything under $1600 for Summer 2019, so I kept waiting (shouldn't have waited!!!!) and ended up paying $1800 each. I'm still paying off that bill! We also ended up adding two more guided game drives while we were there because my DH loved them so much. Out of the 8 game drives we had, 5 of them were private with only the 4 of us in the jeep with the guide!

Here is what we (me, DH, DS22, DD20) did -
London: London House Hotel in Kensington Gardens/Bayswater area (family suite)
Day 1 - double decker bus tour with The Original Tour, dinner at a pub
Day 2 - Tower of London, Thames River cruise, Trafalgar Rock & Roll walking tour of Piccadilly and Soho, pub for lunch (I had high tea scheduled but got outvoted), Evensong at Westminster Abbey, pub for dinner
Day 3 - Churchill's War Room, flight to SA

South Africa:
Day 4 - Protea Hotel Hazyview (2 rooms free using Marriott points), didn't get there until around 6:00 PM, dinner at hotel (DS loved the monkeys here)
Day 5 - Kruger Park sunrise game drive with Kurt Safari (hotel gave us breakfast boxes to take with us, we saw a leopard sleeping on the side of the road first thing), dinner at hotel
Day 6 - had to exchange the rental car, breakfast at hotel (included each morning), lunch at Harrie's Pancake in Graskop, Panorama Route (didn't do the whole thing due to the rental car exchange and late start), dinner in town
Day 7 - breakfast at hotel, Kruger Park afternoon game drive with Kurt Safari (a whole herd of elephants coming up from the Sabi River came right up to our jeep), dinner at hotel
Day 8 - breakfast at hotel, DD and I went to the Elephant Sanctuary to brush down elephants while DH and DS golfed at Sabi River Sun, relaxed by the pool in the afternoon, cultural dinner and show at Shaangaan River Club in Hippo Hollow
Day 9 - Tamboti Tented Camp (family tent), breakfast at hotel, then drove up through Kruger Park (drove slowly, game drive style and saw sooooo many animals! elephants, giraffes, rhinos) to Tamboti which is inside Kruger Park, cooked dinner over campfire at camp
Day 10 - sunrise game drive (saw another leopard and 2 female lions but lions were really far away), lunch at camp, sunset game drive (saw a genet and a honey badger), cooked dinner over campfire at camp
Day 11 - Shindzela Tented Camp (2tents), after breakfast we drove out of Kruger into the Timbavati Reserve to Shindzela (a beautiful full service classic safari camp with 3 meals a day and 2 game drives a day included. The beds had hot water bottles in them and mosquito netting over them each night when we got back after dinner - so pretty!), afternoon game drive with sundowners (we saw a pride of 5 female lions with 3 sets of cubs that afternoon)
Day 12 - morning game drive, afternoon game drive (saw a hippo marking his territory, so funny!), all 3 meals at camp (and they were yummy, dinner was served in the Boma around the campfire each night - very lovely!)
Day 13 - Protea OR Tambo (2 rooms free with points, with a late 2:00 checkout the next day), we had one last morning game drive at Shindzela (saw a 500 large herd of water buffalo at a watering hole, and the pride of lions came back to drink as well. The male lion was with them this time!!! After drinking, they stalked the herd of buffalo, we followed them hoping to see a kill, but it didn't happen. It was AMAZING nonetheless!) After one last breakfast at Shindzela, we left for OR Tambo.
Day 14 - breakfast at hotel, naps to prepare for the looooong travel day/s, early dinner at hotel, flight home that evening

We were really happy that we stayed in 3 different places in the Greater Kruger Area because each area had different animals and different size herds. We could not get over the volume of each species we saw. Driving through Kruger to Tamboti, my DS looked to the left and yelled because he couldn't believe how many giraffes were right there. There were 15-20 walking and running right next to the road. The next second my DD yells "look", so we turned to the right. There were 50 or 60 elephants all gathered at the watering hole drinking. The volume and variety were incredible! We saw all the big five multiple times, plus tons of other animals and lots of amazing birds. And even though it was winter, we saw lots of baby animals (rhino, hippos, baboons, zebras, lion cubs, giraffes, water buffalo calves, elephants). It was a GREAT trip! And I can't believe we did all that we did, saw all that we saw, and stayed in the quality lodging that we booked all for a $12,000 budget.

 

[OrangeBirdGirl]

One thing I do when traveling overseas is checking out escorted tours; Adventures by Disney or other "higher end" companies. I then see what they are doing and try to fit those activities into our days. I don't want to do a tour though, I prefer to travel on our own.

 

[bananasplitkids]

It was absolutely AMAZING!!! I was a little stressed about it because I planned it 100% by myself with some help from the Fodor's folks, but no travel agent or tour company, so everything was 100% my responsibility. It went flawlessly with the exception of 2 minor car issues. 1) After an overnight flight from London to Johannesburg, we picked up the rental car and drove the 4 hours to our hotel in Hazyview just outside Kruger Park. It was around 5:15, starting to get dark and we were about 15-20 minutes away from Hazyview when a tire blew. We called Budget Roadside Assistance, but got no help. They just told us to put on the spare, turn the car into the closest Budget office (45 min away) the next day, and pick up a new car. The next thing we knew, a truck load of Afrikaners stopped to help us. It was a dad, his son, nephew and a friend. They changed the tire! They stopped because they could see we were tourists and it was getting dark. They didn't want us out on the side of the road after dark; they wanted us to truly enjoy our visit to their country. We tried to buy them some beer as a thank you, but they said no. We did take a big group picture with all of us though! They were such nice people! 2) After 25 hours of travel back to the US, we got to our car at the airport. It was about 100 degrees outside and the battery was dead. We saw a sign for airport car assistance in the parking lot, called, and were on our way home in about 15 minutes. So all in all, things went very well.

Our flights were about $2000 over budget (my original trip budget for everything was $10,000 - pretty small), so I get what you are saying about airfare. When I priced things out for Summer 2018, flights were around $1250 each, so I budgeted $5000. I couldn't find anything under $1600 for Summer 2019, so I kept waiting (shouldn't have waited!!!!) and ended up paying $1800 each. I'm still paying off that bill! We also ended up adding two more guided game drives while we were there because my DH loved them so much. Out of the 8 game drives we had, 5 of them were private with only the 4 of us in the jeep with the guide!

Here is what we (me, DH, DS22, DD20) did -
London: London House Hotel in Kensington Gardens/Bayswater area
Day 1 - double decker bus tour with The Original Tour, dinner at a pub
Day 2 - Tower of London, Thames River cruise, Trafalgar Rock & Roll walking tour of Piccadilly and Soho, pub for lunch (I had high tea scheduled but got outvoted), Evensong at Westminster Abbey, pub for dinner
Day 3 - Churchill's War Room, flight to SA

South Africa:
Day 4 - Protea Hotel Hazyview (free using Marriott points), didn't get there until around 6:00 PM, dinner at hotel (DS loved the monkeys here)
Day 5 - Kruger Park sunrise game drive with Kurt Safari (hotel gave us breakfast boxes to take with us, we saw a leopard sleeping on the side of the road first thing), dinner at hotel
Day 6 - had to exchange the rental car, breakfast at hotel (included each morning), lunch at Harrie's Pancake in Graskop, Panorama Route (didn't do the whole thing due to the rental car exchange and late start), dinner in town
Day 7 - breakfast at hotel, Kruger Park afternoon game drive with Kurt Safari (a whole herd of elephants coming up from the Sabi River came right up to our jeep), dinner at hotel
Day 8 - breakfast at hotel, DD and I went to the Elephant Sanctuary to brush down elephants while DH and DS golfed at Sabi River Sun, relaxed by the pool in the afternoon, cultural dinner and show at Shaangaan River Club in Hippo Hollow
Day 9 - Tamboti Tented Camp, breakfast at hotel, then drove up through Kruger Park (drove slowly, game drive style and saw sooooo many animals! elephants, giraffes, rhinos) to Tamboti which is inside Kruger Park, cooked dinner over campfire at camp
Day 10 - sunrise game drive (saw another leopard and 2 female lions but lions were really far away), lunch at camp, sunset game drive (saw a genet and a honey badger), cooked dinner over campfire at camp
Day 11 - Shindzela Tented Camp, after breakfast we drove out of Kruger into the Timbavati Reserve to Shindzela (a beautiful full service classic safari camp with 3 meals a day and 3 game drives a day included. The beds had hot water bottles in them and mosquito netting over them each night when we got back after dinner - so pretty!), afternoon game drive with sundowners (we saw a pride of 5 female lions with 3 sets of cubs that afternoon)
Dau 12 - morning game drive, afternoon game drive (saw a hippo marking his territory, so funny!), all 3 meals at camp (and they were yummy, dinner was served in the Boma around the campfire each night - very lovely!)
Day 13 - Protea OR Tambo (free with points, with a late 2:00 checkout the next day), we had one last morning game drive at Shindzela (saw a 500 large herd of water buffalo at a watering hole, and the pride of lions came back to drink as well. The male lion was with them this time!!! After drinking, they stalked the herd of buffalo, we followed them hoping to see a kill, but it didn't happen. It was AMAZING nonetheless!) After one last breakfast at Shindzela, we left for OR Tambo.
Day 14 - breakfast at hotel, naps to prepare for the looooong travel day/s, early dinner at hotel, flight home that evening

We were really happy that we stayed in 3 different places in the Greater Kruger Area because each area had different animals and different size herds. We could not get over the volume of each species we saw. Driving through Kruger to Tamboti, my DS looked to the left and yelled because he couldn't believe how many giraffes were right there. There were 15-20 walking and running right next to the road. The next second my DD yells "look", so we turned to the right. There were 50 or 60 elephants all gathered at the watering hole drinking. The volume and variety were incredible! We saw all the big five multiple times, plus tons of other animals and lots of amazing birds. And even though it was winter, we saw lots of baby animals (rhino, hippos, baboons, zebras, lion cubs, giraffes, water buffalo calves, elephants). It was a GREAT trip! And I can't believe we did all that we did, saw all that we saw, and stayed in the quality lodging that we booked all for a $12,000 budget.

Sounds like you had an amazing trip. I think we will have to bite it and book our flights. They are currently about $2000 per person for economy. Hopper, Google Flights, etc are saying to wait that prices should go down, but I don't know if I want to take that chance. We budgeted $1800 per person so its not too much over but that is an additional $800. Once we figure that out we can book our hotel in Johannesburg for when we arrive. Our airbnb in Cape Town was booked months ago along with our private reserve stay in Kruger. Did you have to take malaria pills for your stay in Kruger?

 

[Mrs. Ciz]

Sounds like you had an amazing trip. I think we will have to bite it and book our flights. They are currently about $2000 per person for economy. Hopper, Google Flights, etc are saying to wait that prices should go down, but I don't know if I want to take that chance. We budgeted $1800 per person so its not too much over but that is an additional $800. Once we figure that out we can book our hotel in Johannesburg for when we arrive. Our airbnb in Cape Town was booked months ago along with our private reserve stay in Kruger. Did you have to take malaria pills for your stay in Kruger?

We did take malaria pills for Kruger Park. I hemmed and hawed about it because it was winter there, but there have been a few reported cases in winter. We made an appointment with the Travel Clinic inside our local Publix. The pharmacist looked at our records and made recommendations based on what the CDC says. Then he contacted our doctors for us to get the necessary prescriptions faxed to him and ran everything through our insurance. It still ended up costing us some money due to the copays, but the whole process was pretty easy.

We all got meds for malaria and traveler's diarrhea.
We all got the typhoid shot.
DH and I got the Hep A shot (kids already had the shot)
DH got the MMR booster (kids already had it, and I got it for grad school in the 90s)

PS - We didn't see one mosquito while we were there!

 

[Shakana]

TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Trip.com, AirBnb, Aktis Taxi.