June/July 2017 NY/DC/BOSTON/CANADA/D23 Expo PTR

I'd highly recommend a stop in Mike's Pastry store in the North End. The canoli seems to be an institution!

And we also enjoyed the Duck Tour in Boston.
Oh....and the Swan boat ride in the Boston Common/Garden. It's one of those tourist must-do's. (Go figure.....but we were glad to have done it).

And if you're a Cheers fan, I'm sure you'll find both the real Cheers bar that doesn't look like the set and the not-so-real Cheers bar that looks like the set in Boston. Do both if you're a fan!
thanks for the tips!
 
Ok so the recent announcement of the opening of Pandora – The World of Avatar at Animal Kingdom in May, did give DS and I some serious rethinking time about if we could swing a trip down to WDW. We thought about it but decided we would pass. He hasn't even seen Avatar and while i liked the movie I wouldn't say I'm a massive fan of it. We would have had to either dramatically shorten some of our time in cities or dropped a city altogether. Now if it was the Star Wars Land opening, well that would be a totally different story!

The only thing I've really been doing is looking at hotels vs AirBNB for Boston & DC. We still haven't locked in our dates for the Boston, DC & Niagara as we are still playing with different orders and options. Niagara we seem to be going to get to from flying to Buffalo, though flights to and from Buffalo are not as common as I thought they might be or they are often with a stop over which is not something I'm very keen on. Another option is for us to fly to Toronto airport but then I understand its quite a trip back to the Falls. decisions decisions...
 
Our itinerary is starting to get firmer. The flights we got require us to go LAX-NYC & NYC-LAX at the beginning and end of the trip. In thinking about how best for us to do this we have decided to break our NYC time up into two lots at beginning and end. This is how it has taken shape :

BNE - LAX - NYC
NYC 8 nights
Train to DC
DC 6 nights
Fly to Buffalo, car to Niagara
Niagara 2 nights
Fly to Boston
Boston 5 nights
Train to NYC
NYC 4 nights
Fly to LAX
Anaheim 6 nights (Includes D23 expo 3 days)

While it might seems we are back tracking a bit, the reason we are going to fly from DC to Buffalo and then to Niagara and then fly to Boston, is that we will then be limiting out trains trips to max 4 hours as opposed to if we did DC to Boston on the train it's more like 7 hours so taking a whole day to get there.
 


Sounds awesome! Cannot wait to see how it all pans out!
it's taking shape. still over 100 days away but I'm sure (hoping!) it will pass soon.

Trouble is there are a number of different options all which work, I just cant settle on which one works best though in reality there may not really be any real difference between them !

I was going to purchase our DLR pak hoppers, but then saw that the D23 site says that they will be releasing special priced tickets for Disneyland "shortly", so I'm going to hold off and see what they have to offer.
 
Update time...

Firstly, today marks 99 days until we leave!! woohooo!!!

We have locked our itinerary in which now looks like this :

  • BNE - LAX - NYC
  • NYC 8 nights
  • Train to DC
  • DC 6 nights
  • Boston 5 nights ( inc Fourth of July ) - haven't decide if we will go via train or fly yet
  • Fly to Buffalo, car to Niagara
  • Niagara 2 nights
  • Fly to NYC
  • 3 nights in NYC
  • Fly to LAX
  • Anaheim 6 nights (Includes D23 expo 3 days)

We have booked our accommodation for NYC, Washington & LA. Boston i'm still yet to settle on which hotel, but it will likely be the Intercontinental. We are staying at the same hotel we stayed at last time for NYC (Hotel Beacon) and DC (Willard Intercontinental) . LA is Disneyland Hotel :)

It is coming together nicely and starting to come quite fast which is great also.
 
72 days to go!

all accommodation is now booked. Choice of Niagara Falls hotel was holding me up but that's now decided and booked.

Now it's on to Planes, Trains & Automobiles to get us from place to place !
 


Great itinerary! Looking forward to reading more details as you go, and I am also interested in what the Summer is like in this locations.
Thanks for sharing!
 
I noticed that you said that you are interested in early US Presidents, so based on that I would suggest a tour of Mount Vernon - George Washington's Home - while you are in the DC area. It is a little south of DC, maybe10-15 miles. Since I live locally, I always drive there, so I'm not much help with suggestions on getting there from DC and there isn't a train that goes there. Sorry. But it is beautiful and the museum is great. I hope you can fit it in, if you haven't been there already. Have a great trip!
 
I noticed that you said that you are interested in early US Presidents, so based on that I would suggest a tour of Mount Vernon - George Washington's Home - while you are in the DC area. It is a little south of DC, maybe10-15 miles. Since I live locally, I always drive there, so I'm not much help with suggestions on getting there from DC and there isn't a train that goes there. Sorry. But it is beautiful and the museum is great. I hope you can fit it in, if you haven't been there already. Have a great trip!

Thank you for the recommendation. I was aware Of Mount Vernon but honestly it slipped my mind when thinking about our things to do in DC so I'm very glad you have reminded me. I'll be sure to try and work in a visit.

It's 28 days now to go. I have to book a few internal flights and trains and car pick ups this week end. I've left them pretty late for me!
 
Had a productive booking weekend. Now have all internal flights for :

WAS --> Boston
Boston --> Buffalo (then car to Niagara)
Buffalo --> NYC

Direct flights to all these were less common than i thought they would be. Had a small issue with booking AA. They have changed their site making booking with AU credit card more problematic at the better price. Ended up using Expedia.com to book that flight to get the price that was on the US AA.com site. Will be flying JetBlue one leg as it was the only provider I could find direct to Buffalo. Buf to NYC back on a a Delta partner.

NYC to Washington will be Amtrak on the Acela Express. train now booked also. Some of the car transfers are done, scored a nice 10% discount code for them which was a bonus also.

Sent off email to for Buffalo Airport to Niagara car transfer. I was thinking about renting a car and driving but decided against it. I'd rather just relax lol!

Purchased some Disneyland tickets from http://www.mypersonaltravelplanner.com.au/

Our USA ESTA is still valid from last trip and we don't need one for Canada as we are coming in by car. If we flew into Toronto we would have, so that's one less thing I suppose.

That's pretty much everything that needs to be done before we leave except booking a transfer to take us to the airport from home on our departure date !

Now just to firm up (a little) the loose plans of what to do in each place , but really just to relax and enjoy!
 
Excited to read your TR once this one is done, I totally loved your last one! (fingers crossed you are up for another one!)
We are planning a Summer trip to the East in 2019 (Italy next year, Asia this year) and I would love to hear all about Summer travel from an Aussie perspective.
 
Excited to read your TR once this one is done, I totally loved your last one! (fingers crossed you are up for another one!)
We are planning a Summer trip to the East in 2019 (Italy next year, Asia this year) and I would love to hear all about Summer travel from an Aussie perspective.

I do plan to, I'm trying to be better prepared by making sure I take a travel notebook so I can record more detail and then share it with those that's are interested. As an aside I've been eyeing off this leather bound Harry Potter notebook at Dymocks but it's a bit pricey for what it is so I'm hoping it come done in price before I leave lol

I will try and see how to set up a private group on Facebook so I can post some daily updates and pics but not have it fill all my FB friends feed
 
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If you mean this journal:
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it's on sale at Zing at the moment for $15 :) I bought a Deathly Hallows journal from there for one of my kids friends a few weeks ago.

I too am looking forward to reading your trip report once you're back, it all sounds very exciting!
 
If you mean this journal:
ImageHandler.ashx
it's on sale at Zing at the moment for $15 :) I bought a Deathly Hallows journal from there for one of my kids friends a few weeks ago.

I too am looking forward to reading your trip report once you're back, it all sounds very exciting!

I have seen that notebook which looks nice. The one I was going to buy was the Expecto Patronum Moleskin notepad which was a bit more pricey.

I might take another look at the ones at Zing so thanks for the heads up.
 

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