New York: Things to know before you go!

For as long as I can remember my dream has been to visit New York and when Lewis came along it was lovely to see that he shared the same dream. From his first bedroom decorated in New York wallpaper, to the prints hanging on his walls now at fifteen, it’s something we have talked about, and looked forward to, for such a long time. With me turning 40 this year and Lewis turning 16, we decided that 2020 would be the year we finally made that dream come true and last week we did, and it was every bit as wonderful as I hoped it would be. And whilst I can’t wait to share it all with you, first I wanted to share our top tips for booking a trip to New York.

1. Apply for your ESTA

Once you’re ready to book your trip then make sure you get your ESTA application in to give yourself time for any set backs you may encounter with the process. If you google ESTA applications there are so many sites claiming to offer it for a small fortune but the official site can be found here and charges just $14 per person. We applied in the morning and had our approval through by the evening which was a huge weight off our shoulders!

2. Consider the time of year you visit

Generally speaking, visiting New York is always going to be cheaper after peak season, with January and February working out the cheapest, and the quietest. months to visit. We visited on the 30th January and found return flights for £300 per person including 23kg luggage allowance with Virgin Atlantic. We flew Economy Classic and found the seats comfortable with a great choice of entertainment and food, and had no issues with our booking or checking in service.

New York is so much quieter during these months which meant we queued far less for attractions, even the busiest places such as Times Square were still relatively quiet, and we found our experience to be far less manic than I would imagine it to be in busier periods.

3. Book a hotel with free cancellation

Once we had booked our flights I set about searching for a hotel for the duration of our stay, eventually finding one with free cancellation right up to a week before our stay. After reserving our room I continued to check prices in the lead up to our stay and, just two weeks before, when our hotel price dropped I was able to cancel our booking and rebook via a new reservation with Expedia saving ourselves £150 in the process. Bonus!

4. And no resort fees…..

Many hotels in New York charge a resort fee, something that can be sprung on you at arrival, and average $25 per person per night which soon adds up! We used a resort fee checker website when making our hotel choice and found there are several hotels in New York which do not charge. We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn Times Square, right in the centre of Manhattan, and were charged a $200 deposit fully refundable deposit.

We had a large room with two double beds, a bathroom, city view, and great service all round. The location was great and we would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a New York hotel.

5. Plan your itinerary

Planning our itinerary was possibly the most stressful part of the whole trip for me as I was desperate to make sure we fit everything into our five days. It can feel completely overwhelming to try and navigate such a large city and yet after a lot of research we decided the easiest way was to split the city into separate areas per day – Upper Manhattan, Central Manhattan, Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. That gave us the last day to revisit anywhere we had particularly loved, do some shopping and just take it easy!

My advice would be to buy a New York guide book, create a list of every attraction you’d like to visit and then plot them out on a map ready to split into days. Whilst some people have a minute by minute itinerary, ours was far more relaxed and yet we found it so much easier to know what the plan was for each day and it meant we didn’t miss out on anything we wanted to see and do.

6. Buy a New York Explorer Pass

If you’re wanting to do several attractions during your stay, my number one piece of advice would be to buy a New York Explorer Pass before your visit. We bought ours on Expedia but they are available across several discount sites including Groupon and currently Costco. You can choose a 3, 4, 5, 7 or 10 attraction pass and we paid around £120 per person for a 10 attraction pass. Buying through Quidco meant we also got cash back on our purchase to save even more money.

The New York Explorer Passes saved us an absolute fortune and were super easy to use. You simply scan your pass at each attraction in exchange for a ticket or entry to over 90 major attractions. We used ours for Ripley’s Believe it or Not, Madame Tussauds, The Ride, Central Park bike hire, the Hop on tour bus, Empire State Building, Top of the rock, Statue of Liberty Cruise, 9/11 memorial museum and the Natural History Museum.

It’s worth noting that some of the attractions can be booked in advance before you leave the UK, such as The Ride, and others such as the tours and more popular attractions can be booked on arrival in New York. We booked The Ride two weeks before our visit via the website using a credit card to secure our place and then scanned our passes on the day.

7. Pre-book basket ball tickets!

Lewis’s biggest request for our trip was to see a basketball game and so leading up to our trip and yet every game during our stay was completely sold out. I kept checking StubHub until I eventually got hold of three tickets to a Brooklyn Nets ‘v’ Chicago Bulls game at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. StubHub is a great way to get last minute tickets for discounted prices and I think we paid around half the ticket price. It was a real highlight of our trip!

8. Don’t pre-book theatre tickets!

My biggest request for our trip was to see a show on Broadway and whilst we originally planned to buy tickets before our trip, they were just extortionate in price for a decent seat. Little did I know that each day on Times Square at TKTS, under the big red steps which are impossible to miss, you can buy tickets for same day shows with up to 80% off the ticket price. At 10am the tickets go on sale for that days matinee performances and at 3pm for the evening. The only downside is that people start queuing early, we got there at 2.30pm and queued for 30 minutes and yet it was totally worth it to get three tickets to Aladdin, 15 rows from the centre stage, for just $40 per person.

If your stay coincides with the weekend it’s worth knowing that Saturday evenings are usually fully booked on Broadway in advance and so discounted ticket choices can be quite limited. On a Sunday many of the theatres close for a break and yet it’s a great time to grab a good deal on the handful which do remain open!

9. Get a Revolut card or similar

Obviously you’re going to need dollars for New York and whilst we obviously took some with us, we also didn’t want to be taking a large amount of cash out and about with us each day. After researching the best way to go about it we decided on the Revolut card, a simple bank card and app where you can directly add money from your bank and exchange to a currency of your choice at the touch of a button.

You can set yourselves a budget per day, spend and withdraw money abroad with no fees, receive notifications for every transaction, and transfer money globally. We found it so much easier to use and also keep track of our spending. It also meant that we didn’t return home with any spare dollars and the remaining total on our Revolut card can be exchanged to Euro’s for our remaining travels this year.

You can find several alternatives to the Revolut card here as well as The Post Office who offer their own card for using abroad.

10. Do your own thing

As much as I’m sharing my own tips, the biggest tip of all is to do your own thing. I read a lot about New York before hand, I joined facebook groups and forums, chatted to friends and family who had already been, extensively googled and, as much as it helped in some ways, it also stressed me out in others. I heard so many conflicting views about which attractions to visit and which to avoid, was repeatedly told it would be too cold for us to enjoy our time there, and how expensive it would be when we arrived.

In the end we simply chose to do the attractions we liked the look of and we loved every single one of them. The weather was between 7-14 degrees throughout our stay, warmer than it has been here in the UK, and you can spend as much (or as little!) as you want to during your stay. We had the most incredible five days seeing all the sights, exploring the city and making memories, and now we are back home there isn’t a single thing about our trip I’d change!

I’ll be sharing everything we got up to over the next couple of weeks but in the meantime if you’re thinking about visiting New York then just go for it!!