Planning Our New York City Vacation

Having school-age children one of the biggest struggles is timing.  Our children attend public school and participate in sports activities, therefore, finding a time where both children are out of school and do not have sports activities to attend.  As I'm sure this is a challenge for many traveling families.  Typically what we have found is Spring break, winter break, and Thanksgiving break are usually the best options for our schedule and for our budget.  Summer is usually hectic with sports camps and mandatory band camps plus summer is one of the most expensive times to travel.

So, when we think of taking a trip we don't set a destination, in the beginning, we think of a few places we might like to visit and the times we are available that year and begin looking for flights and hotel prices.  That's how we ended up choosing New York City for our spring break trip last year.  Using Google.com/flights we were able to find amazing prices for flights through Jet Blue directly from Jacksonville Florida to New York City.  Not only were the flights a great price compared to other airlines but we also had in-flight movies and got to pick our seats for free.  I know a lot of airlines charge for that option nowadays and don't always offer in-flight entertainment, especially for short flights.  

After booking our flights we began searching for a place to stay.  We knew we wanted to be in a safe neighborhood, close to metro stops as we didn't want to rent a car, and we wanted the hotel to provide breakfast. During this trip, we would also be traveling with my sister, Aunt, and cousin so we would need 3 rooms.  I searched several discount sites such as hotels.com, kayak.com, and Trivago.com as well as direct hotel sites for weeks.  During my searches, I also set up alerts to get notifications if pricing dropped.  I compared locations in the city center vs. outside the city.  It is much less expensive to stay outside the city and commute to the city.  So I focused on hotels outside the city that offered free breakfast.  Each time I considered a hotel I read the reviews posted by customers that had stayed there before me.  Not only reviews posted on the sites I searched but also other sites for that same hotel.  I always want to make sure I am staying in a clean, reputable hotel, and safe hotel.  

After a month of searching, we located a hotel that met our needs for about $100 a night per room.  Considering all the research I had done during this time the price was great.  The rooms were comfortable and clean when we arrived as well.  The location was perfect for our stay.  I will say the breakfast wasn't as good as we had hoped for but for the price it wasn't bad.  

Now that we had a place to stay I began researching things for us to do while we were there.  Each of us had our "must see" list so I started with that.  I took the list of things that we all wanted to see and went to each of the sites to see the entry cost and the days/times the facility was open.  Then looked for tour groups and city pass options.  You can save a ton of money with a city pass option if you are visiting a lot of sites and the price of the pass is right vs the entry fee of the attraction, you should always compare the two before purchasing.  I compared the cost of our entry fee with The City Pass of New York, the The New York Pass, and so many more.  We found that the New York pass provided us with more of the activities we wanted access to plus free tours, hop on hop off bus and there was a mobile app we could download to help us find each attraction.  

We used the New York Pass for two tours, the river cruise, and access to museums, 911 memorial, top of the rock, Empire State building, the hop on hop off bus., Statue of Liberty, and so much more  We ended up spending about 20% less than we would have if we purchased entrance to the attractions.  That's including if we had chosen to access the museums on their free days.  

If you're interested in visiting the Bronx Zoo they also offer Wednesdays where you can donate what you want to visit their facility.  I would recommend checking out their website to verify they are still running this promotion before planning your trip, however, this promotion was running during our visit.  We were able to access the zoo without a taxi or car rental.  We used the metro to commute to and from the zoo.  

For the Metro, we purchased a 7-day unlimited card when we arrived in New York City.  You can purchase these at any of the kiosks in New York City.  They are found at most of the main metro stations.  You can locate them on the New Your City Metro website. The unlimited card was significantly less expensive than paying per ride on the metro.  We purchased an unlimited card for each family member but we later leaned on our New York City Tour that we could have purchased fewer cards because up to 4 people can share a card as it can be passed back to another person and swiped again up to 4 times. You can also download a New York City Metro app on your mobile device to assist you with navigating around the city.  

These are tips and tricks that I used to plan my families New York City trip this last spring on a moderate budget.  I hope you find this information helpful when planning your next trip to New York City.