The planning stage

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So for a true travel novice how do you plan an ultimate world trip?

I mean seriously, I've been to Australia a few times and the Cook Islands once as a teenager. I have never travelled the world, neither has my husband. We haven't a clue as to how to start and our curiosity levels were high.



So this started as a one week trip to Canada, then once we realised we may be able to leave the younger kids we thought maybe we will take the older two to LA Disneyland. My husbands sister then contacted us to say why not add London? At this stage it was beginning to become the trip of a lifetime so why not.



This is where it began to get complicated and our lovely travel agent Joanna began to help hugely. So flights going there were ok but coming back got hard, then we realised we couldn't meet up the weekend we wanted to go and dates changed again. Eventually it all ended up as a bit of a World trip. For a couple who has limited travel experience this is amazing. We are so excited as our two oldest boys are such a good age to travel. So the current plan is leave Auckland on the 12th September, fly via Hong Kong to London arriving on the 13th, now I must admit apart from accommodation I have planned nothing for this week. This goes completely against my entire being but we are leaving ourselves totally in the hands of my sister in law. Since they know us, our kids and London we think it is best to leave our trip there in their hands. It is still scary but also very exciting, like a mystery tour!



We leave London on the 19th September and fly via Toronto to Edmonton, Edmonton is the location of the entire point of this endeavour, the lovely wedding of our friend Keiran and his bride Jamie. In exciting news my husband has been invited to be the best man. He is so thrilled and delighted by this. So I imagine I will see little of him while we are in Edmonton. We are all invited to the wedding which is lovely. We have a car while we are there so I may have to try driving on the other side of the road, this will be interesting. I really want to see some of the Canadian scenery but due to the circumstances of our trip we are only there for two days 😞 I am very excited though by the location of the wedding at the Muttart Conservatory and hope to get some amazing photos. We leave Edmonton the morning after the wedding to fly to LA - 21st.



I think after seeing their cousins and Big Ben (I blame the cars movie for their fascination with the clock) this is the part of the trip they are most excited about. We have given them a lot of input. We drive (yes drive in the US - scary!) to Carlsbad, straight from the LAX. I am hoping all will work out well and we will arrive at the Legoland hotel in time to go to the waterpark. The deal we got gave us two days for the price of one but I really want the boys to go to the chima waterpark. They are so excited to but unfortunately due to the park schedule (waterpark only open on weekends in Sept, and our available days) we can only do the waterpark on this day. We haven't decided the exact plan for the next few days but our tentative plan looks like this, Legoland hotel 21st-22nd Sept, 21st waterpark, 22nd, Legoland resort, 23rd San Diego zoo, we then drive to Anaheim with the biggest change of our planning so far. We had planned on staying at Howard Johnsons and got their last available room for the period we were initially booked. With trying to catch up with American friends we needed to extend our trip by a day and they had no more accommodation. I managed to get what I think was an amazing deal via a third party website for a stay at the Disneyland Hotel - huge dream of mine -yes it had to be paid in advance to secure it but so so cool to go and stay there, especially as at the time of year we are staying hours are shorter so the extra hours will be so enjoyable.



So our Disneyland stay, we spend the 24th at Disneyland with a World of colour dinner that night. Our plan is that the next day (25th) we will not go to Disneyland but will go tripping to Palm Springs and see a few different things.

The 26th of September we are hoping to do a character breakfast - at this stage maybe surfs up? Then go to Irvines Railroad to do a traditional Pumpkin patch. Then back to our hotel for a nap, I so hope we can convince the boys to at least lie down. I'm sure we will all be tired!! Anyway that evening we have Mickey's Halloween Party Tickets! So excited. Disney and catch up with friends Sat - hoping to see fantasmic, Sun, hoping to see fireworks as well as popping out to DTD to see friends. Monday will be a short Disneyland day before returning the car and heading on back to NZ.



So if you are interested in following our story - there will be more intensive planning, costume ideas and Disney plans.

Anyway if you are interested here we are.

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