Saving Money with a Go Los Angeles Card.

When we began planning our Los Angeles trip, we made a list of the attractions we wanted to visit during our stay. Then we found out about the Go Los Angeles card by Smart Destinations. It's a good way of saving money versus paying for each attraction separately.

The Go Los Angeles card is available to buy from Attraction Tickets Direct, which we also used to buy our Disneyland tickets. The card covers 35 different attractions and you can get 1, 2, 3, 5 or 7 day tickets that can be used over the space of 14 days. We bought 5 day tickets, as Universal Studios Hollywood is only included on tickets with 3 days or more.

You can visit more than one attraction in the same day as long as you get to your last one of the day by 5:30pm. 

We visited the Queen Mary on our first full day. It was really interesting and you get to pick between one of three tours to do while on board. If I was in Southern California again, I wouldn't hesitate to go back and do one of the other two tours.

In the afternoon of the same day, we did a two and half hour whale watching cruise. You'll have to excuse the fact that I have no photographic evidence of this as I spent the majority of it feeling seasick and counting down til we headed back to land! We didn't see any whales while on the tour but we did see hundreds of dolphins right next to the boat.

We were planning to drive down to San Diego Zoo as this is also included on the card (or a visit to Legoland California) but we got an hour into the drive and headed back to LA. Los Angeles Zoo is another attraction available so that became our back up plan. I'm so glad we decided to do this, not only did we save ourselves a five hour drive there and back but LA Zoo was really quiet. This meant we were able to talk to the employees one on one about the animals and it was a great experience.

Universal Studios Hollywood was one of my favourite days of the whole holiday. The tram tour is a must do, and as a Harry Potter fan, The Wizarding World was a highlight. As for shows, Waterworld is a must watch.

Sony Studios Tour was good. We got to visit soundstage where The Goldbergs is filmed, which is one of my favourite shows. It was cool to actually be on the set where it's filmed and see all the details that are hard to notice on TV.

Warner Brothers Studio Tour Hollywood is a must do, especially for Friends fans. While the Sony tour is a walking tour, Warner Brothers is primarily a tram tour followed by a self guided tour around exhibits plus a photo op at Central Perk!

Six Flags Magic Mountain is a must visit for thrill seekers, these are some of the most intense rollercoasters I've ever been on. Not only was it a really good day out but it was so quiet that we hardly queued for anything!

The card costs £217 for a 5 day ticket though at the time we bought them, they were £206. If we had paid for everything on the day, it would have cost $417 which is about £325. Even if we booked everything in advance separately, it still would have cost about £273. 

If you're planning to visit Los Angeles, a Go LA card is the way to go.

Have you visited any of these attractions before?

Planning a Holiday to Los Angeles.

With only 43 days to go until Glenn and I board a plane headed for LAX, I thought it was time to talk about our planning process, who we booked with and all that jazz. Obviously the first thing to get sorted before heading to the US is your ESTA application. After that, you're good to get booking.

We booked our flights before anything else. We originally looked at Norwegian air as I'd heard that they did pretty cheap flights. The reviews for the airline were all over the place and it definitely put us off. We checked out Virgin Atlantic next and that was out of our budget. We ended up booking with British Airways which was more or less the same price as Norwegian. We also booked our car hire with our flights.

We looked into hotels, but the ones in our price range didn't suit us or weren't in a nice area and we all also had to factor in extra parking costs. A much better idea and the way we ended up doing it, was booking an AirBnB for the first 9 nights. The one we chose has off street parking and is in a residential area of Eagle Rock, about a twenty minute drive from Downtown LA.

For the last five nights, we'll be staying in one of Disneyland's Good Partner hotels in Anaheim. There's plenty of hotels within walking distance if you're planning on hitting the original Disney park on a SoCal trip. We filtered the choice by looking at which hotels offered free parking and weren't too pricey. We'll be staying in the Wyndham Gardens Anaheim which was recently refurbished from a Ramada Plaza Hotel. It's so close that you can see parts of Disney California Adventure from some rooms.

When it came to buying tickets for places we wanted to visit on our trip, we used Attraction Tickets Direct. I used the same company last year for PortAventura tickets and it was one of the cheapest places I found for those. This time we bought 5-day Disneyland park hopper tickets and 5 day Go Los Angeles cards. The Go Los Angeles are print at home tickets and the Disney tickets were posted to us quickly. The Go Los Angeles cards are a great money saving way to hitting up multiple attractions as there's about 40 to choose from. You can visit more than one attraction in the same day as long as you enter before 5:30pm. Some require making reservations beforehand, but I found ringing ahead easy and was sent email confirmations straight away. The passes are available in 1, 2, 3, 5 or 7 day options, with Universal Studios Hollywood only included on passes or 3 days or more. Aswell as Universal, we will be using our passes to go whale watching and visiting Warner Brothers studio, Sony Pictures studio, The Queen Mary, Long Beach Aquarium, San Diego Zoo and maybe some of the smaller attractions if we have time.

We've also applied for tickets to watch The Late Late show with James Corden being filmed but haven't heard if we've been successful yet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

We've been changing some money every month instead of doing it in one go before we leave. I use MoneySavingExpert.com to find where has the best exchange rates on those days. I've found Tui to be the most convenient for us, as it's local and has one of the better rates. 

I'll definitely be doing some posts once our trip is over, probably a couple of hauls as the idea of shopping at Sephora and Ulta has me pretty excited already. 

Have you visited LA? Do you have any tips or recommendations?

Danni
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