AW: Tripadvisor just saved us $615

hoffse · June 2014

So I've posted a few times that H and I are going to London for 10 days in the middle of August. While we are there, we are taking several day trips to places we've always wanted to see. One of those places is York - site of Viking landings, the Northern Uprising, and arguably one of the coolest churches (or "minsters") in England. We knew we would get there by train.

I read a thing about train tickets on tripadvisor a few weeks ago. The locals suggested doing a dummy booking for 12 weeks out vs. 1 day out to see if ticket prices were any different for all the places you think you might be visiting. Some ticket prices stay the same, some go up a lot if you buy walk-up tickets vs. booking in advance.

Turns out booking tickets to York in advance is 27.20 pounds per person roundtrip. Totally reasonable, given you are literally going half-way to Scotland in under 2 hours. However, if you wait and do walk-up tickets for the exact same trains, it's about 215 pounds per person roundtrip.

Converted to dollars at the exchange rate my credit card uses, that's about a $615 difference for two of us.

The advanced fare tickets to York went on sale today for the date we wanted. I snagged a couple. Off to York we go!

It's times like this when I really love the internet.

brij2006 · June 2014

That's an awesome price for train tickets! Much better than buying them at the station the day of.

Will you be using their train system often while you're there for day trips? There's also a punch card you can purchase for a certain period of time to travel X amount of times. I believe I paid something like $500 for it before leaving from the states, and it gave me 10 one way tickets. So it equaled out to $50 each way.

ta78 · June 2014

This is not nearly as cool as your savings, but we just applied for the Southwest Rewards card for 50,000 bonus points when you spend $2000.... which it's usually 25,000 bonus points. They say an avg flight is 25,000 points, but we mainly just fly to California to see family and friends which is only 12,000 points for a round trip flight. That will be 2 free trips to LA for my H and I.

Although I would much rather be going to London.....

hoffse · June 2014

@Brij - Thanks for the tip! I found that punch card, but we aren't going to be there long enough to make it come out being the best deal for us. If we could stay an extra week, we totally would have gone that route. There are soooooo many places we had to cut from our list. It was a wrench doing it, but it just means we'll have to go back again someday

@ta78 - that's a great deal! Flights are the most expensive part! H and I don't travel enough (yet) to make a travel card work for us... but hopefully we will be changing that in the future!

I love planning for travel. It takes a long time to learn how to get the best deals for the places you are going, but I have discovered that it's totally worth the effort. Granted, H and I are overpaying on flights and hotels because our dates weren't flexible... but that just motivates us to try to save in other ways. I look forward to the day when we can pick our travel destinations based on cheap flights at random times of the year!

IAmSherlocked · June 2014

Wow, that is awesome! That is such a huge savings. Seems like I know a few people that are going to England this year--I'm staring to think I'll have to plan a trip out there myself, it sounds wonderful!

Sounds like you guys are going to have a blast on your trip!

KTdidit · June 2014

wow that's amazing that there's such a price difference to buy in advance! Good job!

AW: Tripadvisor just saved us $615

Re: AW: Tripadvisor just saved us $615

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