As it's closed season I've found myself trip planning a lot, especially because I'm not at school and I'm stuck at home. To do all my planning I need a solid collection of websites to get my information from. Today, I'm writing about the websites I use for trip planning! Most of these I've mentioned in some way or another before but I think a blog to collectively list everything I use is needed. So, here it is.
RCDB:
RCDB is the enthusiast's wikipedia. It has facts and statistics on every cred in the world and can filter through all of them to give you a certain collection of coasters (e.g: all the wooden creds in the UK). I use it constantly to look up how many coasters certain parks have, how tall/fast coasters etc. I think I've used it most recently looking at all the creds in Belgium to see how many I can get into our trip as there's only 35. I always find it helpful to have RCDB open while I'm planning so that if I need to know any park/cred statistics I have them there.
Coast2Coaster:
I think I know a few enthusiasts who would agree with me, but I couldn't do trip planning if I didn't have coast2coaster. It's a map tool that shows you every park to have existed/that does exist on a map with markers to show how many they have. I use it to find groups of creds which I can do in one trip. Coast2coaster is very helpful as you can filter it to only show places with a certain amount of creds, which makes it easier to see the slightly better places when you're looking on a bigger scale.
SkyScanner:
When looking for flights, I usually use SkyScanner. It gives you the cheapest flights from every airline to get you the best offers. It also has an app which you can set notifications for to see when flight prices are lower than normal so you know when to book. Sometimes you'll get better offers from the airline's own website so just have a little look, but from my experience Skyscanner always gives the best prices. Other than that I sometimes look on Cheap Flights for
Premier Inn/Travelodge:
From all my research/experience, I've found Travelodge's to almost always be cheaper, but premier inn's are more commonly found and tend to be closer to your location. That isn't always the case, so just check the driving distance on google maps and compare the prices to see what works out better for you. If you want REALLY cheap, either look at the lowest Travelodge prices that don't include Breakfast and Wi-fi, or go to wherever your visiting on google maps, search 'hotel' in the nearby section, open all the cheapest ones, and put in your dates and rooms to see which one comes out as cheapest.
Google Maps:
I've explained before multiple times, so I'll keep it short. You can use Google Maps to mark places you want to visit, trips you want to do and things like that. You can also use the 'nearby' tool to look for nearby airports, hotels etc.
I hope this helps anyone trip planning! It's really made me miss booking trips writing this, but at the time of writing we should have an announcement roughly on when parks might open! I'm always here if anyone needs any trip help, feel free to message me. I'll see you next time
Cleo x
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