Until someone who has actually done a 2 centre comes along to offer their advice, I would suggest the following. Book your flights to and from Vegas and book the internal flight from Vegas to SF with someone like SouthWest as it will be much cheaper.

Also much cheaper to book the Vegas and SF hotels yourself direct. There are several topics in here on booking direct. Deals for Vegas hotels usually come out from about 12 weeks before arrival.

luci

I would second the vote for Southwest Airlines.http://www.southwest.com/
They usually have the best prices, still have some customer service and are stable financially, so they should weather all the turmoil that is going on at present.
Plus they have on average 8 flights a day from LAS to SFO ,so lots of choices. They have good website special prices too, if you book in advance, however they only publish their prices online for 6 months ahead? I think it is still that, they keep increasing the dates . Book your own flights, you can do it all online and print your boarding passes within 24hrs of flight if you want.

Frontier Airlines also flies that route, but they are in drastic cutback mode at present trying to decrease costs and they keep canceling flights- I would not currently trust vacation plans to them.

Southwest also has curbside checkin- for a fee of $2 per person - you can obtain your boarding pass if you do not already have one, outside the terminal on the curb, then you just leave your bags with the Sky-Cap (porter) there and go on to Security screening. At a busy airport during rush hour this is worth $ for not having to stand in line at the airline desk..... Being the USA a small tip to the SkyCap is appreciated ($1 plus, per bag they load for you).

BTW most TA's here (US) will not book flights for you anymore without charging a per person $20 fee, as they get NO commission from airlines ....
You are a sophisticated traveler, it will be easy for you to do it online and save!

Have you thought of renting a car for the Vegas/ San Francisco trip?

We did a 2 centre with San Francisco and Las Vegas in 2004 booked through Virgin Holidays. It was in the era prior to the time I realised booking everything independently often saved a lot of money. It is still worth having a look at the VH brochure, but you won't get splits like you want, in most cases it will be 7 & 7 which is what we did.

Can I ask why you want split Vegas up, with a few days beforehand and then some more after San Francisco? Perfectly acceptable of course, but if it's only the cities you want to see, I would do a week in each. Fly into SFO and out of Vegas.

If you do go the independent route, believe me it is so easy. Decide on a date and then look at Expedia.co.uk for flights. You don't have to book through Expedia but their search engine saves a lot of hassle and time and will often give you the best options, direct and indirect. If you find a decent flight at a price that suits, check the airlines website to see if they are cheaper.

For internal flights between SFO and LV look at Southwest as others have mentioned. First class budget airline and very cheap (I think that route is $49 one way most times if you book early). Alternatively hire a car and drive from SF to LV, we did, it took 9 hours city to city and that was with leaving SF in rush hour. You definitely don't need a car in either city. If you want to explore further afield then it would be a good option but I wouldn't bother if your aim is to stay close to the cities themselves. SF has the best transportation system in the world (my opinion) and Vegas is very easy to get around without a car.

For hotels book direct. There are countless threads on this forum about Fat Wallet for Vegas, just do a search. In San Francisco it might be a good idea to utilise Hotwire.com, which is owned by Expedia. You are offered hotels in distinct areas, but you don't find the name of the hotel until you have agreed to purchase. You can save a bundle by doing this. I know of one person who got the Holiday Inn Fishermans Wharf in SF for $69 a night, normal price $200+. You do take a gamble in some cases, but my advice is to stick to 3* (normally Holiday Inn standard) and above and you will be fine.

Once flights and hotels are sorted you can really start to plan what you want to do. Loads to do in both cities.

You will love it, both great cities.

Why not take the train and see some of the US en route? Factor in time for delays especially when you are returning for your flight. Cars are a menace in SF! http://www.Amtrak.com

I don't think there is a direct train service from Vegas to San Francisco. I think Amtrak provide a connecting bus to somewhere in California prtobably about 6 hours drive or so) and then by train.

I've done the trip by car - we started out in LA, went via Palm Springs, Lake Havasu, Vegas, Yosemite, South Lake Tahoe then San Fran. It's a great opportunity to see Yosemite, which is a truly wonderful place, and maybe Death Valley too. Obviously it will take a few days of your holiday but in my opinion it's worth it. Maybe fly into Vegas and stay a few days, then hire a car for a few days, drive to Yosemite and stay a night then drive on to SF next afternoon and drop the car off (not really needed in San Fran), then you could fly back to Vegas when you want and spend a last couple of days there? Would be a reasonably cheap way of doing it but seeing lots.
Cheers,

TC

Many thanks thats a lot of great advice. The reason i want to break the journey by stopping in vegas a few nights is ive been struggling to get a flight to san fran, i cant get direct from manchester and dont want to go to london. With changes ive found flight times vary between 14 to 30+ hours, a direct flight to vegas is 10 hours so thought that better to get me over there. Thanks again for all the help.

If you drive a car one way the drop-off fees can be heavy- what they estimate their costs to return it to the source. Do check that if you plan to rent.

Good point on the one way fee, however I have driven to Las Vegas twice from San Francisco and Los Angeles and neither time Dollar have requested a drop fee. It might only be down to my good fortune, or even Dollar's generousity though.

I did want to drive from Santa Fe in New Mexico to Vegas in a few weeks time and Hertz wanted $250 one way drop. We decided to fly Southwest instead and take 2 hours, instead of 10+.

I would second the plan by TC to visit Yosemite. It's easily within the top 5 of my favourite places to visit in the world. We have been twice now, but the 2nd time might be of interest to you because it's a similar thing that you are trying to put together.

You can actually get the Amtrak train from San Francisco to Merced, which is the nearest major town to Yosemite NP. From here Amtrak operate bus transfers into the park on a regular basis, there and back. It's actually very pleasant because you can sit back and watch as opposed to having to be careful with your driving. Stay in the park (2 days at least) and then head back to Merced. Now here you have two options. Initially we booked a flight with Scenic Airlines to fly to Las Vegas North (not the main airport). Scenic are a major player in pleasure flights to the Grand Canyon and Yosemite from Vegas, but they also offer a scheduled service to Las Vegas from Merced. This was ideal for us so we booked. However on our final day in Yosemite we called to confirm our flights and Scenic had cancelled the flight. The reason was due to lack of interest on the sightseeing trip, so all scheduled tickets were cancelled. Not happy, but did get a full refund obviously.

This then left us in Yosemite (well in Merced actually as we knew we would get there on the bus transfer) so I put my thinking cap on and came up with an idea of hiring a car in Merced to Las Vegas. This turned out to be a non starter with no cars available from Merced airport (it's tiny, no surprise). I then looked and found out the next biggest airport was Fresno, which fortunately was on the same train route from SF (and a bit further on from Mercred 45mins tops). We therefore got the train from Merced to Fresno, hired a car and drove 6 hours to Las Vegas. It was great fun. Another option would be to actually fly from Fresno to LV, but the flight times didn't suit us.

If you need any further info on that San Franciso-Merced-Yosemite-Fresno-Las Vegas plan, just give me a shout.

Ju

Hi we hired a car in SF and dropped of in Vegas [MGM ]this was booked with Dollar UK and no
one way charges,next month driving from Miami to Orlando and Phoenix to Las Vegas again both
one way and no extra charges Dollar UK are one of the best!!!!
ann

I agree with Ann. We used Dollar.co.uk extensively in the USA back in 2006 for 7 weeks and always found them to be the cheapest and with the best (often new) fleet of cars.

As a general rule if you are hiring a car and driving one way between the cities of LA, SFO or LV then there tends not to be a one way drop off fee as so many people travel these routes and the getting the cars back from a to b is easy for them.
There is a lot to see and do if you drive between LV and SFO and i would recommend this and it will be a lot cheaper then flying, if there is 2 or more of you.

Yoesmite is north east of SFO and is a slight detour, but i would say worth the visit at any time of the year. If your going in the summer if may be recommended to book a nights acm there if you plan to stay, the worst thing that could happen is if you drive there and all acm is booked up. Its a very popular place for the locals to visit during the summer season.

Yup, no one way charges when we hired a car.

If you go to Yosemite in May time, it can be one of the best times to visit. The winter snows are melting and the waterfalls tend to be in full flow - Yosemite waterfall is one of the highest in the world and is a real sight close up.
http://www.worldfromtheweb.com/Parks/Yosemite/YosWaterfall.html

One thing to consider is that in May it can still be snowing up in the higher parts of Yosemite, in some of the passes as you drive up the east side - all the passes are very high up so sometimes remain closed in May due to snow. (Don't worry, the roads everywhere are absolutely clear) but it's fantastic to leave Vegas in 100 degree heat and a few hours later be driving through snow lined fir trees in a blizzard! A bit surreal We had to drive round to the main entrance to the park on the west side to get in, in early May.

Cheers

TC

Yes car hire is also an option after taking onboard the advice offered here, thanks again to everyone for your help.