I Spent 13 Days Doing A Round The World Trip: How To Plan One?

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Yes. It was time to start planning the Round The World Trip 2023. And this time I wanted to do it in April, taking advantage of the Passover and Easter Holidays, although it was going to be a very tight trip.

To understand how I planned this annual trip, it is important to know the timeline of it.

August 2022: Conceptualization

8 months in advance. My Round the World Trip 2022 was going to be between September and October 2022, so I started to think when the next one was going to be. I picked April 2023, not only for the Passover and Easter holidays, but also because I wanted to get the RTW23 out of the way, and maybe use the September holidays for other trips.

But where should I go this time around? How? Using miles or cash? For how many days? Should I request PTO? What’s the approach on hotels? Or should I stay in hostels?

All these questions of course come up at the Conceptualization phase of any trip. Think about it as a project, where at the beginning you only know you have to do it, but you are not sure about the other W questions. For now, I wanted to give it the time in my calendar.

September 2022: When? Where?

I had decided to pick the days from April 05, 2023 to the 17th, requesting only 1 day of PTO. 13 days was the shortest RTW I would have ever done, but it was doable still. The shortest one had been 18 days in 2017, and even in 2022 I was able to do it in 19 days. But with other trips coming up in 2023, that I had already planned like a 7 day Cruise for Alaska, I would not have too many PTO to use this time around.

Now that the WHEN was out of the way, the most important question, the WHERE came up. This is when I check my List of Places I want to Visit, which I keep in my keep.com tab. I noticed that I had picked Universal Singapore for the RTW2022 and one of the 7 New Wonders of Nature. Maybe should I try to continue crossing out from the list these wonders and all the Universal parks in the world? Would RTW23 be a continuation of RTW22? The answer was yes. But what Wonders of Nature should I visit this time around? Let’s check the list:

Now that I had picked South Africa, where Table Mountain is located, I started immediately checking for flights to NYC and viceversa using Google Flights. There was a direct United flight from Johannesburg to Newark, that was also a red-eye (which I love), so I focused on this one first. Yes, I was buying the return first than anything else. I was going to finish my RTW in South Africa. The prices were crazy but Google Flights can tell you the history of them, so I set an alarm for when the price would drop (almost to half the current price). This is always a gamble, but can save you tons of money.

Now, while I was waiting to buy the return, I needed to pick the first flight. I had a ton of American Airlines miles, so I started playing with their app to see the least amount of miles required for a flight between any of the airports in New York and any of the airports in Japan. Why Japan? Because there are a few parks in there:

1. Tokyo Disneyland
2. Tokyo DisneySea
3. Universal Studios Japan in Osaka

I also love Japan, so it is always a good idea to go there. Now, with the depart and return flights in the lookout, I only needed to wait until the prices would go down and make it official.

October 2022: Locking the Return flight

I was in the middle of my RTW22 somewhere in Asia, when I finally received the e-mail from Google Flights saying my flight from JNB to EWR had dropped to $569. I had a $400 credit from United that they gave me for canceling one flight before, so I payed $169 for that flight, basically a 15 hour flight for just $169, wow. I bought it so fast, and I remember I was on an Uber when I did all this. Now, it was official, I was going to South Africa last in my RTW23.

November 2022: Locking the Departure and Connection flights

I do not know why it took me so long, but I finally bought the departure flight from JFK to Haneda, using my American Airlines miles and $5.60 in fees. With the outward and inward flights locked, it was time to start planning the entire trip.

Now the question was, how to get from Japan to South Africa? I did multiple combinations using Google Flights, from airports in Japan and close to Japan and airports in South Africa. One combination resulted the best money and time wise: Hong Kong-Addis Ababa-Cape Town on Ethiopia Airlines. Hong Kong had a theme park too: Hong Kong Disneyland, so it was decided: I would pass by HKG, go to Disney and then continue to Africa.

On November 15, I created a Excel Spreadsheet with the following columns: Day of the week, Date, Flight (or transportation), Departure Time, Arrival Time, Price of Transportation, Night (as in what city to spend the night). After seeing how to do Tokyo, Osaka, Hong Kong, Cape Town and Johannesburg in just 13 days, basically playing with dates and flight times, I bought all the connection flights. Only the train from Tokyo to Osaka would be missing.

December 2022: Plan Each City in Japan

Now, the fun part was about to start. In Google Maps I had to bookmark every place I wanted to go to, as “Travel Plans”. In order to do that I just google for example: “Things to do in Tokyo”, or “Things to do in Disneyland Tokyo”. I usually do these searches cronologically, so I finished with Tokyo, and Osaka first. After doing this and having marked the spots on each city, I picked a hotel geographically convenient. Both hotels I picked were in the vecinity of the parks, and chose the cheapest but most convenient options in both cases, using my old friend Booking.com.

Following this I bought the train from Tokyo to Osaka using Rail Ninja. Since it was a few months before, I could not yet buy the tickets to the theme parks, but I set a reminder in my Google Calendar to do so as soon as I could.

Other things that I checked and continued checking during this time were Covid restrictions, visa requirements and everything needed to enter without a problem to these countries. Only Hong Kong had a problem with Covid but I kept an eye on it in case it would change in the following months.

January 2023: Plan Each City in South Africa

It was now the time of South Africa. I would enter through Cape Town, so I knew I was going to Table Mountain regarless, it was the whole point of coming to this country. But I would depart from Johannesburg. What is it to do there? When I Googled “things to do in Johannesburg” I was surprised it had safaris. I had never done any safari before, so I did my research and found a nice one day one in Pilanesberg, close to JNB. I proceeded to also book the hotels and other spots on these 2 cities.

With all the info, I proceeded to create a folder especifically for this trip on my OneDrive and added all the flights and main events to my Google Calendar.

February 2023: Booking the Theme Parks

The dates for April finally showed up for the Disney and Universal parks, so I finally booked the tickets for all of them. Since their respective websites do not accept American credit cards, I used Klook, a very trustful service to buy not only the entrance tickets, but also the Express Pass in Universal Studios Japan, and the entrance and Premier Access passes in Hong Kong Disneyland. Right after doing this I had to reserve the day on Hong Kong Disneyland as well.

March 2023: Final Preparations

Less than one month before the main event of the year, and now I needed to double check everything:

• Flights have not changed, especially the times or dates.
• Hotels are still convenient, compare with others around and make sure are the best option.
• Covid restrictions for each country and in the them parks.
• What bags are allowed on my flights? Did I choose the seats during check out?
• Check and add to Watch Later videos on YouTube of places I am visiting.
• What is the temperature in each destination and what to pack according to this?
• Make a list of what to eat on each place. For example, google “things to eat in Tokyo Disneyland”, and find potential restaurants I would visit.
• Download offline Google Maps for every city I would visit.
• Go over the list of things to pack.

April 2023: About to board the RTW

A few days before I had to make sure of some things:

• I pack properly (trying not to bring anything unnecessary)
• I print all the documents just in case I lose or get my phone stolen.
• I also scan my passport, visas and everything and put them on a cloud like OneDrive. Download this cloud to be offline, in case I lose service.
• I make sure my phone carrier will have service in all destinations.
• Leave everything ready at work.
• Download videos and series on the cellphone, to have entertainment.
• Leave everything ready in my apartment while I am gone.

Round The World Trip 2023

This is the RTW 2023:

You can now read all the chapters of this trip:

1. Why is it good to do an annual Round The World Trip? My latest experience.
2. Amazing Uber Tour of Johannesburg
3. I spent a day doing a Safari in Pilanesberg: Full of Surprises!
4. I spent a day traveling to Johannesburg… and it was fascinating!
5. I spent a day touring the Surprising Cape Town
6. I spent a day in Cape Town: another Wonder of The World in the bag!
7. I spent 20 hours traveling from Hong Kong to South Africa
8. I spent an evening in Hong Kong Disneyland
9. I Left Hong Kong Disneyland To Go Explore This Amazing City!
10. I Spent 3 Hours in Hong Kong Disneyland… And Did Everything!
11. I Spent A Day Exploring The Modern City Of Osaka!
12. I Spent An Evening In The Wonderful Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Japan!
13. Things To Do At The Wonderful Universal Studios Japan
14. Tokyo DisneySea During A Rainy Day: Best Things To Do
15. Tokyo DisneySea In Just One Day: What To Do?
16. I Left Tokyo Disneyland, Explored Tokyo And Came Back
17. Tokyo Disneyland In One Day: What To Do?
18. I Spent A Day Traveling From New York To Tokyo

If you have any questions about how I planned this trip, or anything else please comment down below.