Name Of Area
Money Saving Tip: If you are traveling from the Philadelphia, Delaware, New Jersey area try parking your car at Hamilton Station in New Jersey. Parking + train tickets are often cheaper than nightly parking in NYC. Also, the train is a double-decker train so the kids love it.
Manhattan
Hotel/ Lodging
Grand Hyatt New York
Information
Grand Hyatt New York rates on their website start at around $280.00 a night (not necessarily a good deal). We paid about $120.00 a night through Priceline (name your own price). Here's more on how we did it.
Bidding on Priceline: I had never used Priceline before, so I went on the web to find out more about it. I was nervous about getting a bad hotel because you don't know the hotel until you book it. I did some research online, there are several online forums about Priceline bidding. I was able to narrow down the hotels used by Priceline at each star rating in Manhattan. As a rule of thumb I would start your bidding on Priceline at about half the rate. published on the hotels website.
Daily Resort Activities
It's not so much about the resort activities in NYC. All of the hotels have smaller rooms and you'll be hard pressed to find a hotel with a pool. The hotel staff at the Hyatt made all of the difference they were polite and even gave my daughters teddy bears when we checked in.
You go to NYC for the shopping, shows and food. Since travel around NYC by car is difficult you want to look for a hotel in Manhattan. The Hyatt was close to everything, we could walk to 5th Ave, 30 Rock and Times Square.
What to do in the area
Here is what we did while we were there:
American Girl Place - bring your doll, shop for new clothes, get her ears pierced or hair styled and stay for dinner. Dinner with your dolls seated right at the table was great and contrary to rumors the food was quite good.
Toys R Us Times Square - they have an awesome indoor Ferris Wheel
FAO Schwarz - it's a must see just to say you have been there
Times Square - again it's a must see, go walk around, have lunch at a NY Deli
The Today Show - if you go on a day with no concert or major star you have a good chance of getting on TV. That crowd is not as big as you think.
Duck Boat Tour: it was a lot of fun just don't do it during a heat wave.