Las Vegas to Los Angeles bus tour, $699

The Real Deal: Five-nights' accommodations, motor coach travel, guided city tours, national park entrance fee, and some meals from $699 per person.

When: Depart Wednesdays between Apr. 18 and Dec. 26, 2007. During late Mar. and early Apr., additional departures may be available at deeper discount. Contact the tour operator to learn more.

The Fine Print: Based on double occupancy; single supplement is $250. (Nearly half of Contiki's clients travel alone.) Travelers must be between 18 and 35 years-old. Three dinners and three breakfasts are included. The tour ends in Anaheim, which is about 40 miles from the nearest major airport. Expect to pay about $30 for an airport transfer. Cancellation rules vary by circumstance. For example, if you cancel within seven days of departure, you will generally be charged half of the full cost of the trip regardless of the reason for cancellation. For general guidelines on evaluating deals, click here.

Book By: No deadline; based on availability.

Contact: Contiki, 866/266-8454, contiki.com

What Makes This a Deal: Consider that the $699 rate breaks down to about $139 per person per night. That is a significant discount compared with the cost of independently purchasing the trip¿s components: accommodations, local transportation, national park entrance fees, several meals, and guided city tours. Throughout the trip, guides are available for insight and assistance.

Trip Details: The package covers lodging and transportation for five nights. On the first morning of the trip, you depart Las Vegas and travel to Bass Lake, Calif., where you will stay in a mountainside hotel in a four-person suite. On day two, you visit California's Yosemite National Park, home to sequoias, waterfalls, gorges, and granite cliffs.

You visit San Francisco for the trip's third and fourth days. Included in the itinerary is a city tour of key tourist spots, such as the Golden Gate Bridge. An optional afternoon sailing trip costs $39 per person. On the fourth day, you hit the beach in Santa Barbara. Then you lodge at a hotel in a nearby coastal village.

The trip ends in Los Angeles with a walking tour of Hollywood Boulevard, the cost of which is included in the trip's price. After a stop in Venice Beach, the trip ends in Anaheim.

Contiki sells its packages in 35 countries around the world, so you should expect to meet people of other nationalities on this popular tour of California. Trips are for only for 18- to 35- year-olds.

Find the current forecast California and Nevada here.

Getting There: Airfare is not included in Contiki's package. To get a sense of the cost, here are the lowest round-trip fares (arriving in Las Vegas and returning from Los Angeles International or Long Beach, Calif.) that we've found for a Apr. 18, 2007, departure: $229 from Burlington (JetBlue); $234 from Chicago (America West); $264 from Minneapolis-St. Paul (Northwest); $269 from Atlanta (AirTran) and $410 from Seattle (Southwest).

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