I did consider the USA route but decided against it for three reasons:
1) I didn't want to take 3 weeks holiday from work in one go... I like to have a couple of trips away with the wife during the year or she'll be going on holiday without me! In addition to the holiday, by the time I factored in the cost of flights and insurance, the deal didn't look as good.
2) I didn't want to rush through the training process in 'ideal' (i.e little wind, perfect flying conditions etc) when I knew that 99.9% of my flying would be in wind / cold / rain etc (safety aspect).
3) I didn't want 'learning to fly' to be pressurised. I wanted to learn at my own speed and have no pressure if things were taking longer than I expected.
HTH
Steve