This is the first blog post for AppliedValueInvestor (AVI) for the year 2019. While I could list several reasons for my lack of blogging activity, the biggest contributor to my lack of blogging productivity has been the paucity of worthwhile value investing ideas in the current market environment.
More recently, I have gotten interested in the FIRE (Financially Independent Retire Early) movement . Having read several personal blog articles from ardent followers of FIRE philosophy, I am very much motivated to embark on my own FIRE journey.
As such, starting today, I am going to expand the scope of my blog to also incorporate my adventures in Personal Finance and the FIRE. While RE or Retire Early is not the primary objective for me, FI sure is. I am hopeful that by expanding the scope of focus for this blog, I can not only be more productive in my blog writing but also use the platform to document my journey towards FI. Hopefully I can in a small way contribute back to the FIRE movement from which I have learned much over the last six months.
Going forward, this blog will comprise of mix of articles on value investing and my personal journey towards FI.
Having just returned from a week long family vacation to Disneyland Parks, whats better than to share our experience planning and executing on a family Disneyland vacation that did not break the bank.
The article is divided into three parts, the first being planning and budget for the trip, the second being the actual visit to the park and the third being a short synopsis of the trip and a reminder of things we would do differently the next time round.
Planning and Budget
As soon as our daughter turned 4 in late May of this year, we embarked on plans for a family vacation to Disneyland, California. While, both myself and Mrs AVI have been to Disney World Parks in Florida, neither our son, who is now 7.5 years old nor our daughter have ever been to any of the Disneyland Parks. So, when we told them of our upcoming family trip to Disneyland, their joy knew no bounds!!!
Customer obsession is the first leadership principle of Amazon and the backbone of this principal is working backwards. Having worked at Amazon, I have sincerely embraced this principle in all things life. As such, our plan began by imagining me writing this article and logging all our expenses. We began our planning with a clear idea about the dollar amount that we would be comfortable spending for our annual family vacation: $3000. With a firm budget set, we started putting our plan into action.
- Given Disneyland California has two parks, Disneyland proper and Disney California Adventure, and assuming, with two kids in tow, it would be near impossible to do park hopping on any given day, we decided to purchase 3-day 1-park per day tickets.
- The next agenda on our to do list was to fix the travel dates. We settled on July 15th through July 19th, primarily because, these were the best days that we could find to book a return flight from SEA to LAX for a party of 4 under $1000. Travel cost also included, airport parking for 4 days for our car at SEA and rental car at LAX.
- While Disneyland resort stay would certainly would have been our preferred choice for accomodation, the price tag of $300 to $400 per night on the lower end of luxury spectrum, pretty much ruled out this option for us. Of the remainder of available options, traditional hotel room vs. Airbnb, we erred on the side of Airbnb, with the assumption that we could book a Airbnb room that could easily accomodate the 4 of us as well as offer amenities like full kitchen, quite useful when traveling with young kids. Proximity to Disneyland was also quite important, given our plans to maximize our stay at Disneyland Park rather than commute to the park.
- Food expenses can add up quickly, especially if all food is purchased within the park. Add kid demands for ice-creams and other goodies inside the park, and the costs can add up quite quickly. Through blog post on “Disneyland on a Budget” by mommymouseclubhouse.com (a great website to learn all things Disney), Mrs AVI found out that Disneyland allows visitors to bring their own food. This was a valuable piece of information for Mrs AVI to diligently plan towards preparing for pre-cooked meals for us to eat within during our visits to the park.
The list below provides a summary of all the costs associated with pre-planning for our trip (round up to nearest dollar amount)
- Airlines Ticket– Alaska Airlines flight from SEA to LAX for 4 persons, $962
- Disneyland 3-day 1-park per-day tickets for 4 persons, 2 adult and 2 children, $1160
- Airbnb stay in Garden Grove, about 3 miles from the park, for 4 nights, $370
- Rental Car booking, 4 days, Advantage car rental, $101
- Airport parking, 5 days, $48
- Disneyland parking, 3 days, $75
Total cost, $2716
Visit to the Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure
We had 3 days to cover 2 parks and $284 to spend. It sure was going to be fun. Given we had no idea which of the two parks the kids would enjoy the most and the time it would take to cover the essentials within each park, we decided on visiting Disneyland Park on the first day, Disney Califnoria Adventures on the second day, leaving 3rd day optional to decided after experiencing the two parks.
Day 1: Our 3-day pass offered us the opportunity to enjoy early admission to the Disneyland Park starting at 7.00 AM in the morning. The usual park hours are 8.00 AM to 12.00 AM. Having flown into LA the previous night, there was no way we were going to enjoy this extra hour at the park at the cost of waking up an hour early in the morning.
By the time we reached the park, it was 9.30 AM. As soon as we were handed the park map, we realized it was impossible to cover the entire park in a single day. Thank goodness, we had one extra day on hands.
Disneyland Park is divided into 9 thematic regions (2019 Map): Main Street, USA; Adventureland; New Orleans Square; Critter Country; Star Wars: Galaxy’s edge; Frontierland; Fantasyland; Mickey Toontown and Tomorrowland
We decided to cover the left half of the map, leaving the right half for the third day, assuming Adventure Park would be a one day visit. That meant our goal was to cover the essentials within, Adventureland, New Orleans Square, Critter Country, Star Wars and Frontierland.
About an hour into trip within park, we learned about the Disney Park app, which I promptly downloaded (so much for pre-planning duh…). As it turns out the app comes quite handy to plan ones way around the park. The app offers estimate wait times for all rides and also is a place from where one could purchase Maxpass for $15 per person per day.
As we found out on day 2 of our visit, Maxpass offers two essential benefits and with 20-20 hindsight, Maxpass is most certainly worth the price. The first benefit is the ability to obtain Disney fastpass via the app. While it will take an entire blog article to explain the nuances of fastpass, for the sake of brevity it suffices to mention that fastpass offer visitors an opportunity to skip long lines, especially for popular rides. The second benefit of maxpass is photo access. While this benefit does not sound much of a benefit, it turned out to be the most loved benefit of maxpass for our family. Family photos at prime spots in high res, available for download via app as it turns out is priceless.
We did not avail of these benefits on our fist day at the park as we were not exactly sure how the Maxpass works and whether the purchase is worth the price. Even without Fastpass, by end of the day, we managed to visit almost all regions of the park that we intended to visit except for Frontierland. The essential rides that we managed to cover were: Jungle Cruise and Indiana Jones Adventure at Adventureland; Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Carribean at the New Orleans Sqaure, Splash mountain at the Critter Country and Millennium Falcon at the Star Wars: Galaxy Edge.
Indian Jones Adventure ride probably was the best amongst all the rides followed by the Splash Mountain ride. Haunted Mansion in our opinion was not worth the wait in the Standby line (long line with no fastpass access).
Our first day at Disneyland parks ended with the awe inspiring Disneyland fireworks show, the Fantasmic. We left the park at around 11.00 PM totally exhausted but excited all the same for our second day venture into the Disney California Adventures park.
Thanks to the diligent planning of Mrs AVI, for day one, our food cost was $10 for purchase of 2 ice-cream cones. Two more days to go and $274 still available to spend.
Day 2: Day 2 at the park started for us at 10.30 AM. The excursions of day previous certainly had taken their toll. The first thing we did as soon as we entered the park was to purchase the MaxPass, total cost $60.
With Maxpass in hand, I immediately loaded up with couple of fast passes for the seemingly popular rides, identified by the wait times seen on the app: The Incredicoaster and the Radiator Springs Racers.
Google search for fastpass shows that the maximum number of fastpasses accessible per day are limited to 3. This led to some confusion for me as I was deciding on the third fastpass to add to our list. As it turns, with maxpass there are no limits on how many fastpasses one could get. The limit is on the timing for getting the fastpasses after the first batch of 3. It seems after accessing the first 3 fastpasses, one has to wait for about and hour and half to add any new fastpass to the app.
Disney California Adventures Park is divided into the following seven thematic regions: Buena Vista Street; Hollywood Land; Bugs Land; Cars Land; Pacific Wharf; Paradise Pier and Grizzly Peak.
With Maxpass in hand, we zoomed through the line for the Incredicoaster. This ride has a height limit of 42″ or higher, which meant our daughter, who is 40″ in height could not enjoy the ride. With fastpass in hand, both myself and Mrs AVI took turns with our son to enjoy the ride, while the other person was with our daughter. Without fastpass, it would have been impossible for each of us to separately go onto the ride.
As the day went on, we zoomed through all the regions of the park with fastpasses in hand at the same time taking advantage of several photo ops along the way.
Of the map-front page listed attractions “you won’t want to miss”, including, Frozen-Live show, Soarin Around the World, Radiator Springs Racers , Toy Story Mania and Turtle Talk with Crush, we managed to cover all but the one, Toy Story Midway Mania. The Frozen theatric show, was probably the highlight of the day followed by the Guardian of Galaxy- Mission Breakout ride. We went into the ride with our daughter, as she met the 40″ height limit to the dot. This is an accelerated drop ride attraction and some what scary. What was priceless was our daughters reaction after the ride… “Bad ride, scary…. I don’t like it!!”
Day two expense, in addition to the Maxpass purchase was limited to 3 ice cream cones, total cost $15. One more day to go and $199 availale to spend.
Day 3: Back to Disneyland Park.
Day two at Adventure Park was not as tiring as the first day at Disneyland Park. We attribute this to the fact that we did not have to wait in long lines through some smart use of fastpasses. Still, by the time we reached Disneyland Park for our third and final day of visit, it was 10.30 AM.
As was the case on day 2, the first thing we did was to purchase the Disney Maxpass, total cost $60. The kids were bent on getting the Mickey Mouse glowing bubble wand and
on day 3, we finally caved in and ended up purchasing two wands for a total cost of $50.
. With the Maxpass and the bubble wand in hand, we were ready for the adventures of the day. Our goal was to cover the remainder of the Disneyland Park, i.e., Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, Frontierland and the Mickey’s toontown.
Quite similar to what I did at the Adventures Park, my plan was to get the first 3 fastpasses as soon as I could for our day 3 visit to Disneyland Park. However, as it turns out at the Disneyland Park,we could avail only one fastpass at a time, followed by a wait period of about hour and a half. I am not 100% sure whether above is the case or I did something wrong with the app that prevented me from getting 3 fastpasses at one go the first time round.
Regardless, instead of 3 fastpasses in tow, we had one fastpass to begin our day with. The first fastpass was used up for the Matterhorn Bobsleds ride within the Fantasyland. Following which, without any fastpasses we managed to cover most of the rides within Fantasyland, almost all of which are geared towards kids under age 5.
Our next destination was Tomorrowland, where with some smart choice of fastpass, we managed to cover all the fun rides, including the Star Wars, the Adventure Continues, the Astro Orbitor, and the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster rides. We then moved onto the Frontierland, where, again with the help of fastpass we managed to skip the line for the Big ThunderMountain Railroad ride.
It was 8.00 PM by the time we reached Mickey’s toontown, our final destination at Disneyland Parks. As luck would have it, Mickey’s toontown is the only area within the park that closes at 8.30 PM. Here we waited in the long line for the Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin ride and by the time we were done with the ride it was 8.40 PM.
For our last hour at the park, we headed back to the Star Wars: Galaxy Edge for some more photo ops and scope of icecream, total cost $15.
For the third day of our trip, the total cost was $130.
The next morning we bade adios to Disneyland Parks, heading back home to Seattle. All in all, the total cost of our Disneyland vacation, $2,939, $61 shy of the $3000 budget we set for ourselves.
A few things that we would do differently the next time round.
As I am writing this, there are a few of things that come to mind that we probably would do differently, should we embark on yet another family Disneyland venture.
- July is probably not the best of times to visit Disneyland, given the temperatures are soarin and Disneyland Park tickets are not necessarily cheap for a visit in mid-summer
- While, home cooked food was a smart idea to allow us to limit our food expense within the park, the weight of carrying 6 water bottles and all the food each day is not ideal. May be, may be.. it is worthwhile to travel light and to spend some dough purchasing all meals within the park.
- Get Maxpass for all days of visit to the park. Fastpass was definitely worth the money to cover all the rides that we did on Day Two and Three.