The Disneyland Hotel Deception

My husband and I will be going to Disneyland on Monday and Tuesday for my birthday!  For those of you that know Disneyland, you know that for hotels there are several surrounding the park that are within walking distance.  This is great because you can just walk into the park and you don't have to pay for parking which, as with all things Disney, is severely overpriced.  So when I was looking for a hotel a few months ago, naturally I wanted one of these.

Since it's the middle of summer, a huge tourist time, all these hotels were marked up.  It is impossible to find one under $100 at this time of year.  Just as I was about to book one, it dawned on me . . . how much is parking and how much are hotels outside the walking range?  If you're getting a hotel room within walking distance just to not pay parking, that better be the cheapest option.

When I expanded the radius from even just 2 to 3 miles away from Disneyland instead of just 1, there was a dramatic price drop.  DUH!  Hotels that are within walking distance hugely mark up their price because of the "convenience" of being so close, claiming you don't have to pay the high parking fee.  This is what I now like to call The Disneyland Hotel Deception.  

Here's the truth.  Parking at Disneyland is $17 a day (yes a day!).  BUT if you look for a place a little farther away in Anaheim, you can get a discount hotel at prices far lower than a $17 difference in price from the closer hotels.  That means even though it sucks paying Disney a crazy amount for parking each day, it's still less than staying in a hotel closer and walking.  And it doesn't have to mean getting up that much earlier as we're only talking about a few miles which just adds about a 15 minute driving time.  Plus it's less walking!  I ended up getting a hotel 7 miles away for $60 a night! 

If you really don't want to park, it could still be cheaper to do one of these hotels and use a ridesharing service (see my post Ridesharing).  We're definitely going to do this at least for the first day since I have two $5 off Lyft rides, and the estimated price was $5 - $10 a ride so at most we would just be paying $10.

I'm going to think of these things more from now on instead of falling for marketing ploys.  I can't believe I hadn't thought of this before!  It had just always been a tradition growing up to get one close and walk.

Ridesharing

Since my husband and I got married and moved in with each other almost a year ago, we have been sharing one car.  His work is only a few miles away from our apartment but mine is several, so naturally I'm the one who needs the car more.  When we were figuring out how he can get to and from work when I was using the car, at first we thought that the bus system here would be better than our hometowns.  Not.  The buses don't run very regularly and it would take him an hour, for a trip that takes 10 minutes driving.  And cabs are way too costly.  So for the first few weeks, he would walk.  Which also took an hour but was free.  But we knew this couldn't work forever.  So we went to searching.  And that's when we discovered ridesharing.

Ridesharing is where you use an app to request a ride, a nearby driver of that company will pick you up and take you to your destination.  The cost is much less than a cab and tipping is not expected (and with some not even possible).

It is dominated by two companies: Lyft and Uber.  There are other ones, but these are the biggest and naturally you do want to use a company that has a lot of drivers in your area so the wait time is less.  We used Lyft first, but ran into some issues with the app and found out the customer service isn't the best so we switched to Uber. 

It's a really great option for people that don't have a car, or their car is being worked on, and now I think especially for when you are on vacation.  (Many people also use it as their designated driver so you can go bar hopping and all your friends can drink!)  It's simple to use and what's really great is you don't actually deal with any money with the drivers, it's all paid electronically through the app so it's much faster!

If you're interested, take a look at what ridesharing companies are strong in your area, or the area you are visiting.  But I'd recommend Uber.

 ****Sign up here to get a free ride from Uber!****

I Have a Twitter Account Now! @ewsmm

So I'm not a huge social network person.  I've had Facebook basically since the beginning and that's about it.  I got an Instagram but I have like 4 pictures on it, same with Pinterest.  I didn't even really understand what exactly a hashtag was until a while ago.  I knew it was for Twitter and that's it.

It wasn't until Facebook started using hashtags that I thought I'd try clicking on one to see what it did.  Of course, it brought me to a page that had all the posts of people that used that hashtag.  Ohhhhhhh so it groups like things together.  Genius!  #imanidiot

Well that's cool.  I still didn't really use it.  Then last night, right before I was going to go to bed, it dawned on me . . . I could use hashtags to amp up views on my blog!  #duh

I went and reshared some of my favorite posts on Facebook and, mostly, Google + (cause I didn't want to inundate my actual personal Facebook page with posts) with added hashtags.

There were a lot more views on my pages this morning.  But seeing where they were coming from, I didn't think it seemed right.  So I realized the best way to use hashtags is still with Twitter.  So I signed up for one just to promote this blog.  That's it . . . for now.

So go follow me @ewsmm, I guess ;)