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PAX trip: costs?
Erin The Red
The Name's Erin! Woman, Podcaster, Dungeon Master, IT nerd, Parent, Trans. AMABaton Rouge, LARegistered User regular
The Name's Erin! Woman, Podcaster, Dungeon Master, IT nerd, Parent, Trans. AMABaton Rouge, LARegistered User regular
OK folks, after reading about how much fun people had this year at PAX, I want to get in on some of this. Before that can happen, time must pass, of course. Also, I need to save dollars and such, and plan. That's where you come in.
For those of you that have been to PAX (the main one, for the sake of this discussion), how much does all this cost?
I'm just looking for a breakdown if any of you have one.
I think next year is 4 days as opposed to 3? Anyway.
How much was your hotel room when you stayed? Did you need to rent a car? Is public transit useful enough to negate the need for the vehicle? How much are tickets? How much eating out did you do? How much did all that cost?
Also, once you're actually AT PAX, is all of the event stuff (panels, musical acts and the like) included?
Thanks in advance!
For those of you that have been to PAX (the main one, for the sake of this discussion), how much does all this cost?
I'm just looking for a breakdown if any of you have one.
I think next year is 4 days as opposed to 3? Anyway.
How much was your hotel room when you stayed? Did you need to rent a car? Is public transit useful enough to negate the need for the vehicle? How much are tickets? How much eating out did you do? How much did all that cost?
Also, once you're actually AT PAX, is all of the event stuff (panels, musical acts and the like) included?
Thanks in advance!
Erin The Red on
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4 nights of hotel was a little over $800 this year. Plane tickets for me were almost $300. You can split the former cost, not the latter.
I ate out for pretty much all my meals, and also drank. So, uh, that was probably another couple hundred bucks.
The pass is probably the most affordable part, provided you got one before they sold out. (Remember: they sold out in less than a day this year.)
I'd say that I probably budgeted about $1000 for PAX. But this is also pretty much my big vacation for the year.
But again I don't know if they remove all of those reserved rooms when big events like this come around, since I wouldn't be surprised if they're smart enough to plan for it... but if you managed to pull it off, you could get 4 to 5 nights in a hotel for 250-300 bucks instead of 800+ and it'd be a nice one too.
http://metro.kingcounty.gov/tops/tunnel/tunnel-map.html
If you arrive by rail, same deal. You'd arrive in town next to the International District tunnel station. Seattle is also a very walkable town, and there's plenty of bus coverage if you want to go tour away from the convention center area. The one notable change is that even though the map up there marks out a "ride free area", that's going to go away at the end of the month. Bus fares are around $2.25 for 4 hours of usage currently. If you stay in one of the main PAX hotels (Sheraton or Hilton) and decide not to tour the rest of the city, you will be within 3 blocks of anything you could ever want for.
I'd only advise renting a car if you were interested in heading out of the city to go visit one of our state parks, and only for the time you would be out there.
Well, the main issue with Priceline is that you could end up with something that isn't within walking distance of the convention. However, there are hotels that aren't in the block reservations near the center. For instance, last year one of my friends had a boatload of hotel points so we stayed at the W for free.
We tried to bring an extra $1000 for spending costs just because we didn't know what we were going to buy, misc charges from the hotel, airport hassles, food between trips, etc.
If you're going solo, you can make the trip for $2000 easily. If you're doing a group thing the cost jumps down considerably.
Personally I wouldn't consider going to PAX with less than $1000 in spending cash, but that's just me. I don't think of it as a convention. I think of it as a week long vacation like I were flying to Alaska or the Beach or something.
I hope I can convince my wife to come along, but if not, I can always just invite a bunch of random forumers to sleep in the room and save money!
hotel:
i'm the one who usually works out what's what for my north jersey/nyc crew when we ship up to boston (whoa oh oh). this has run from 5-10 people on various years. i always round up generously for taxes, this way when then real number hits and people get some money back it makes them feel good. and room wise, i always give a cut to the person who is willing to sleep on a cot or the floor. switching people between floor/cot/bed is nice, but not always healthy. so maybe everyone else puts in $5 more so the person on the cot/floor gets about $20-25 back.
and stay at a place that 1. has convention bus service and 2. has stuff nearby that you like (bars, malls, etc.) staying next to the convention is nice, but there really isn't much near there. i like to stay near downtown/chinatown. cause afterwards, that's wher we're drinking/eating. price is of course cheaper. even staying at a place that has a shuttle service, you may want to spring for a cab back to the hotel if the shuttle is running late or you just want out of there. getting back to our hotel cost about 12, tip included. only did this twice or so.
remember when you're staying at a hotel you also want to include parking and maid service tip in the final cost you give to people.
food:
eating around town/at the con is nice, but pack a cooler to save money. bring cereal, oatmeal, lunch meats, bread and fruit. i buy milk when i get into town and free ice to keep it all cool from the hotel. hot water from just running water through the small coffee maker in room for oatmeal. eating breakfast in the hotel and packing a sandwich and fruit for lunch (eat on those long lines or playing a table game) will save you anywhere between 15-30 bucks a day. i also have an osprey water reservoir in my backpack. it's useful.
going out for dinner and drinks was where i spent money. can't really give you any info or tips on this that urbanspoon and yelp couldn't.
spending at the con:
this is where i spend a bit. i buy board games, buttons, autographs and other junk. but i budget myself. i set a price and perform constant WILL checks to respect it. best i can say here is on friday, shop around. just walk the floors and vendors. demo games before you buy them. sometimes if you wait til sunday to make purchases, you can even get a better price, but you can also run the risk of something being sold out.
5 people in my group, so some of these things are divide as such.
but this is MY cost, as in what I paid PAX East 2012:
3 day pass: $65
hotel, parking, maid (thursday-sunday) $130
gas: $10
food brought: $25
lunch/dinner out: $75
convention cash: $120
taxi: $25
so in all, about : $450
some people in my group spent more, some less. just think about how you are on vacation or at other cons. what are you spending habits and how do you budget them?
You can eat out a lot at some very nice places, hit up bars and such, rent out a hotel room for yourself, and spend a bunch at the con. This can easily add up to a couple thousand dollars.
Alternatively, you can rent a bed at the Green Tortoise just down the street from the convention center (4-8-person rooms), and do most of your eating from Target (it has a grocery section and an alcohol section), and not pay money for anything at the con (you can still see a lot of shit, play a lot of games, etc.). Minus airfare (since I don't know where you'd be flying from), this would probably run you about $300-$400.
So, it really depends upon what kind of experience you're looking for. Do you have a preference?
I would like to do some moderate purchasing, but hopefully nothing near 1000 bucks. I mostly want to come and hang with forumers, so there would likely be a decent amount of eating out at restaurants and stuff. I don't really care where I sleep, as long as I don't get stabbed in my sleep haha.
So the flight, round trip, would run you about $400 (ballpark, there's always wiggle room there, but we'll use that for now)
Hotel would be another $200-$600 depending on if you did the multi room thing or just got your own room for the weekend
So that puts you at $600-$1200
Throw in an extra $100 for any hiccups with checked bags and airport food, etc you might have to deal with (that's a high number, but it's always better to be safe than sorry) and you're at $700-$1300
Now for expenses... I'd say $500 is reasonable for a four night stay. That's $125 a day for food and booze if you're a drinker, and there's a lot of great cheap places to drink in the area. You'd still even have a few bucks left to buy a t-shirt or something if you wanted to.
So a safe savings estimate would be between $1200 and $1800. That would pretty much guarantee a good time without being "broke guy" and not worrying about overdrafting your debit card or running short on cash two days in. That's also a good 4-5 day vacation.
An even more brilliant plan would be to get three or four forumers together that you talk to quite a bit on the forums, and go foursies on an apartment or house like that.
Nice thing for me is that I live in Portland, so I will just take a comfy wi-fi enabled train up for 80 bucks round trip.
Yeah I've got a few people I talk to often. Need to see who is amenable to the idea of being temp. roomies, and which ones don't snore/smell much haha.
You should consider the Bolt Bus -- it services PDX/SEA and tickets are currently $10 each way, with free wifi. That's $60 you can spend on miniatures at the show!
https://www.boltbus.com/
Yeah, this is fucking amazing. Thank you for this link. I'll put it away in my trip planner file I have together for PAX next year.
If I tried to scrape and save every penny possible I could probably get away with it for about $650. That's airfare, splitting a hotel 4+ ways, cheap food, and spending next to nothing else. (Traveling from Washington DC.)
A list of things, should you be of the gifting persuasion
As long as I can stream Twitch or Netflix, even on moderate quality, I'll be happy.
Do what many of us do that are forum regulars: bunk with friends.
MrBlarney and I and two to four others from the phalla community have pretty much shared a room for five years running now. The last few have been at the Homewood where we have the attached boardroom which is great for space and hosting and board games. That only costs me personally $280 for the four nights I stay, its a great way to stay and those that are also regulars but not fit into the room do similar things for sharing sleeping space at other hotels, and just use ours to hang. (If you come to PAX, TRV, you are obligated to join us some night for games dammit!)
Flight was $700, food is hard to say because I don't try to budget that, I'll just do what I feel like but if I was trying to save money there are ways.
Flying in, you take the Link light rail end-to-end for a quick easy trip for $2.75. Do not rent a car, not worth it.
This.... PAX 2010 my wife and I were Seattle virgins and the cabbies at the airport were all to happy to bring us downtown for about $48 bucks (after tip) which added $100 to the cost of our trip.
PAX 2011 someone here gave us the advice about the rail and that $100 trip became $6
If/when I come to PAX, games SHALL be had. And fun times. And probably alcohol. And a beard competition. I am up for any and all games.
Flight - $200
Hotel - $180 (Stayed at the Hyatt, roomed with 4 other people from the hotel share thread, slept on the floor but not bad at all, I just brought extra blankets and a pillow)
Food - I spent about 30 bucks a day tops on food, but that was just me exploring and trying fun places. You could definitely eat for less
Souvenirs - There were things I wanted, but they werent exclusive to PAX so I didnt buy them, and some of the other items that I wanted seemed too expensive. I did buy a $10 dice set though. Everything else cool I got was just random swag.
I also spent a small amount of scratch going out to dinner one night with a local friend and seeing the underground. I also got stuck with a $40 cab ride going home because, contrary to what the website says, the light rail didnt start running till 6 instead of 5.
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1. I stayed Tue-Mon so I could go to a bunch of community events outside of PAX proper
2. I didn't split the cost of the hotel room (this is a HUGE one)
3. You could get by for quite a bit cheaper on day to day expenses if you wanted to. I figured I was on vacation so I might as well splurge a bit.
Round trip airfare from MD to Seattle: ~$400
Total hotel bill for a king room + a rollaway at the Sheraton for 6 nights: ~$1300
Misc Travel expenses: ~$150(guestimate)
Food: ~$25 a day x6 = ~$150(guestimate)
Store purchases (games, PAX merch, etc) = ~$120
Tickets and entertainment (Post PAX Party, Magical Mystery Tour Stuff, Catching a movie one night, etc) = ~$100
Total = ~$2220
Like I said though, that's way high for the vast majority of people. I was there extra long and made no effort to conserve money whatsoever.
We stayed with Infy & blarney in the Phallasuite (shut up that's what i'm calling it), so it was $280/person for us for the weekend (thurs-mon). Plus we did the Post pax party which was $40/person.
Food we averaged around $35/day per person and that's with going out to dinner a few nights.
The only other real expenses we had were our board game purchases, and that came out to about $200.
So it can be done for under $1500. Depending on your flights. If I remember correctly the flight from the east coast to Seattle was about $300 for the two of us. But I got a super good deal.
180 for plane
280 for room
40 for PPP
175 for food
200 for other
$1275 just about?
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
Flights $1500 from UK
Apartment $1000 for 2 weeks
Pre- and post-PAX activities $500
then food and stuff.
Worth every penny!
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"The power of the weirdness compels me."
Flight was around 350 from Atlanta to Seattle
Food and other things around Seattle area was around 200-300
I'd say aim for $1200-1300 at the minimum.
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Ferries car and driver +1 return ~$100 with BCFerries experience card
Gas I want to say about $200
Hotel was $550 for the 2 of us for Friday night to monday morning Paid for buy airmiles Best Western gift cards. It was a walk but nothing awfull and there was a few nice resturants near our hotel.
I think we took ~$1000 spending and food money and I converetd at least $200 back into canadian when we got home.
So yeah about $1800 or so for our trip. We missed 3 day passes and only got Sat/Sunday but spent the extra for the hotel sunday night so we didn't have to drive home right after the con, that was one of my best ideas!
I also had the expense of passports and making sure we got them in time since my husbands was out dated and I had never had one. so there was another ~$160
if you're one of those people who has to drop 500 bucks or more on a flight then keeping the total under 1,000 bucks is going to require some thrift. for me personally i save money on transit by going with the train (but i'm closer to pax than you are) and put the left over budget into my food budget, because meals and bars with forumers is my favorite part of the trip.