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PAX East Cost
Admiralmatt
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
in PAX East
For anyone with experience. So if we assume $107 for a 3 day pass, $X for a hotel for 1 or 2 people, $Y for cash on hand for other expenses (Food/other). What is X and Y, How much would it cost to go to PAX as a ballpark idea?
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Seems high to me. I am estimating $160 for the passes (no 3-day), $200 for the hotel (I usually split 3 nights 3 ways), $100 for Con expenses (Swag and a board game), and about $240 for food. This is $700 from Thursday-Sunday and obviously you will have to adjust based on your situation. $1000+ seems excessive unless you're planning on going nuts on games at the con.
2 people at aloft for 3 nights will be 640 according to my reservation for last year.
I'd say at least 30/day for food unless you're eating light or finding other options/skipping meals, so 90 dollars for the weekend there.
i'd easily throw on at least 50/day for general spending on "oooh, thats cool"
I tend to budget 1000-1500 for myself with passes, hotel cost, food, travel and merch. I tend to buy some shit, have at least one or two good meals at one of the seafood restaurants, I drive down from Toronto and gotta pay for parking, etc.
Whatever you're ballparking for expenses, unless you have a good amount of willpower, throw in an extra hundred or two for wiggle room. Your numbers look mostly fine in your second post though.
Attended: East 14, 15 and West 16
Attending West 2019
Yeah, I was assuming USD without OP specifying. I'm in the same boat. Thankfully driving(or a porter seat sale)+splitting hotel has always made it reasonable to attend despite the dollar.
Yeah never had a issue with the CAD in travel, either a 8 hour drive or a 2-300 or so dollar flight on Porter, i have seen some say go to Buffalo but with the exchange rate you will end up paying more.
Attended: East 14, 15 and West 16
Attending West 2019
Is the travel, food, and stay split with anyone?
passes 160
train 50
gas to train 30
swag 70
food 150 (normally skip breakfest eat at the con for lunch and then have a nice meal for dinner someplace)
drinking money 300 ( normally its not this much prob closer to 175-200 range but still budget 100.00 a night)
taxi 50 ( I use the shuttle to get to the con but still taxi to a from the hotel from the convention center and then prob once or twice throughout the weekend)
hotel 150
Only the stay is, I often stay at the Westin Boston Waterfront, though last year I had to unfortunately stay at the Westin Copley Square. Either way, that amounts to $200-300 for each person in my room. Travel I try to get the $1 buses from NYC, but I'm not too disappointed if I end up with a $15-$30 round trip. Food I don't generally eat a lot, but lunch and dinner under $10 each, so $60 (dinner Thursday, lunch dinner Friday, Saturday, and lunch on Sunday.) I often splurge a little here though, I like barhopping though it's no where near as fun to do in Boston as it is here haha.
http://east.paxsite.com/news/pax-east-2017-approaches
And my budget this year is:
Passes - $160
Hotel - $170/night plus tax (3 nights, divided by 4 people.. comes out to $150 ea)
Transportation - $50 (we're driving from Pittsburgh in one of our cars)
Uber from the con - $20 (hotel has a shuttle going there in the mornings)
Food - usually no more than $100
Total necessary expenses: about $500
And then on top of that, whatever alcohol we buy for the room and other stuff I want to spend money on. I usually don't spend more than $150 for both of these
$160 - Badges
$200 - Round-trip flights (from Charleston, SC)
$250 - Four nights nearby hotel, split with three others (I've done three nights in the past, but staying Sunday night makes a big difference IMO)
$200 - Everything else (food, modest amount of merch, ???)
Last number could easily grow but that's already over $800. PAX ain't cheap!
PAX East Attendee since 2011
Passes are usually about $80 and I go all 3 days.
flight is what I saved on this year so $300-$500
hotel was 170 a night for thurs-mon split among 5 of us, so $180 after conversion
$200 American for spending
I've been saving since I left PAX East 2016 so I'm over half way on my saving
PAX East Attendee - 2015, 2016
150 passes
30ish Gas/Tolls
200ish Food/Drink
250ish Merch
725ish Hotel/Parking (all my friends snore badly and i'm a super light sleeper, so single occupancy close by lol)
1375ish. PAX is one of the highlights of my year, so I like to enjoy the living hell out of it
$160 passes
$20 for train
$20 Lyft
$200 for food
$300 alcohol and/or parties (I probably wont use this much but I want to be flexible)
$900 hotel/merch (goal is to snag Westin again. If I bring roommates then whatever I save will be going towards swag and games I buy)
$1600. Yup, don't look at me.
Yeah, it's really only the hotel that's all that expensive. If I'm not able to get Westin I might try to take my car in, but I'm sure I'll flip flop on whether to do that over the next five months.
$30 or so for parking
$20 for gas
$250 for food and merchandise
Gonna reuse last few years cosplay (TF2 Engineer and Fallout 4 Vault Dweller.) So I will have a little more cash this time hopefully.
So for now $675
I'm not sure if this is what Sepioth does for parking, but if I was to take my car in I definitely would not park it in the Seaport district. Way too expensive for more of the places down there. I would park it somewhere outside of the city. Alewife if you're coming from the north and I think people like Quincy if you're coming from the south. I'm not sure of the actual numbers, but it is so much cheaper. Then, just take the T in from there.
As far as food goes, for lunch you could choose to make some deli sandwiches ahead of time and stuff them in a lunch bag with an ice pack. It would get your lunches down a reasonable amount.
Hotel (my share) - $505
Flight - $479
Food - $250
Spending - $500
So total for me is about $1900 ... but I kind of like to not worry about money while I'm there.
I live 30 mins away and we get there early enough to park at the main lot. I believe parking is $20 a day.
@RedK232 for food try the food trucks they have had last few years. Reasonably priced and usually pretty good food.
160 for passes
282 for hotel (3 night stay at the Renaissance, divided by 3, plus taxes and fees)
About $30 for gas (Driving from Montreal in one car, split 3 ways)
Food and merch: I play this by ear, usually around $300-400 USD
PSN: L00nyEclip
Steam: Loony Eclipse
Twitter: @Loonyeclipse
That bacon truck last PAX...
Man, I had one of those grilled cheese sandwiches last year? Damn that was good.
PAX East Attendee - 2015, 2016
Those garages rule set to have all day/all night rates. But over night is what they don't do from what I remember. It is priced differs and they have shuttles services at least.
I'm in the same situation as I come from CT. Last year, I was lucky to stayed at the Seaport Hotel and was able to have in & out privilege and over night stay parking at a pretty good reduced rate.
It was really convenient as I brought my own futon and all. Plus storage if I bought stuff from the con and free swag.
250-300 Round trip, that's pretty standard.
Some of the Hotels include free parking.
PAX East Attendee - 2015, 2016
It seems pricey but then when you realize what the standard rate for these hotels is, you're getting a good night. The Seaport would normally run you close to $400/night without the PAX discount.
Alewife is $7 if you can be in and out within 14 hours, $15 after. That's not really much better than parking in the BCEC lots really.