With These Prices, Is Disneyland Really The Happiest Place On Earth?

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By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com Travel Editor

My friend Gabi offered to drive me from Hermosa Beach to the Amtrak station in Anaheim (I take Amtrak between LA and San Diego instead of driving the 5/405 to do the video podcast PubClub LIVE!) and I gladly accepted of course.

Now Gabi being Gabi, she wanted a little adventure with the ride. I had offered to buy here lunch and immediately she said “let’s go to Disneyland!”

“Sure,” I remarked. I had not been to Disneyland in years and while we would not be going inside the park we would be close enough to it to get a feeling of ‘the happiest place on earth.”

Well, after getting our lunch bill, I wondered how it could be the happiest place with those prices.

It was more than $70 and that’s without the tip. We had a couple of okay lunches and a couple of drinks. Then we got hit with a $30 parking fee. Good grief, Goofy, we were only there a couple of hours. So lunch really cost $100. That’s a Ben Franklin. Wow.

She suggested the Disneyland tiki bar and naturally I agreed. Heck, I didn’t even know Disneyland had a tiki bar – how cool! We went there, got a couple of very good rum drinks (impressive; I was expecting something touristy) that reminded me of Smuggler’s Cove in San Francisco.

We then ordered lunch; I got the closest thing they had to a Hawaiian plate lunch and she the same. It was fine but it hardly filled me up. In fact, I broke into my stash of peanuts as soon as I got on the train to satisfy my lingering hunger.

Imagine how much it would have cost had we gone into the park. Disneyland just raised its ticket prices to between $104-179 depending on the day and how busy they are that day and time of the year. Tack that onto the price of lunch and one drink, along with parking and we’re looking at around $250.

Heck, we practically could have taken a 3-day cruise to Mexico for that price.

So it’s hard for me to consider Disneyland “the happiest place on Earth” at these prices.

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