Saving Money on Attractions
Next up in the series of money saving tips for vacation…saving money on attractions! While some vacations only involve a beach chair and an umbrella drink, most vacations with kids will include at least one attraction, museum, or event. These things can really take up a bulk of your vacation budget if you aren’t careful, so here are some ways to save on all of those fun excursions!
Plan Ahead
Don’t just show up at your vacation destination and figure out what you are going to do after you get there. Not only is that just not good planning, you will definitely end up spending top dollar on your admissions to attractions. Do some research before you leave! Figure out what your vacation area has to offer and check into each one to gauge what the price of admission is and if there are any discounts readily available. Some museums have discounted admission on specific days of the week or after a certain time of day. Many attractions have coupons available online that will help you to save on admission. With a minimal amount of digging you can get a few dollars off at most big attractions.
Use your Resources
Start with the Convention and Visitors Bureau for your vacation destination to see if they have any coupons or discounts available. Then see if there are any local publications that have coupons online. Just like KCParent.com has a page full of coupons for local attractions, other local parenting magazines may have their own coupon pages!
Buy an Entertainment Book or a CityPass
Check out www.citypass.com if you plan on visiting multiple attractions in each city. By using CityPass you can save big on the combined admission prices by buying one pass that gets you into a list of major attractions. For example, the Chicago CityPass allows you to enter the following attractions for $84 total.
- Shedd Aquarium
- Skydeck Chicago
- The Field Museum
- John Hancock Observatory OR Museum of Science and Industry
- Adler Planetarium OR Art Institute of Chicago
The regular price of all of these attractions would be over $160! But be aware that if you don’t make it to all of the attractions, your savings may not be as great as you would like.
Another option is buying an Entertainment Book for your destination. Entertainment Books have coupons for attractions as well as restaurants and shops in most major cities. The bonus is that this time of year Entertainment Books are usually deeply discounted because the coupons expire at the end of the year. So if you are traveling in the next few months you can get one of these books for just a few bucks and make up for it in the savings you’ll get with all of those coupons!
Daily Deal Sites
A few months before you travel, sign up for daily emails from sites like Groupon and Living Social for the city that you will be traveling to. Many times you will end up getting sweet deals on attractions as well as restaurants.
If you do end up in your vacation destination without finding any discounts ahead of time, be sure to stop by the concierge desk at your hotel (or the front desk if your hotel doesn’t have a concierge) and ask them how you can get in for less. They will often have fliers with coupons or other tricks on how to get in for less that they will be happy to share with you!
Happy Trails!