Disney & Anthony's Birthday

Where is your happy place? For Anthony, it is Disneyland. For me, it is with him. So, for his birthday we went to Disneyland. Simple right? Well for this blog, I thought I would talk about value - the perceived value of a Southern California Select Annual Pass specifically. When we bought ours, it was $129 per pass, plus an additional $40 for a pass with free parking. Combined, we spent on May 7th, 2009 about $324 for these passes. This year, the Year of Celebration, Disney lets you get a gift card equal to the current price of admission, so today, it was $72. Anthony found an awesome Billabong jacket for about that much and got it for his birthday. Let's subtract that gift card from the spent balance as "cash back" for us. So now, we have really only think we have spent $252.

Knowing Anthony and our mutual love of amusement parks and roller coasters, I know we would have bought at least one day each in the two parks - so let's subtract the value of a single day of parking and two costs of entry ($10 and $72x2 respectively). That brings our balance to $252-$154 = $98. Considering we will visit at least another 5 times in the next few months, our total cost per visit is about $9.80 each, about the same cost as a movie! Pretty decent perceived value for both he and I and a great bonus for Disney. In addition, this high perceived value allows us as consumers to justify spending nearly $80 at Ariel's Grotto for Anthony's Princess lunch (including the Fairy Godmother - so appropriate no?) We do love the princesses. . .