Theme park ticket prices seem to be outrageous. Everyone wants to get a discount to visit the attractions in Southern California. Where does one go to to get the discounts? There are a lot of places to get these discounts – the first suggestion was to go to a timeshare invite package, to receive the discount tickets. Some people have tried this, and say that this works, there are free tickets to places such as Sea World, or Disneyland, offered by Resort Corporation International, Ramada Resorts, or other timeshare condominium resort management companies. If spending the better part of a day being given a sales pitch is worth receiving a “free” theme park ticket to you, by all means, go to the presentation, and spend the day. This is not for all of us, though.
The Ralph’s Advantage card from Ralph’s supermarkets offers a large discount on admission to Knott’s Berry Farm, in Buena Vista, which brings the price of admission to $34.99 for adults, and $19.99 for children. Ralph’s, the local supermarket chain, has supermarkets throughout Los Angeles, San Diego and Anaheim. The Los Angeles Entertainment book also has a coupon good for a 20% discount on a ticket to Knott’s Berry Farm, if you do not want to leave your hotel room to go to the supermarket.
The Ralph’s Advantage card also offers a discount on admission to the Soak City Water Park, for only $21.99. This is the Southern California supermarket chain that offers a discount to Knott’s Berry Farms for $34.99 for a ticket. If you go shopping at a Ralph’s supermarket, look for the coupons on the way into the store, or the way out of the store, near those .25 cent and .50 souvenir toy vending machines.
www.ralphs.com
Knott’s Berry Farm, Buena Vista is a popular theme park. The season ticket deal for $89.99 looks good, especially given the $24.99 buddy pass deal for season ticket holders, if you bring a friend to Knott’s Berry Farm, and have a season pass, their ticket costs only $24.99. Plus there are also barbecue days to Knott’s Theme Park, for $39.99 for adults, or $25.99 for kids and seniors offers a ticket and meal.
www.knotts.com
Sea World San Diego, San Diego is a park that has discount coupons at some Southern California Burger King, McDonald’s, and Taco Bell Restaurants, plus, there is a deal called a silver passport, listed on the website, good for one year, for only $99; the fun pass is good for the remainder of 2008, and costs $65, with the exception of the blackout date of August 31st. Plus, there is a link on the website to both the Los Angeles City Pass, and the San Diego City Pass.
http://www.seaworld.com/sitepage.aspx?PageID=351
The Go Card Los Angeles is available in a 1 day card for $54.99 for adults, and $49.99 for children, 2 days for $89.99 for adults and $69.99 for children; and as well as the 3, 5 and 7 day card passes, and offers free admissions to up to 35 attractions, including Knott’s Berry Farm, the Six Flags theme park, Paramount, Kodak, plus museums galore.
www.gocardlosangeles.com
The Entertainment coupon book, offers several coupon books – the Los Angeles Book offers one coupon good for free admission to Spooky House Haunted Theme Park, Chatsworth, and a 20% coupon discount for the matinee. Right now, the 2008 Entertainment book is free with the on-line purchase of the 2009 Entertainment Coupon book.
www.entertainment.com
Castle Amusement Park, Riverside, this sister park to Boomer’s, is presently offering a summer ticket special – buy a ticket for $24.99 for adults, and $19.99 for children 48″ (4 feet tall) and under, and get the whole summer of admissions to the park – free! Boomer’s is offering deals at various locations, such as the $18.99 admissions coupon to most of the Southern California locations, as well as special deals for the El Cajon Boomer’s, which includes a $5 Fridays deal. The El Cajon Boomer’sFive Dollar Fridays deal includes use of the go-kart, rock, wall, and mini golf; plus a personal pizza, drink and a popcorn/cotton candy combo.
www.boomers.com
Raging Waters, San Dimas has a package for admission after 4 pm; $14.99 for adults, $11.99 for children, and $12.99 for seniors, the parking lot price is still $7 per car.
www.ragingwaters.com
The season membership to MCA/Universal City Walk, Los Angeles. This place also supplies tons of discount coupons to people, and the Go Los AngelesCard offers people who purchase the 7 day pass free admission to Universal Studios, Hollywood. The SoCal CityPass also offers one day of admission to Universal Studios, Hollywood in the package deal (see end of article).
Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus will be appearing in Anaheim at the Staples arena between July 23rd and August 3rd, people who are taking Amtrak will receive general seating tickets for only $8, when showing their ticket stub to the cashier, via the Amtrak “sizzling summer special”.
Children who are less than one year old will also receive a free certificate to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus good for a free circus ticket via the “Baby’s First Circus” program by printing out a certificate after filling out a form on the website, this offer is also good for twins. Meanwhile, triplets under a year old or adopted children over one year old may also receive this free circus ticket via mail, after filling out the form and then mailing it in to the company, via regular postal mail.
www.ringling.com
Lego-land, Carlsbad, is part of the San Diego Go Card program. Other theme parks that may be visited with the San Diego Go Card include these parks: Wild River Waterpark, Irvine and Boomer’s of San Diego. The Legoland park complex is pretty large, and might take a couple of days to completely see all of; parks there include the Land of Adventure California Resort, Legoland California, and the Aquarium Sea Life California Resort.
Old Town San Diego, San Diego – closer to being a theme park than the San Diego Zoo, has live weekend shows (wild west, missions, I forget the exact schedule of the live performances), at this a lovely attraction, plus the visitor’s bureau at Old Town has many discount coupons and certificates good for the cheap seats. The staff of the visitor’s bureau is knowledgeable and willing to share the coupons.
Disneyland, Anaheim
The best deal for this that I have found thus far is at priceline.com, the Disney Hopper pass, called Magic Your Way, with ticket rates for ages 10 and up starting at $72.07 per day for a three day pass, $60.71 per day for ages 3 – 9. The Magic Your Way pass program’s price is less per day for the more days that it is purchased to be used, a four day pass base pass costs $56.45 per day for ages 10 and up, and $47.39 per day for ages 3 – 9. The base pass, for five days costs $45.80 per day for ages 10 and up, and $38.13 per day for ages 3 – 9. I found the table of tickets to be a little confusing at first, until I realized that reading the columns meant adding more features to the ticket, and reading the rows from left to right meant adding more days to the ticket.
www.priceline.com
AAA (Triple A), the Automobile Club of America offers a 3 day, 2 night package, with prices starting at $404 per person per adult, and $173 per person per child, for lodging at Disney’s Paradise Pier, plus admission to Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure. Features of this tour include:, a free souvenir, a Hotel Resort Hopper ticket good for admission to Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure, Mickey’s Toon Town Madness, a Magic Morning 1 hour before the park opens (location varies), and a voucher for the first Turtle Talk with Crush show. Getting discount tickets to Disneyland is not an easy thing to do. I have seen these at the IMAX theater, and on refreshment cups at United Artists theater, as well as at electronic shops such as Circuit City and Best Buy. I called up the agency center in LaVerne, and did not receive much information from Julie, the automated attendant. Being that I have let my membership lapse, I did not receive any further information from the live attendant. This is a service only for those with a membership, however, the staff are friendly enough to live visitors at offices such as the one on E. Foothill (Route 66) in LaVerne, and are generous with water, treats, and the membership includes free maps for motorists. I miss my AAA membership, believe it or not, which includes a tow club, as well as the discount tickets, for those driving to Southern California.
www.aaa.com
www.aaa-calif.com
I looked at a website that apparently belongs to Ares Travel, that offers what at first seem to be discount tickets, however, I am not familiar with the company, thus I cannot say whether the deal is really good, and, so, I hesitate to say anything at all about it. The prices were discounts, and the website did state if no discount was offered, on such already existing deals as the CityPass. I have not purchased anything from this company, as of this writing, and have not heard anything about the services of Ares Travel. All the area attractions are listed on the website.
www.amusementpark.com
There is yet another pass deal, this one is called the SoCal CityPass, the cost of this pass is $247 for adults, and $199 for children. This pass includes 3 days of visits to the theme parks at The Disneyland Resort, 1 day admission to Universal Studios, Hollywood, and 1 day at Sea World, San Diego – plus admission to the San Diego Zoo or the San Diego Wild Animal Park.
The week long pass is something to definitely purchase one of those identity card protectors, and a neck-loop tag for the pass, to wear the pass dog-tag style, or keep it in your trousers pocket, or tie it to your belt loop, at the very least; plus a few tiny stickers at the edges to help keep the pass from falling out of its plastic protector. The plastic helps keep the tag from getting wet, on those fun water rides at the theme parks.
Then, of course, there are the offers at Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) restaurants, such as the Legoland coupon offers to receive a free child’s ticket with each adult ticket purchased. I imitated your average carload traveling from Arizona to California in my search for these coupons. First, I learned from a Burger King employee at the Highway 95 restaurant in Fort Mohave, Arizona, that discount tickets t theme parks are available at all California Burger King locations. The Burger King restaurant on Route 111 in Indio, California has these coupons, with the Legoland discount, of a free child’s ticket with purchase of adult ticket.
The McDonald’s restaurant on Rio Road in Bakersfield presently has the SeaWorld discount coupons, however, these Sea World coupons could run out tomorrow. Sometimes the restaurant has these coupons, sometimes, the restaurant does not.
The Jack in the Box restaurant on J Street in Needles, California did not have any coupons, according to the storefront employees at this location, nor did the Wendy’s on 10th Street in Lancaster.
The fast food restaurants may or may not have these coupons, at a given location in a fast food restaurant chain, and the offers change every few months. The best thing to do in this situation is to call the restaurant first, as the coupon situation at the retail storefront is variable, transitory, and not reliable. In other words, the discount coupons might or might not be there on a given day.
There seem to be theme park attraction coupons every time I turn around on hotel row, at the hotel lobby, in the card rack, at the fast food restaurant, in the souvenir shops, at the convention and visitor’s bureau desk – all over Anaheim and Buena Vista, sorting through all these flyers, promotional ads, and coupons takes the better part of a day all by itself, and the offers change on a regular basis. Six Flags Hurricane Harbor and Six Flags Magic Mountain coupons are abundantly distributed, and help offset the refreshments and parking price, which is presently $9. Both of the Six Flags amusement parks are located in Santa Clarita. I have collected envelopes full of the various deals offered for these theme parks, the percentages off or the dollar off value varies. A person could spend their entire vacation sorting through all kinds of coupons and deals, which is exactly what I did this past December. It is now July, and the discount offers have changed to a certain extent from what they were in December. The previous article lists a few current offers for cheap tickets to Los Angeles theme parks.
The prices and terms for these deals were current as of this writing, in July, 2008.
Sources: www.amtrak.com , www.ringling.com, www.knotts.com , www.seaworld.com , www.entertainment.com , www.travelersweekly.com , www.castlepark.com, www.golosangelescard.com, www.aaa-calif.com, www.expedia.com, www.family-vacation-getaways.com, www.legoland.com, www.priceline.com, www.amusementpark.com , www.google.com
