Halloween Tourism for Everyone 10.20.12

Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Not me, but there are so many other things I am afraid of. Halloween is the time where you can face your fears and put a little scare into others. Why not spend this October hitting up places that have good old fashioned ghosts and goblins? The past few years we attended the Halloween events at Disney World's Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party and I look forward to checking out the Disneyland events and returning to EuroDisney to check out the party happenings there. This year, I'll have to live vicariously through everyone else.

• Many park days at the Magic Kingdom and Disneyland in Sept-Nov are cut short for this party that requires a special ticket to get in. From 7pm to midnight, many of the park guests come dressed in costume to enjoy 5 hours of trick-or-treating, dancing, nighttime thrill rides (only specific rides will be open during that time, not the whole park), Hall-o-wishes fireworks display, an all-villain musical show in front of the castle, villain meet and greets, amazing park decorations and, best of all, a special parade opened with the Headless Horseman on horseback. It’s all totally Disney and so out of their normal festivities that it’s worth putting off your vacation until that time of year.

• Knott's presents Knott's Scary Farm. Save $6-23 on your tickets by buying them online instead of at the gate, where they will be $57 each.

• Universal puts on Halloween Horror Nights. While ticket prices don't waver, you're sure to get your money's worth while riding select rides and being scared out of your wits with roaming creeps, themed haunted houses and scare zones. It's like being in your very own horror movie. 

• Busch Gardens in Tampa offers up Howl-o-Scream. Much like Universal, they have scare zones, haunted houses and themed entertainment. You can't get cheaper tickets for this event either, but it'll scare your pants off, which you maybe can't put a price on.

• Sea World has a great event for the little ones and admission is included with your regular park ticket. It's called Spooktacular and it offers trick-or-treating, silly and spooky shows and kids are encouraged to come in costumes.

Now, that's just the major theme parks that have fun activities. There are plenty of other activities the world over that you can get in on. Here are some inexpensive things you can do during the fall season or any other time of the year.

• The Dungeons are on my list of kitchy and kinda scary (if you're afraid of the dark and mirror mazes where you might be followed) and must-do attractions. The site offers best price guarantee and you can get discounted deals if you purchase a combination ticket with Madame Tussaud's and/or the London Eye. If you plan to visit off-peak hours, you can save up to 50%! You must purchase your tickets online though. Each dungeon (located in London, York, Hamburg, Edinburgh and Amsterdam) walks you through the "streets" of history and winds you through creepy stories and rides that take you from one area of the dungeon to another

• Paris Catacombs. There are miles of underground tunnels underneath Paris full of human bones that were put there when the cemeteries became overcrowded. Even now they are still crowded, but with tourists. Get there right at opening and beat the crowds. Lines can stretch up to 2 hours long and with prices at only 5 Euros per person, it's one of the cheaper things you can do in France. If you want to skip the lines and go on a 2 hour guided tour with a small group. Viator can help you with this if you're willing to pay more than 5 Euros. For a little more than $54 per person, you are guaranteed access into the Catacombs, which is extremely limited.

• Plenty of creepy things have come out of London. One of the most famous? Jack the Ripper. He was never caught and you can walk the same streets on a London night with a small group for around $15 per person. Feel some of the fear those women must have felt while standing in a dark alley and hearing about the gruesome and brutal murders that happened on the very spot.

• New Orleans has always claimed to have a rich history in the occult and creepy myths. For an hour and a half walk among the darkened streets on the New Orleans Vampire Tour for only $20 per person. Many other walks are available, but who wouldn't want to believe in the undead and the horrible things that happen in the shadows of the city?

• New England always seems to be the backdrop for creepy and bizarre happenings. Stephen King loves to write about New England in his scary novels, too. One such story, which happens to be true, is the tale of Lizzie Borden in Massachusetts. Not only can you stay in the very house both her parents were murdered in (whether she did it or not, as she was never convicted, but moved to live outside of town where she was shunned for the rest of her life), you can also take a tour of the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast. As cheerful as a B&B sounds, this one claims to be haunted. People have said to have had many encounters with ghosts while staying there, but if you can't get in to sleep there or are too scared, take the tour. They are only $12.50 per person and occur only during daylight hours, so there's (mostly) nothing to be afraid of, but what happened to the real murderer?

• Portland's Shanghai Tunnels are quite a tourist attraction. There is a whole city of tunnels under the Oregon town's downtown area. For $19 per person you take a flashlight tour of the tunnels and learn about how people would be pulled into the tunnels (often drunk), have their shoes stolen and forced into slave labor. If you missed my blog post on underground sightseeing, find it here.

• Winchester Mystery House. Tour 110 of the 160 rooms of the house that took 38 years to build and has stairs that lead to nowhere and doors that open into walls. There are several tours to choose from, including a flashlight tour special for specific October dates. Tours range from $25 to $33 per person and should be purchased online.

• Almost anywhere you go that has open land will have a corn maze. You can go during the day or the evening and enjoy getting lost in a labyrinth of corn! The daytime maze will be fairly tame and the maze at night is dark and may have several spooky surprises. Though you may not be able to take advantage of pumpkin picking, you CAN stop at the general store they have set up and get some local foods to take home, like pumpkin butter and huckleberry candy (okay, that's probably just what we have here in Oregon). 
• Check out some fun musicals for Halloween season. Search for discounts on great theater in London on BroadwayBox. Two musicals that might be of particular interest to you are Thriller Live and Wicked. This week we're going to see Lost Boys: The Play! in Portland, done by a great local sketch comedy group. 

I look forward to finding out all the new fun Halloween activities for the this season. What are the cool things to do in your town that are fun and affordable?

Review: CityPASS Attraction Cards

Earlier this year CityPASS offered me a pair of passes to try out their services, but I had no travel plans at the time. They were gracious enough to still provide the pair as a giveaway, which my readers were super excited for. Since I had used their services before, I knew how great they were to work with and wanted to pay it forward with my trip to SoCal this Fall and purchase cards so I could do a full-on review. My cards arrived quickly after ordering and I put them in a safe place in my travel bag. After all, these were going to get me into Disneyland, California Adventure and Universal Studios. (They also were good for admission to SeaWorld, but we didn’t have plans to drive to San Diego on this trip.)

Why CityPASS, you ask? It’s true. I could have just purchased 3-day park hoppers directly from Disney and 1-day admission to Universal, but the cost would have been quite different. CityPASS saves you a significant amount of money on attractions with their cards – up to 50%!  And you all know that budget travel is the name of the game, so the more money saved off the bottom line the better. Regular ticket prices for Disney are $250 for a 3-day hopper and Universal costs a whopping $80 to get in, making your total $330. CityPASS gets you into these two attractions (including a Magic Morning at Disney) and SeaWorld for just $279. It’s a potential total discount of $129 per person, but even the $51 we saved was a good chunk of change. We used the difference to purchase $49 front-of-the-line passes at Universal – and still kept a few bucks in our pockets.

CityPASS is super easy to use. You bypass ticket lines, stroll up to the gates and your PASS is scanned and a regular ticket is presented to you. You pocket both and continue with your day. It literally takes less than 30 seconds for them to scan your card and give you a ticket. No holding up the line or complicated procedures at all. Now, in Universal it doesn’t really matter if you have a real ticket, but at Disney, you need your ticket to be able to use FASTPASS machines that get you ahead in the lines and save you time.

Here’s how we used our Southern California CityPASSes – remember, you need one for each member of your travel party:

Day 1 – California Adventure

We arrived on a Saturday night and were able to check in, get settled, make a grocery store run that involved a spontaneous stop at Wienerschnitzel (pretzel buns are back???) which we don’t have anywhere at home, watched fireworks on the rooftop (of our lodging, not Wienerschnitzel) and then headed to bed for an early morning at the parks.

Sunday, we waited patiently for the ART bus and then waited not-so-patiently in line for security to check our bags. Turnstile lines were short, so we waltzed over to the shortest one and the wonderful cast member scanned our CityPASS, pushed a few buttons, gave us regular park tickets and reminded us that we needed to use those each time we came back on our visit. Easy!

Day 2 – Disneyland

Using our park hopper tickets given to us the previous day, we had absolutely no issues getting into the park a second day. We even used them to hop to California Adventure and back with ease. Once inside the parks, we used them to get FASTPASSes, too.

Day 4 – Universal Studios

Three days after we first used our CityPASSes, we arrived at Universal Studios Hollywood and presented our cards to the attendant and they were quickly scanned. They don’t bother giving you a regular park ticket, which saves some paper.

Day 7 – Disneyland

This is the day we used the remainder of our 3-day park hopper passes for the Disney parks. Again, we had no problems using them for entry and FASTPASS options.

If you want to save up to 50% off your activities on vacations, CityPASS should definitely be on your list of buys before you leave for any of these 11 destinations: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Hollywood, Houston, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Southern California or Toronto. The more you use it, the more you save. Like you needed an excuse to pack more things into your budget, right? If you have kids, you can purchase CityPASS for them at a lower rate and it works just as conveniently. When you save big on certain aspects of your travel, you can splurge on other things (like your hotel or food) or realize how you can have a great vacation with your allocated travel funds.

Mickey gives CityPASS a thumbs up!

CityPASS has generously offered to give me another pair of passes for one of my readers. While I normally would attach that giveaway to this review, it will be part of our Best of the Best Travel Gear Holiday Giveaway next month where we will revisit the awesome travel products and services of 2012 and give away a whole slew of prizes from those merchants. In the meantime, keep CityPASS in mind for any travel you have coming up to the cities they are available in as well as holiday gifts for the traveler on your list. CityPASS is also perfect for getting yourself or your family out of the house over the holidays. If you live in or will be visiting a featured city, spending every waking moment with relatives is not always stress-free. Use CityPASS to save your sanity.

More information:

Where you can buy them: CityPASS online

How much they cost: varying

Where they are available: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Hollywood, Houston, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Southern California and Toronto.

Other specs: CityPASS is good for one year from purchase and makes a great gift.

Doesn’t CityPASS sound cool? You can also find them on Facebook and Twitter

Disclosure: I was not provided with free CityPASS cards for the purposes of this review. My review is purely unsolicited, but the giveaway will be sponsored by the lovely people at CityPASS.

Review: GoCards from Smart Destinations

I love nothing more than saving money on my vacations. It makes me giddy to see how much I would have spent and the actual total for my trip getting lower and lower. I don’t care how long it takes me to find discounts, but lucky for me Smart Destinations makes it super easy to save big and do a ton on your trip. They offer GoCards (and GoCard Select) for 9 U.S. cities: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Oahu, Orlando, San Diego and San Francisco. They bundle a bunch of travel activities and attractions into one card to help you save money, do more and prepay for your entertainment, so you don’t have to worry about how to pay for each thing you do once you get there.

GoCards allow you to skip the ticket queues and go straight to the turnstiles at most attractions. You present your card and either are admitted entry right away or get an admission ticket to use on your way in. I was provided with 2 two-day Los Angeles GoCards and we had more than enough things to choose from on our trip. In fact, there were so many options, we had to make some decisions about what we definitely wanted to do and what we could do without.

We planned to spend one day in Hollywood and another day on the coast – in between our theme park days and other activities – so we chose attractions in both places and set out to save as much money as possible (even if these things weren’t paid for by us). The more you use the cards, the more you save. Had I not been provided promotional tickets for this review, I would have purchased the cards on my own to do these things.

Day 1 – Los Angeles/Hollywood

We drove to Hollywood early in the morning to take in breakfast at the famous Mel’s Drive-In (not really a drive-in) after reading about how many diners enjoyed the morning selections. I also had a Groupon. Then we followed it up with:

Movie Star Homes Tour by LA City Tours – These tours are great, as they are in small groups (around 10), so you have time to ask questions and also aren’t crammed in a bus with a ton of other tourists and not able to get photos of what is being talked about. Not only did we see some amazing homes of stars, like Simon Cowell’s palatial estate, but we also passed by famous Hollywood landmarks like the Viper Room and places where celebrities have been spotted, like the El Pollo Loco where Brad Pitt once worked. This tour is generally $49 per person.

Tour of the Dolby Theater (formerly the Kodak Theater) – The Dolby is the permanent home to the Emmys and, during the two months they aren’t setting up and taking apart things for that, Cirque du Soleil. Right now they are performing Isis, a movie-inspired performance. What more would you expect from a theater in Hollywood? Tickets are normally $15. The tour is 30-60 minutes long, depending on how many questions are asked, and you learn about who gets invites to the Emmy’s, security, the red carpet and VIP areas. We showed our GoCards at the box office and got two admission tickets.

Eric making a deal he can't refuse

We had afternoon tea reservations at 3:30 at the London West Hollywood and then we returned to Hollywood and Highland to visit Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. Usually, I avoid it because it seems terrifying. I figured since it was virtually free it wouldn’t be the worst decision in the world. At first, it was scary, but then I got into it and it was really fun. Eric thought it was hilarious when I ran away from the wax figures. Regular admission fees are $30 per person and even though it was a few minutes past the 5:30 pm cut-off, they still let us use our cards.

By now it was getting dark, so we checked out the hand and footprints in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater, appreciated the lit-up front of the El Capitan Theater owned by Disney and then went back to Anaheim.

Day 2 – California Coast

Several days later we headed to the beaches, since we always skip going to them when we are in California. This time we had many, many days to fill and we felt we should do it at least this once. Our first stop was in Long Beach at the Queen Mary. We got there super early – we were so used to everything taking forever to drive to – and we had a leisurely breakfast at the café on board. When we went to get our tickets for the tour we were told that our cards didn’t work.

Unfortunately, we weren’t told that our promotional passes were only good for consecutive dates (normally they are valid for two weeks from your first use), but on the plus side, Smart Destinations’ customer service is amazing and friendly and they let me know that even though our cards were deactivated, we could still use them by calling at each destination and letting the rep talk to the ticket office. We were a bit behind schedule at this point, so we left and headed to Venice Beach. If we had stayed, the Queen Mary tour tickets would have usually been $25 each.

After a nice stroll along the Venice Canals and the beach, we headed to Santa Monica where we used our cards and customer service to get wristbands for Pacific Park. We rode the only solar-powered Ferris wheel in the world, the only West Coast steel oceanfront rollercoaster on a pier and other fun rides. Unlimited ride bracelets are generally $23.

Because there was a party at Pacific Park that night, we skipped going to the aquarium and used our GoCards and customer service to get seats on the Santa Monica Hop-on, Hop-off Bus. If you’ve been reading Shereen Travels Cheap for any amount of time, you know how I’m obsessed with these. Instead of paying $40 for each of us, our tickets were included with our cards. We got a lovely ride on an open-top double-decker bus along the coast and through Brentwood, Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills. The bus has running commentary along the route and you can stop off at a number of places along the way.

Even with the misunderstanding of how the promotional cards worked, the GoCards were super easy to use and gave us quick entry into every attraction we went to. Had the traffic into Hollywood not been so slow on Day 1, we also would have squished in the Hollywood Museum, which would have run $15 for regular entry. The GoCards Los Angeles allows you to gain entry into 39 attractions in total. A two-day pass costs $110 and we used $157 worth of attractions. If things had gone as planned (as if they ever do), we would have saved $92, instead of $47, but even so we saved 30% off the regular cost of all the attractions we did.

GoCards are great budget traveler take-alongs. They help you do more on your trips and stay within your vacation allowance at the same time. Who doesn’t love that? If you’re going to any of the cities where they are offered, you should definitely look into getting them for your travel party. You can get them for children, too, at a discounted rate.

More information

Where you can buy them: SmartDestinations online

How much they cost: varied

Other specs: GoCard and GoCard Select available for Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Oahu, Orlando, San Diego and San Francisco.

Like the awesomeness of SmartDestinations? Find them on Facebook and Twitter.

Disclosure: I was provided two GoCards for the purposes of this review, but all opinions are 100% mine.