When You Just Cannot Afford to get to WDW this Summer.

[AndreaDM]

I live in Ohio less than 2 hours from Cedar Point and loved going there as a teen/young adult. However, now with our 8 year old, we make the 2 hour drive to Pittsburgh to Kennywood. Great family park and you can get tickets for $23 from AAA. Food is reasonable too, but it's very easy to take in a cooler and eat at the picnic shelters. Idlewild is great for younger kids, but by 7 or 8 they've pretty much outgrown everything there.

 

[PrincessSuzanne]

We aren't very far from Six Flags over Georgia, but they seem almost as expensive as Disney and not as fun. We haven't been there in many years and the only reason we went then was because I had been given some free tickets. Parking is more than it is at Disney.

We really aren't that close to anything else, at least not amusement park like.

Suzanne

 

[czycropper]

Since our DDs are over the Princess stage and have actually said that they'd rather go to a park with coasters than WDW ....we've been trying to ride all the top coasters/thrill rides since 2008 , so far we've gone to:

Busch Gardens Williamsburg
Busch Gardens Tampa
Hershey Park
Islands of Adventure
Universal Studios

This summer we're going to:

Cedar Point (end of June)
Holiday World (end of June)
Kings Island (end of June)
Kennywood (end of July)
Dorney Park (an hour from our house)
Great Adventure (an hour from our house)(beginning of June)
Six Flags New England (July)

By the end of this summer, we will have ridden 8 of the top 10 steel coasters.

The Cedar Point/Holiday World/Kings island trip - we're doing on a budget and are staying at Breakers Express for Cedar Point for 3 nights, eating a big breakfast, light lunch and then eating dinner out of the park; we've also bought the Platinum Pass for Cedar Fair properties so that we can go to Cedar Point, Kings Island & Dorney with free parking- I calculated and we're saving quite a bit of money.

Holiday World - we've been able to get a hotel about 20 minutes from there with our frequent flyer miles and the same with Kings Island.

Dorney & Great Adventure are only about an hour from our house, so we'll be doing those on day trips.

Six Flags New England & Kennywood will be overnights and we're also trying to see about getting a hotel with the frequent flyer miles - got to use them somehow

 

[My3kiddos]

We aren't doing Disney this year because my kids wanted a break from the commando type vacations we have at Disney. We bought season passes to Dollywood Splash Country since it's cheaper to buy season passes then it is to go for more than 2 days. Pigeon Forge has always been a weekend trip for us so we will stay a week then do multiple weekends thru the summer. I've been to Dollywood, Kings Island, Holiday World, and Cedar Point. My kids love all of them, but they favor Holiday World for some reason.

 

[dpratt68]

We got 3 passes to Six Flags Great Adventure and Hurricane Harbor (they are two separate parks here). DD didn't need one yet. We also got a parking pass but unfortunately it's only good at your "home" park this time. (ARGH!) The passes will get us into all the other Six Flags parks so we are heading up to SF New England this weekend (and I wish we could go again, it's really charming!) Unfortunately, I'm not employed at the moment so we will go to Great Adventure at least once a month.

We're also getting a combo ticket for Hershey Park and Dutch Wonderland. DS still uses a kids' ticket this year, and DD doesn't need one, so for a total of $200 we will get a full day at each park, plus the preview night (3 hours the night before) at each park, and mini-golf at Dutch Wonderland, and ZooAmerica in Hershey. I think that's cool. We are making it into two separate camping trips so that'll be the bulk of our summer vacations this year.

Next year we are determined to go to Florida, but we will ALSO get the Busch Premium Passes for 2 years of unlimited admission - Sea World, Busch Gardens, and Sesame Place. I hope they don't raise the prices too much! I'll do Flex Plan though.

Have you travelled to 6 flags NE yet? Did you trynto use your parking pass?