$4 a gallon... we aren't going...

[JCtheparrothead]

Got lucky

I guess I got lucky this year with 128 fare from Detroit to orlando for me and my wife. But it is not going to be easy for families.

 

[haveyoumetmark]

I know for us, it makes it tough. We live over in Tampa and head out just a day at a time. (Hard to justify spending $200 to stay over when we can just drive home and sleep there, you know?) But where we used to put $20-25 in the tank for the 90-mile drive (one way), now...it's more like $40-50 in the tank. Tack on parking ($11) and lunch ($20 for the two of us) and maybe a drink or snack or two ($10) and suddenly it's not the cheapie day that it used to be.

It's a lot harder now to pop over there for us and I'm sure a lot of fellow Tampa Bay residents feel the crunch too. Especially since so many of us are stuck driving oddball and frustrating commutes to our jobs. (Love drives 25 miles one way to work each day after his company relocated their building.)

The culmination of higher gas, higher food costs and all around less-impact-per-dollar, yeah. We're definitely forced to think a lot closer about running out to Orlando these days.

You took the words right out of my mouth. Tampa area as well, and we have been rethinking too, gas along with the $11 parking - it's nuts.

I don't really know if there are any concert-goers here, but concert tickets have been astronomical as well. I was reading in a recent issue of Rolling Stone about how ticket prices have skyrocket due to touring costs directly related to rising gas prices.

 

[dazzer68]

WOW $4 a gallon how lucky ae you lot! here in the uk we are paying £1.35 a LITRE!!! over £5 a gallon ($10+) so think your selves lucky. we completeley ripped off here and the goverment are now thinking of putting a 2% green tax on fuel as well! flights to orlando have just gone up over the weekend from a bout £700 ($1400) to now around a £1000 ($2000) as the fuel crisis carries on i think disney is really gonna feel it, specially from the uk holidaymakers.

 

[DisneyEverest]

$4 a gallon, thats way cheaper than the UK.
for $4/£2(approx) we could get 2 litres(half a gallon) of petrol in our car.

WOW!!

 

[RetiredFRN]

gas prices

I feel for everyone and the current gas prices. We live in CT and unfortunatley are paying the highest prices in the country right now. I paid 4.23 for 87% prem gas the other day. Our prices can go up 5 cents in one day.
I have definitey changed my driving habits and even changed jobs so I'm only 10 minutes away instead of 30.That being said, i still strongly believe in that you can't stop living. You only have one life to live, you don't know what tomorrow will bring, so go for it. Don't go hog wild but don't sit at home and do nothing. I look for bargains, scoured the internet for cheap air fare and even took a second per diem job. I play hard, i love Disney so I try to make it work. GO FOR IT!!!:wave:

 

[Alexx]

WOW!!

Exactly so count yourselves lucky.

So consider people like my family.
We live in Thornaby right?(a little town in the NE of England) theres no airport flying to orlando here, so we have to drive either to Manchester or London to do to Gatwick airport.
We could get a train but still they cost about £100 for us.
Imagine how much money we have to spend for petrol just to get to the airport. So if $4 a gallon breaks the bank, you may need to rethink a few things

Wow... still blows my mind how much fuel costs in Europe. Not as bad as that here (Atlantic Canada), but it's still like $1.339 a litre which is about 5.07 a gallon.

Wow, thats about how much it is in £ here, except that might be a bit less, which is quite bizarre really

 

[wvdisneyfamily]

In the grand scheme, the price of gas is not that big of the portion of the trip. I live about 1,000 miles from WDW. My Odyssey gets about 25 MPG on the road. That would take 40 gallons of gas to get there. That is only $160 for gas. Even if gas was $2 a gallon, it is only $80 more each way. It is stilll much cheaper that flying.

You've got that right. I just can't believe how much gas is now, but it is causing everything else to go up as well. Our grocery bill is outrageous and everything just keeps going up. I am just counting the days until Disney's prices jump too, on everything. I have to really plan & save for our trips so I am already looking at ways to save more.

I know for us, it makes it tough. We live over in Tampa and head out just a day at a time. (Hard to justify spending $200 to stay over when we can just drive home and sleep there, you know?) But where we used to put $20-25 in the tank for the 90-mile drive (one way), now...it's more like $40-50 in the tank. Tack on parking ($11) and lunch ($20 for the two of us) and maybe a drink or snack or two ($10) and suddenly it's not the cheapie day that it used to be.

It's a lot harder now to pop over there for us and I'm sure a lot of fellow Tampa Bay residents feel the crunch too. Especially since so many of us are stuck driving oddball and frustrating commutes to our jobs. (Love drives 25 miles one way to work each day after his company relocated their building.)

The culmination of higher gas, higher food costs and all around less-impact-per-dollar, yeah. We're definitely forced to think a lot closer about running out to Orlando these days.

I agree with the above posters. The price of gas is bad, but it's not what is taking away from my expendible income. When cereal goes up $.24 in a week or pizza sauce goes up $.14 in a few days is when I start to see my money going a lot less farther than it used to. I know those are just two small items, but everything is going up a few cents here and a few cents there. A few cents adds up. What used to be a $50 trip to the grocery store is now a $75-$90 trip.

 

[Monty]

I agree with the above posters. The price of gas is bad, but it's not what is taking away from my expendible income. When cereal goes up $.24 in a week or pizza sauce goes up $.14 in a few days is when I start to see my money going a lot less farther than it used to. I know those are just two small items, but everything is going up a few cents here and a few cents there. A few cents adds up. What used to be a $50 trip to the grocery store is now a $75-$90 trip.

And it seems even if/when gas prices go back down [not that they've ever returned to where they were] the food that went up stays up. :brick:

Get used to reduced buying power folks, it's here to stay.

 

[Master Yoda]

All the oil companies are doing something. They're making record profits.

The oil companies are raking it in but the refineries are breaking even to loosing money.

 

[Disney05]

Ask your government officials why we're not drilling in the Bakken oil field. Look it up, very interesting.

 

[jsdratm]

I recently moved across the street from work to reduce my commute to 2 minutes (walking). The problem is that nobody cared for so long about oil being a non-renewable resource and nobody cared about the future. Now people are finally thinking about conservation and investing in alternative energy. We dug this hole for ourselves and we have to dig ourselves out. Please write your congressional representatives to demand a better passenger rail system!

 

[WDW Monorail]

All the oil companies are doing something. They're making record profits.

That's right. That's why the government should tax those big bad oil companies to punish them. Tax, tax, tax, tax, tax.


But guess who gets screwed in the end...

:shrug:

I want my drilling in ANWR! Thank you Mr. Gore.

 

[Buzz Lightyear]

Here's a funny story. My first trip to Disney World was exactly 10 years ago this month. Since I drove, I had to keep my receipts for re-imbursements. For some strange reason, I still had this in my files at work. We drove from Knoxville, TN and when we stopped in GA to fill up, I paid $0.93 a gallon on6/20/98. That's right, I filled up our van for $22.00. THOSE WERE THE DAYS!!!

To the OP, yes the gas prices do affect our Disney trips too, but we have found some ways to save money. For instance, we have always vacation with friends, so instead of staying on property, we have stayed off-property the past few years, including our trip coming up in 5 days. For our 8 day vacation, we would have spent around $1200 for the Value Restorts. Instead, we are sharing a 5 bedroom, 5 bathroom, brand new vacation home for about $100 a night. With tax and all, it will end up costing us about $500 for the week. That saves us about $700 dollars which more than makes up the extra cost of gas.

There are definate ways to save money, but I can understand how it affects our everyday lives.

 

[bjlc57]

its so easy to claim..

Oh in Europe we pay... $xxx per gallon.. right, with National Health care. because that's what the tax on gas goes to pay.

here we pay our own health care, or at least a partial amount, or some companies don't offer health care at all. ZERO.


But that's not the basis of the post. its a minimum of 3000 miles round trip. we are a four adult family. We need a Suburban just to make the trip comfortable.

our Gas budget was about 200 gallons. possibly 250. meaning just one more fill. The last time we went to WDW we averaged paying about $1.75 a gallon. with one station in Florida charging over $2.00 at the time. and Hess on Base charging like$1.62 or less. might have been $1.59.

Now to afford to go to WDW, we already do in on the "cheap". We brought 56 bottles of power aid that we got on sale for 35 cents a bottle, with the correct coupon. We cut costs and had a food budget of $50 per day. We do breakfast in the room.

but now this has really priced us out of the trip. Its just too much.

 

[Master Yoda]

You hit the nail right on the head with this statement...We need to be drilling in our own country. Not to turn this into a political debate, but these Democratic tree huggers need to wake up and realize what is going on here. I would like to thank Bill Clinton for his decision in 1998 to ban drilling in ANWR...He did the country a lot of good!

It would be hard to turn that into a political debate as it seems that none of the current presidential candidates are even talking about energy independence.

 

[BensMum]

$4 a gallon, thats way cheaper than the UK.
for $4/£2(approx) we could get 2 litres(half a gallon) of petrol in our car.

I think you must be in a cheap part of the UK my friend. We've just had another price hike and reached £1.16 per litre for petrol and £1.26 for diesel. If I've done my calculations correctly, allowing for US rather than Imperial gallons, I think it works out around $8.50 a gallon - AND STILL RISING. We'll still save for our trips to WDW but may find our visits stretch from 2 year to 3 year intervals.

 

[YankeeMouse]

Kids are grown, it's just husband and me now. We always fly since it's just the two of us, and usually rent a car, but are doing Magical Express and Disney transportation for the first time in a long time. We do use the transportation sometimes, but like to have the option of a car, but won't do it this time.

 

[abbeysmom]

In October I will have to start driving 90 miles one way to work or find another job. I have been at my job for 17 years but this might be a little much with gas prices. However, I am not going to let it get the best of me.... I have 2 vacations planned this summer. 1 to Disney in June and one to Panama City Beach in August. We live in Atlanta and some how, some way we will make it work.

 

[sknydave]

Nevermind I didn't read page 4

 

[miles1]

We're still going in July; the airfare and rental home are all paid for months ago. We were lucky enough to get a fairly cheap fair on Jet Blue from Westchester, New York just a few weeks before the tickets really started to skyrocket. I think the airlines' next move will be to remove the glass windows from the planes and make you flap your arms.:lol:

If the current trend continues, it will probably change the entire landscape of the country. People will move closer to and back into the big cities in order to be closer to their job. We're already seeing marked increases in ridership on mass transit systems. Used car lots are overfull of big SUV's that people can't afford to drive.

If there is any bright spot, maybe decreased attendance at the parks and resorts will make WDW management realize that there IS a breaking point with the cost of going there. JMHO, but I think they'll start to see decreased attendance this summer and there will be some great deals available for the fall and winter, as well as next spring.