Hello everyone. The main objective of this guide is to allow you to see the total expenses associated with attending a LAN, specifically we will be looking at the SoCal event happening in January of 2017. The focus will be on US based residents only as I am only familiar with travel inside the US only (sorry CA, EU, and any others).

There are four main spending points to cover. Those are travel, such as flights and taxi/uber services, accommodations, or where you will be residing during the trip, daily food budgeting, and miscellaneous/ spending cash.

From what I can gather, every person who asks me about pricing is that "Isn't air travel expensive?" Well, it can be. As long as you know what you are looking for though, you can find great deals flying from point A to point B. From what I've been able to find, if you fly out of a major hub, you can get a great deal on a flight. I've been seeing multiple flights coming out of Florida for as low as 179$. Even flights from New York are around 200$. And no, they are not red eyes. In fact, they are nonstop flights all the way to SoCal. Something handy I use to check flights is Google flights. It lists basically every major airline (aside from southwest) and gives you a clear price list for flights. You can pick your travel dates and see when and where the deals are at. Be sure and check surrounding airports as well, for both the departing and the arrival locations. Sometimes an airport 30 minutes away may provide you a 200$ cheaper flight then one that's close by. Another nice thing about google flights is that it will provide you these recommendations for nearby airports if they have lower flight costs. The three airports to look into for SoCal I have found are LAX, John Wayne, and Long Beach. All are reasonably close and offer decent pricing depending on where you are flying in from.

Now of course after you arrive, you'll have to have some way of getting around. The newest trend that everyone is doing is Uber ( or lyft?) if provided in that city. Basically it is a casual taxi service that tends to be cheaper for you in the end. I don't have much experience with the system but it's Something worth checking out. Typical costs associated with Uber vary by city, but according to SoCal Uber prices, it's roughly .90$ per mile and .15$ per minute. Your major travel( if any) will be from the airport to the hotel and back, though most hotels already offer free shuttles to and from local airports. I may be wrong but I believe it's about 30$ for a trip from LAX to the nearby hotels of Santa Ana (LAX being the farthest airport).

Next up is accommodations. Hotel prices vary greatly depending on which chain you stay at, your location, and a few other factors. Focusing on SoCal, the recommended nearby hotel to the LAN venue is La Quinta Inn of Santa Ana. Typical prices per night for a room is around 100$. A hotel discount was acquired however for SoCal LAN, bringing that price down to 85$ per night. Rooms are large enough to fit 4 people comfortably, so splitting up hotel costs among just 4 can really lower your spending as an individual. There are other lower priced hotels such as Motel 6, it's just about checking the area and seeing what's available. It's up to you on how much you want to spend, and how comfortable you'd like to be. As an add on, there's a Motel 6 less then 2 blocks from the E-sports arena, well within walking range. It's going rate is about 60$ a night. Typically you pay for hotel rooms based on how many nights you stay there, so if you'd like to save money, you could skip out on renting an extra day if you fly out right after a LAN.

Next up is daily diets. If you are hard bent on stretching your cash as much as possible, you can easily plan to spend roughly 25$ a day on food. So say you go on Saturday and Sunday, that's a simple 50$ for meals. Of course, this number can vary and is only an estimate for people to use to plan their trips. Won't go into too much detail aside from that.

Lastly, you have spending cash. This is dependent solely on each individual and can vary based on if you care to plan in emergency funds, have extra spending cash for souvenirs, or anything else.

"Ok so that is great and all, but what does that mean for me?"

Once again, this is based off of the SoCal LAN in January. These prices reflect the ideal arrangement of flying in on Friday, January 20th and staying for 3 nights at either the (Motel 6) or La Quinta Inn.

These prices reflect flights arriving at LAX, Long Beach, and John Wayne.
(Prices in the parentheses are for the cheaper options for now)
*Not factored into price is entry fee for LAN or anything in regards to the actual tournament.

Flight: Northwest US (Seattle)-120$
Hotel: (198$) 255$
Travel: (0$) 50$
Food: 60$
Misc: 50$
----------
Total: (428$) 535$

Flight: NorthEast US (New York)-279$
Hotel: (198$) 255$
Travel: (0$) 50$
Food: 60$
Misc: 50$
----------
Total: (587$) 694$

Flight: Central US (Austin)-177$
Hotel: (198$) 255$
Travel: (0$) 50$
Food: 60$
Misc: 50$
----------
Total: (485$) 592$

Flight: Southeast US (Florida)-170$
Hotel: (198$) 255$
Travel: (0$) 50$
Food: 60$
Misc: 50$
----------
Total: (478$) 585$

As a side note for SoCal LAN, there is an official get-together after LAN at Disneyland. The general consensus is to go on Monday, January 23rd. If interested, an all day Disney pass costs 95$ for that day. I'm looking into having a group rate applied and possibly dropping that price even more.

Once again, these are only rough estimates for people who wanted to know prices for attending a LAN. Hopefully it helped a few of you and I'll be adding/ editing this post as time goes on. Feel free to comment down below if you have anything to add or have any questions. Thanks for reading!