You can't *hick* tell me what todojgjfnfnmmm

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!

For those in the fence about going due to pricing, check your local flights! Just found an awesome deal, a nonstop round trip flight from NYC to LAX for 279$ with wifi.

Edit: As for the South Eastern US. There's flights from Florida to SoCal from as low as 197$ round trip. Just take a look. I tend to use google flights as it usually has organized flights from most all airlines.

I'll do a right up soon for anyone wanting a complete layout for pricing to see what it would cost to go to LAN.

Is there a lack of facial hair among TF2ivists?

First all nighter, with a friend at his house and stayed up playing minecraft till like 8am.
"Oh look, is that the sun rising?"

http://imageshack.com/a/img921/4929/Oz9rK5.jpg

Edit: its disconnected from my beard therefore it counts.

http://imageshack.com/a/img921/4929/Oz9rK5.jpg

Yes

Ayyyyyy

Damn that sucks. Best of luck.

I tend to have music downloaded and have download an app or two that I know will entertain the entire flight. Oh and use that airplane wifi :P

TBH I was expecting a dumb post in regards to the actual website/ forums. But this is much better. Great video!

I saw a thing on TV the other day, may or not be relevant, but it let someone who had severe color blindness be able to distinguish colors with a special pair of glasses. Maybe look into color correction glasses for color blindness? Other than that Idk.

PLEASE CHECK OUT THE SPREADSHEET AGAIN, IT HAS BEEN UPDATED.

Some info I found out on which may help some of you gamers, but to keep in mind, Holiday Inn does not have a Disneyland shuttle. They do, however, offer shuttling to and from John Wayne Airport.

Disneyland, per day, is 100$ for an entry ticket keep in mind.

One option I have found is having 7 person vans which would pick us up at the hotel and take us to Disney, then later on in the day take us back. Those vans cost 200$ round trip. Roughly 30$ per person.
Another option would be to get a 24-26 person shuttle bus to do the same thing. Cost on that per person would be roughly the same so long as we have 24-26 people going to Disney.

If I'm not mistaken, it would cost roughly the same per individual to get say a private ride over as it would be to do this group deal. So it may just be worth it. SAVE SOME MONEY.

Want another way to save a good bit of cash? Well in addition to the discount that SoCal LAN will be receiving for Holiday Inn rates, you can also share rooms with each other and get roll away beds for extra guests, costing only an additional 10$ per night.

I am unsure at the moment for the going rates of rooms at the Santa Ana Holiday Inn, but considering we will have a discount code, and just adding on 10$ for additional beds, you could Easily could fit 4 people comfortably in one room for less than 20$ per person per night. Just something to keep in mind and work out among yourselves.

Hopefully some of this info will help people who may not have the financial means to do it all. Best of luck!

CHECK IN ON THE SPREADSHEET AS IT HAS BEEN UPDATED, THANK YOU.

Looking forward to all the additions this brings on for TF2.