At most thats $25 of gas And $40 of parking for most SoCal residents, and thats if you drive a particularly fuel inefficient car. At 25-30 mpg, a 60 mile round trip radius covers a lot of the LA/OC area for less than $15.
$60 + 2 hours of driving << $600 of Hotel fees. It’s not even close.
The more I think about this article the more I find it wanting.
I go to various free concerts in my city. You can have a lot of fun for free, when I think back my favorite date of all time was just me and my first girlfriend holding hands at the pier. But if I wanted to write an article about how unaffordable dating is, I could say I wanted to take her to see Justin Timberlake.
Did you know that Mr. Timberlake has made no effort to make his concert to affordable to working-class couples?!
I think the point is that what used to be cultural staples of American Society for families have now become more expensive. Going to free concerts as a young couple (along with other cheap dates) is actually also somewhat expected and if the pop culture references and stories from Boomers/GenXer are true, also a staple of American Society.
That being said, going to Disneyland wasn’t a frequent trip kind of thing to most Americans anyways, and the Disneyland of the 60s and 70s is downright unrecognizable at times (chainlink fences at the park entrance). I think the article could have done without the Disneyland reference.
$60 + 2 hours of driving << $600 of Hotel fees. It’s not even close.