Disneyland/NASCAR - Terri & Cheryl - FINISHED 3/25 About This Page:

[DrDolphin]

Starring: Terri (34) 25-time Walt DisneyWorld veteran – Disneyland rookie
Cheryl (28) 14-time WDW veteran – Disneyland rookie

Dates = 24 Feb 2005 – 28 Feb 2005

Background
I guess I should start with how this trip came into being. For the last 4 years, I have been a NASCAR fan…I was a Jeff Gordon fan long before that – in fact he is the reason I started to watch NASCAR – he used to do the “safe driver” segments on Good Morning America and I thought he was just really cute!! Well, when Fox began to carry NASCAR races on Sunday – football ceased to keep my attention and NASCAR won. I have been watching races every Sunday I can since then. Last year, I started talking to Running buddy Cheryl about NASCAR, and she got interested and started watching races too. She decided that she needed to like a different driver than Jeff – and settled on Tony Stewart, “because someone has to like the bad guy” – I will admit, Tony is one of my favorite 3 drivers too.

Last year, Disneyland announced the 50th anniversary celebration would start in May 2005, and I remembered that there was a race in southern California about the same time. So we talked about it – and decided since neither of us had been to a NASCAR race, and neither of us had been to Disneyland, we could kill two birds with one stone. Then NASCAR announced its 2005 race schedule. The spring California Speedway race that had always been in April was now going to be in February – one week after the Daytona 500!! Ok – that put a wrinkle in the plans…. No 50th celebration – or we could wait and go to the October race, but we are both planning on a fall marathon in October and I did not want to have to choose. So we agreed on February.

Cheryl and I are both Hilton Hhonors members – and I have way too many points for my own good (which tells you I travel too much). She had been traveling quite a bit too and had points to “spend” as well. Unlike WDW – DL Resort does not have the plethora of onsite hotels (there are 3) and after looking at the prices; we decided we should go with the nearest Hilton property where we could use our points. We originally thought we would each “pay” for one night in points, and split the cost of the 3rd night – but in the end – Cheryl paid points for 2 nights and I paid for one. I can’t remember why it worked out that way. We ended up at the Hilton Convention center hotel 2 blocks from DL.

I had a reward travel certificate from Southwest (again, I travel too much) so my plane ride to and from California would be free, and I had a free day voucher from Hertz, as well as a $50.00 voucher due to an error they had made a few months prior. Cheryl had a credit remaining on AirTrans from a previous trip, and a reward certificate from Southwest – her plane ticket was really cheap (if not free) as well.

So the trip costs looks like this:
Hotel – Free
Airfare – Free (or close to it)
Rental car – way cheap
Car parking at hotel – 3 nights * 11 dollars – 33.00

All we needed now were race and park tickets. I since I had never been to a NASCAR race (Saturday night track races in Corpus Christi in college don’t count) I had no idea where the good seats in the Grandstands were. During my hurricane duty for Ivan – I met another NASCAR fan/Corps employee who goes to races all the time – so he helped me choose seats for the race. I called Cheryl and she agreed – $106.00 each – so now all we need is Disneyland tickets. We did not get garage or PIT passes (this time).

I checked the DL website – and they did not have 2 day parkhoppers… only 3 day for $165.00… I decided to check at Shades of Green at WDW (they seem to have tickets to everything else) when we were there in January – no luck. No DL tickets. I called our local MWR office on base (military travel folks) – they don’t have them and can’t get them…. Ok now what? I looked back at DL.com and there was a special!! A 3-day parkhopper for the cost of a 2-day parkhopper…. $109.00, so we bought those as well.

All right – other than food and spending money – I think we are good to go:

Hotel – free
Airfare – free
Rental car – way cheap
Car parking – 33.00
Race ticket – 106.00
Park ticket – 109.00

Now many people asked me why I was going to California to see a NASCAR race when I live 1.5 hours north of Daytona…. And we looked at Daytona. Pros – 1st race of the year – major festivities, definitely a great ticket to have if you can get it – then I looked at costs… In the grandstands – the tickets started at 400.00 each – and those were the worst seats they had. We could have sat in the infield – but without an RV to climb on top of – we wouldn’t be able to see anything. So…. That’s why we did not go to Daytona (plus, if we’d gone to Daytona, DL was out!).

Next - we're off to the races!