[pbj24]

Just wondering what were some of your average costs during your stay in Europe during ED. Planning my ED trip and want to have a number in mind, thanks

[TeNSaikUn]

Kinda depends on how long you're staying there for...

I was there for 5 nights with 2 other friends, and mostly used airbnb instead of hotels to save money.
Hotel, airbnb, wireless hotspot, gas, taxi, train all came out to less then $300 per person.
Food cost isn't that much different from LA, maybe a bit cheaper cuz you only have to tip them a few bucks.

[BoomWasabi]

It's hard to define average. Some people stay at $300+/night hotels, other use $30 hostels. Dining varies from expensive restaurants to bratwurst stands.

From the experience I had in my previous trips to Germany I am planning my May ED for two as follows:

$100/night in good enough hotels
$100/day on food
$50-100/day on museums/castles/etc
$15/day parking

If you have more than 2 people, AirBB will be a much better deal.

[inktomi]

One thing you might be able to use (if you fly Lufthansa and have a bit of extra money) is their name-your-own-price business class upgrades.

I got an upgrade for $1000 on my A380 flight back from Frankfurt to Miami. Worth every cent. Every last cent. The A380 is also awesome.

Removing the upgrade on the way back, airfare was by far still the most expensive part of my trip. I think I paid maybe $130 a night at the Munich City Hilton (which we found has a nice breakfast as well). All in all, the trip was much more reasonable than I thought it would be since I didn't splurge on things (other than the airfare upgrade). 100% would do it again.

[Gatte]

Originally Posted by Grenyas24

Just wondering what were some of your average costs during your stay in Europe during ED. Planning my ED trip and want to have a number in mind, thanks

Why don't you tell us your intended duration of stay and what the budget is and we will make it work for ya.

[MikeT]

Originally Posted by inktomi

One thing you might be able to use (if you fly Lufthansa and have a bit of extra money) is their name-your-own-price business class upgrades.

Like the song says... tell me more, tell me more.

How does this 'name-your-own-price' work?

I'm flying Lufthansa SFO-MUC/MUC-SFO nonstop on an A340. Long flights so I might be willing to pay a few bucks to get myself out of coach.

[TBro2002]

Originally Posted by BoomWasabi

It's hard to define average. Some people stay at $300+/night hotels, other use $30 hostels. Dining varies from expensive restaurants to bratwurst stands.

From the experience I had in my previous trips to Germany I am planning my May ED for two as follows:

$100/night in good enough hotels
$100/day on food
$50-100/day on museums/castles/etc
$15/day parking

If you have more than 2 people, AirBB will be a much better deal.

+1

This is what I'm budgeting for my ED. Already book hotels and $100 has been average night.

[Gatte]

Originally Posted by BoomWasabi

It's hard to define average. Some people stay at $300+/night hotels, other use $30 hostels. Dining varies from expensive restaurants to bratwurst stands.

From the experience I had in my previous trips to Germany I am planning my May ED for two as follows:

$100/night in good enough hotels
$100/day on food
$50-100/day on museums/castles/etc
$15/day parking

If you have more than 2 people, AirBB will be a much better deal.

If you know your itinerary and exactly what you want to do, you could really plan out your trip very well.
Your numbers seem to be spot on. You did not account for fuel though which could be a major cost if you're driving a lot.

[pbj24]

Originally Posted by Gatte

Why don't you tell us your intended duration of stay and what the budget is and we will make it work for ya.

Planning on staying for a week, no budget as of yet

[inktomi]

On the Lufthansa website, if you make an account and are looking at your itinerary (where you'd see your seats, etc), there is an option to set your own price for an upgrade. Do that, and if they accept you you'll get a confirmation a day or two before your flight that it was accepted and you'll be upgraded!

I based my bid - $1,100 - on what the upgrade price for United was. I think United wanted $1700 or something, so I figured what a reasonable amount might be and submitted that.

On our A380 there were many empty business class seats, so I suspect I could have gotten an upgrade even at $800/$900. I imagine there's some lower bound that they won't accept below though.

Originally Posted by MikeT

Like the song says... tell me more, tell me more.

How does this 'name-your-own-price' work?

I'm flying Lufthansa SFO-MUC/MUC-SFO nonstop on an A340. Long flights so I might be willing to pay a few bucks to get myself out of coach.

[MikeT]

Awesome! Thanks for the info!

[inktomi]

You can also check the seat maps to get an idea of how many business and premium economy seats a given aircraft has.

http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Luf...A340-300_C.php

The A380 has a lot more seats, so likely lower prices could be had there.

http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Luf...us_A380_V2.php

Maybe I'd offer perhaps $1500 and see?

[hyperzulu]

I stayed in Europe about 16 days, but airfare and hotels were in large part paid for with miles and points. For other expenses while there (as well as a few splurge-tastic moments at some hotels in select cities) I spent about $300 a day. Some days more, some days less. I wasn't going totally overboard, but I wasn't trying to pinch pennies either, so a taxi ride back from the Amsterdam drop back to city center was a soul crushing $70. But I was comfortable with that since I knew I had the money for it.

Are you not driving anywhere? Gas is outrageously expensive. I filled up several times and each time was around $75, which is double what I pay for a 3/4 fill-up here in California.

Edit: I was with my girlfriend. I imagine if I had gone with a friend, it would have been a cheaper trip. We split food and gifts, but I paid for hotels, gas and any travel expenses. Even so, it was around $5k out of my pocket for the 16 days abroad.

[hyperzulu]

Originally Posted by govad

The travel expenses aren't the worse end of the deal in my opinion. I paid $1100 for my flight (roundtrip from Miami), then around $300 of gas throughout the few days that I drove the car to Paris from Munich. I didn't pay much in hotels except for my hotel the first night in munich because I have a home in Paris. My main concern on why ED doesn't make sense is the fact that you continue to pay for the car while it is in transit, which means that you also pay for the car you are currently driving at home. BMW only covers one month of transit and the rest is on you (my wait was 10 weeks). ED is definitely a crazy experience, but I don't think one can really call it a "deal" until they actually do it and receive their car back in the US.

My return was 47 days to California. If you want a "deal", I suppose you could buy the car, fly there cheap and return home immediately. If you find a cheap flight, you might be able to get the car with a $1200 cash outlay, which is much less than what you can save on the car. That's about the same amount of money as one of the best deals I've seen (11% discount for US delivery vs my 13.4% discount for ED). So in general, you are more likely to walk out with a better deal going ED if that's what you are looking for. But most folks are looking for an experience.

[BMW F22]

Depends on how many people you travel with. We had 6 so it was difficult to find AirBNB places so we booked hotel rooms using Booking.yeah. It was about $100-130 a night depending on city/country and time of the year. Here and there we used Priceline name your own price.

For food you can go fancy or cheap. When I went with family and friends we often sat down to eat so it was more expensive. When I went to Oktoberfest by myself I didn't care for expensive food so I would grab a sandwich, hot dog, etc. And a bottle of water for lunch and a quick meal for dinner. I would say I got by with $20-30 a day on food ($40-50 for a room through AirBNB).

[Gatte]

Originally Posted by hyperzulu

My return was 47 days to California.

hyperzulu Which dealership did you get your car from ??.
Was it Steve Thomas BMW ??.
I am waiting on mine and it will be arriving at Port Hueneme on the 9th of April (On board the Cygnus Leader). I know Steve Thomas BMW is 25 minutes from the Port and was wondering how many days it would take from port to being ready at the dealership.

My car had no damage and I am not getting any port installed accessories.
Also, do you know how long most people in my scenario had to wait for their cars after arriving at port ??

[Inline_Six]

Originally Posted by Gatte

hyperzulu Which dealership did you get your car from ??.
Was it Steve Thomas BMW ??.
I am waiting on mine and it will be arriving at Port Hueneme on the 9th of April (On board the Cygnus Leader). I know Steve Thomas BMW is 25 minutes from the Port and was wondering how many days it would take from port to being ready at the dealership.

My car had no damage and I am not getting any port installed accessories.
Also, do you know how long most people in my scenario had to wait for their cars after arriving at port ??

Someone's eager to get his car

[MaximumG]

Apart from what the others have already said, I want to point out that:

Although we all may drive the same cars, many of us come from different socialeconomical background. Some of us have these cars as our first car/daily driver, others have them as weekend toys, cheap thrills. I've seen people taking business class flights to MUC, while others flew economy using their FF miles. But I'm pretty sure you're already well aware of this.

My best suggestion to you is to figure out if you wanted to do a ED with a vacation in mind, or simply trying to save money from a ED discount (some people are of the latter type). I did ED with a mindset that I would experience most of Bavaria, in case I won't ever go back again. At the same time, I set myself a budget in accordance to my salary.

If you haven't already figured out where you'll go and eat, set up a complete schedule for the trip. Then, it'll be more transparent how much you'll spend. Or, you could just wing it without planning too much.

I had gone through tripadvisor and bimmerfest/bimmerpost forums to look at how others did ED and planned out where I wanted to go, etc. I then made a meal plan for every day I was there. I went as far as checked out the menu of every restaurant I was going, made reservations, and found out prices of every museum/palace I was going. From there, I had a pretty good idea how much I was going to spend.

But of course, I still somehow overspent by 1000 euro or so...

tl:dr - just start looking at things. You'll have an idea soon once you start (I think).

I can't stop thinking about how much money I would have saved by doing my ED NOW, with current exchange rates.

[drivethemachine]

Right now, the Euro is down relative to USD, so everything will be cheaper.
You can get decent hotels for well under 100 euro if you stay outside of city centers. We used booking.com for our entire trip. I prefer staying in the countryside: great driving and easy parking.
Restaurants will cost about the same as in the US.

[hyperzulu]

Originally Posted by Gatte

hyperzulu Which dealership did you get your car from ??.
Was it Steve Thomas BMW ??.
I am waiting on mine and it will be arriving at Port Hueneme on the 9th of April (On board the Cygnus Leader). I know Steve Thomas BMW is 25 minutes from the Port and was wondering how many days it would take from port to being ready at the dealership.

My car had no damage and I am not getting any port installed accessories.
Also, do you know how long most people in my scenario had to wait for their cars after arriving at port ??

I bought my car from Santa Barbara. Remember that no damage on the trip doesn't mean no damage on the ship coming back, the short drive to and around the VDC/Customs. Luckily I had no damage anywhere. It took about 11 days for me from port to dealer. I've seen 7 days about the shortest in my experience. I posted all my times as best I could over at Bimmerfest where they have a nice list of entries from people dedicated to tracking their cars.

[Gatte]

Originally Posted by hyperzulu

I posted all my times as best I could over at Bimmerfest where they have a nice list of entries from people dedicated to tracking their cars.

Thanks for the response Hyperzulu. Can you point me to the thread with all the times ??? It would be super helpful.

[Inline_Six]

Originally Posted by hyperzulu

I bought my car from Santa Barbara.

Whoa ! We need to talk !!!

I've gotta head back to work now, but I gotta ask you something later.