After scouring Kayak, Priceline, and every other travel aggregator for a week, I found an Alaska Airlines sale on airfare that netted me a nonstop round-trip flight from New York to Los Angeles for $339.
The only catch: I would have to fly in and out on the Wednesday before the festival, meaning I'd have to figure out extended lodging. Tickets flying in/out closer to the festival were double the cost.
With a couple of days in Los Angeles before and after the festival, I decided to book a rental car rather than pay $150 for the Coachella shuttle between Los Angeles International Airport and Indio.
I settled on a reputable budget option from Avis: a Ford Fiesta. I only paid for liability insurance, as my Chase Sapphire Reserve has rental car insurance on it. It still came out to $464. Yeesh.
Lodging is the most expensive part of Coachella. As I was coming from New York, I didn't want to deal with buying or bringing camping gear, so car camping was not an option — and because I was booking so last minute, the pickings on Airbnb were expensive and very slim. I decided to look at hotel options. Even budget hotels like Holiday Inn Express or Motel 6 were charging $350 or more a night.
After searching Hotel Tonight and other last-minute deals sites for a week, I found a room at a boutique hotel called the Hideaway Hotel in Palm Springs for $379 a night. I booked it for three nights. The hotel costs closer to $200 per night if you book a stay outside of Coachella weekend.
A friend in Burbank agreed to let me crash in her home office for the nights before and after Coachella, saving me more than a few bucks there.
As I was staying in Palm Springs, a 30-minute drive from the festival grounds, I needed a way to get back and forth from the concert each day.
Thankfully, I'm not the only one. As lodging in Indio is limited, lots of attendees stay in nearby towns like Palm Desert and Palm Springs. There tend to be cheaper lodging options, and more of them, in those places.
Coachella offers a shuttle for $80 that takes festival-goers back and forth between hotels in those areas and the concert.
The Ford Fiesta I rented gets pretty good gas mileage at 27 city/37 highway. As Palm Springs is about 120 miles from Burbank, where I am staying both before and after the festival, I figure that gas should cost around $30 to $40 at $3.85/gallon. Not too bad.
From everything I've read, it seems that food prices at Coachella mirror the cost of food in Los Angeles and New York. As such, I bought groceries for breakfast and am planning on spending about $30 each day on lunch and dinner.
As for alcohol, I try not to drink during festivals as alcohol gives me headaches and makes me lethargic. I'm probably in the minority here, so if you do plan on drinking, you'll have to factor those costs in. Beers and mixed drinks tend to cost $10-15.
In part, the high cost of the weekend for me is due to the fact that I booked everything at the last minute. If I had known a year ago that I would be going, I probably could have found a better deal on the lodging or had enough time to plan to camp.
That being said, most of my other costs — from airfare to a rental car to the shuttle — are unavoidable if you are visiting from out-of-state. Be prepared to empty your wallet.
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