2024 Summer Bucket List – Pittsburgh Edition

2024 Summer Bucket List – Pittsburgh Edition. The year of the “Staycation”.

We aren’t planning on any big trips or vacations this summer but rather looking forward to a “staycation”.

For the last few years I have made a list… checked it twice… and tried to keep the kids entertained while trying to stick to a budget.

I made my list… adjusted… scaled back… and determined what worked last summer, what didn’t work last summer, what money was wasted, and what money could have been spent more effectively. This is what we came up with.

After reading all of the complaints online and Izzy’s decision to have a fun old fashioned birthday party at home, the Kennywood Platinum Passes would have been a waste of money this year.

We forced ourselves to go to Idlewild last year because the park was included in our passes. Truth be told, the park is really nice, I like it for nostalgic reasons but the boys have outgrown it.

We won’t travel to Dutch Wonderland for the same reasons (although this is a beautiful park), there isn’t enough to do to keep the boys entertained and to justify the trip. Plus we would need to spend the night (added expense) and make arrangements for Tucker.

The kids LOVE Sandcastle but we only made it there once last summer… $1,200(+) for the Platinum family passes even with the opportunity to visit the holiday lights just wasn’t worth it this year nor in our scaled back budget.

We knew we would be going to Kennywood at least once for the school picnic (missed the early bird sale), with discounted tickets and parking, the cost would be just over $200 to get in. One trip to Sandcastle was going to be roughly the same.

Girl Math:

3 Gold Kennywood Passes = $466.06

3 family members unlimited trips, with 2 free buddy passes each = 3 trips for the 5 of us.

4 Silver Sandcastle Passes = $261.96

4 family members unlimited trips, with 1 free buddy pass each = 4 trips for the 5 of us.

Total Cost: $728.02

Total Savings over last year: $471.98

We can go to Kennywood 3 times and Sandcastle 4 times before having to take advantage of the $19.99 “Bring A Friend” discounts to get the “extra” people in our family that we didn’t purchase passes for.

That being said, we probably won’t go that many times but the passes pay for themselves if we go twice to each park and that we will do.

I also “double dipped” here because the Sandcastle passes are my Father’s Day gift to my husband. We will more than likely go to Kennywood and Sandcastle as our Anniversary excursion this year with the kids and these things are now already paid for.

But wait for it…

This popped up on my news feed – the rest of an entertaining summer could be FREE!!!

Saving this here because I totally forgot about this! This was really the whole reason for this blog post.

RUN! Don’t walk to your library if you live in Allegheny County.

The kids all have library cards but I don’t have one myself. *** Adding this to my list of things to do this weekend.

Apparently (according to one of the school moms) you can even take out large yard games and small farm equipment from our library!!! Who knew??? But this summer, with your library card, you can reserve free tickets to tons of fun things to do in the city and surrounding areas. FREE!

To claim your tickets, log in with your Allegheny County library card number and PIN, browse for passes by date or by venue, reserve your pass and either print it or download it onto your phone.

Tickets will be available on May 1 for admission days that start on May 15. RAD Summer Staycation runs through the end of August.

The following attractions will provide more than 100,000 free tickets through the program:

• The Andy Warhol Museum
• Carnegie Museum of Art
• Carnegie Museum of Natural History
• Carnegie Science Center
• Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh
• The Frick Pittsburgh
• Heinz History Center
• Mattress Factory
• National Aviary
• Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens
• Pittsburgh Botanic Garden
• Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium
• Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum

There are few things on this list that I have never done/places I have never gone and this excites me.