Rose Bowl travel part 2: Luxury in LA

If you read yesterday’s budget travel itinerary, here is a dream Rose Bowl trip—sparing no expenses. The goal of this trip is to spend as much money as possible up to the point where spending more money fails to improve the trip. For example, no gold-plated, caviar-stuffed, truffle foie gras pizza. Further, I am not including potential shopping sprees.

I am also going to organize this one a bit differently, this time by category instead of a minute-by-minute agenda. I am also going to be a little less specific about how to spend the money — I spent a lot of time getting exact costs for the budget plan, but it is actually harder to find out how much luxury experiences cost. That said, I feel like I have some good estimates for each of these categories.

Note 1: none of this is sponsored. Again, I wish it were.

Note 2: if you put a really expensive ticket in your cart on StubHub and don’t buy it, you’ll start getting a barrage of calls form StubHub offering you a deal on those tickets. Why did I put the tickets in my cart? Well, that’s the only way I could estimate the fees.

So, if you’re ever going to splurge on fancy tickets, just put them in your cart, let them sit for a day and wait for StubHub staff to come crawling to your feet.

And, if you don’t want to be harassed by StubHub, do not put expensive items in your cart if you have not plan to buy them.

Travel to and from Los Angeles

The most expensive item is a private, charter mid-sized Hawker 800 Jet through aircharterserviceusa.com. I am too embarrassed to actually call them up and ask for a firm quote, but their estimator put the cost around $90,000 round trip.

The Hawker 800 is a lovely vehicle that accommodates up to nine passengers, so you won’t feel like you’re in a plane that’s too big.

Yes, you could spend $300,000 on a charter 747 or something, but you’d be so lonely. You wouldn’t want that now, would you?

Ground travel

Crown Limousine is the best-reviewed limo service in Los Angeles, earning a 4.9 rating on 179 google reviews. They’ll also take you right to the Rose Bowl on game day.

For a luxury trip, I want to make sure that no matter the day or hour, a limo is ready to take me anywhere. $200 per hour is the high end for luxury limo service, so round-the-clock availability from arrival to departure equals 120 hours of service. That puts us at a grand total of $24,000 for ground travel for the trip.

Photo By Cyrus McCrimmon/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Lodging

The Wisconsin Alumni Association is staying at the Hotel Indigo, but that isn’t quite luxurious enough for my liking. Two blocks away from the Indigo is the Ritz Carlton LA, where an executive suite costs $2,500 per night.

The best part of this arrangement is a hotel full of Badgers fans are a short walk limo ride away.

Photo credit should read Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images

Rose Bowl Tickets

The other day I found awesome club seats at the 48 yard line on StubHub listed at $1,900. All-in, that’s a grand total of $4,990. You can take a tour of the club space in the embedded content below (or here if you are on Apple News).

Like the Budget option, we are also going to spend $125 per person on the Badger Huddle.

Events / entertainment

Overall, I expect to pay about $15,000 per day for the most exclusive events. For example, we can get two courtside Lakers tickets on Dec. 29 for a total of $13,925.50. (Author’s note: this is why StubHub keeps calling me).

Photo by Garrett W. Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images

On New Years Eve, we can book Long Beach Firework VIP Cruise — Dec. 31, 2019, 9:00 p.m. - 1:00 a.m. for about $1,000. Add a few bottles of the finest champagne, and we’re in business.

If Disney is your thing, Disneyland has a bunch of VIP options that you could spend up to $15,000 on.

Overall, this section could really benefit from a travel agent, who could easily help you get an amazing experience for $15,000 per day including commission. I would recommend calling one up and just saying “here’s what I like; I can spend $15,000 per day.”

Meals

Here’s my plan - go to the concierge and say, “Here’s $200, tell me the best way to spend $1800 on the best meals possible today.” With that, we follow our whims and local recommendations. Or, we could do that same thing with a travel agent.

That’s how we get $2000 per day on meals for a $12,000 total. If we cannot find a way to spend that much, let’s make a few peoples’ days with extravagant tips.

Total cost

If we build in a 10% contingency again, we are looking at just under a $243,000 budget. Frankly, that’s kind of low, considering we could do this trip nonstop for 6,000 years and not yet spend as much as what Bill Gates is worth.

Frankly, I don’t even know how I would spend any more money than this, and if I were doing this, I would probably come well under budget.