Getty Image / Rich Fury / Staff
Have you made your retirement plan yet? Have you considered eating at an amusement park twice a day, every single day, over the course of seven years? A California man devised a remarkable scheme to save a ton of money by eating at Six Flags Magic Mountain every day, and it paid major dividends.
A 33-year-old California man named “Dylan” started working as an electrical engineer intern in 2014, and his office in Santa Clarita was in close proximity to Six Flags Magic Mountain.
“You can pay around $150 for unlimited, year-round access to Six Flags, which includes parking and two meals a day,” Dylan allegedly told Mel Magazine. “If you time it right, you could eat both lunch and dinner there every day.”
And here you are paying $200 a week on groceries a week like a chump.
“That entire first year, I don’t think I ever went to the grocery store,” he said. “I timed it so I was able to go there during my lunch break, go back to work, then stop back for dinner on my way home.”
In the span of seven years, Dylan estimates that he has eaten about 2,000 meals at Six Flags Magic Mountain – which puts each meal at approximately 50 cents.
However, this incredible plan did have one major drawback – he had to eat amusement park food every single day.
“The first year, the menu was kind of lame — all you could get was a burger and fries, or a pizza and breadsticks, or this pathetic sandwich and a refillable soda cup,” Dylan explained. “It wasn’t healthy at all, which was rough.”
Then came the chicken balls.
During the offseason, Dylan could hit any food stand in the park with relative ease. However, when the park was busy he would have to settle for something near the front of the park by the parking. The closest food option was chicken balls.
“I got so sick of those chicken balls,” he says. “I’d estimate I got them around 150 times, and at five per meal, that’s around 750 balls. I don’t know that I could ever eat them again.”
There was an “amazing” seasonal treat that Dylan used to love to eat in the fall – the Thanksgiving Dog.
“It’s a turkey dog topped with cranberry sauce, stuffing, and a slathering of mayonnaise – which I know sounds awful, but it was so good,” Dylan said. “I ended up eating way too many of them, and now I can’t even smell turkey dogs without gagging.”
Dylan started gaining weight when the dining pass added a snack to the deal.
“Separate from the meal, you could get Dippin’ Dots, sundaes, churros, pretzels — all that type of stuff,” he said.
The meals were not health-oriented whatsoever in the first few years, but recently Six Flags Magic Mountain rolled out food items such as a carne asada salad, black bean burgers, and meatless meatball subs.
After seven years of stuffing his face with an ungodly amount of amusement park food for only $150 a year, Dylan was able to pay down his student loans, got married, and buy a house.
Real men of genius.