Today I’m going to tell you how to park at the airport for $5 a day in a clean, well-lit, covered parking garage with excellent service. WallyPark has locations in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston, Denver, Atlanta, and Philadelphia, and their new Premier Garage service is great. They have a rooftop self-parking for $13, covered self-parking for $15, and valet parking for $17. Taxes and port authority fees are on top of that, but I’m going to ignore them for the sake of easy math.
Three other factors work into this deal. If it isn’t obvious yet, get a Costco membership. It costs $55 but you can buy $100 in WallyPark gift cards for only $50, a 50% discount. Second, get a AAA membership. For a lot of the uses I put them to, Costco and AAA discounts are interchangeable. It seems silly to have both memberships, but I am going to try to be more proactive about finding AAA deals. WallyPark gives you a 25% discount that is combinable with other coupons and discounts.
Finally, sign up for the WallyClub loyalty program. You earn 1 point for every dollar spent, and you earn free parking days based on seven days’ worth of accumulated points. By this I mean if you pay for seven days of valet parking, you get enough points for one day of valet parking. Seven days of self-parking gets you enough points for one day of self-parking. But because they are points, you could in theory pay for self-parking and redeem for valet parking or vice versa. The redemption rate would just be a little off. I will assume you pay and redeem for the same parking type, meaning you get one out of every eight days free, a 12.5% discount.
If you add these discounts together, a day of covered self-parking drops from $15 to $11.25 after the AAA discount, to $5.63 after paying with a half-price gift card, and finally to $4.92 after accounting for the free days you rack up. I was paying $8 a day to park at the Thrifty lot outdoors, and even the WallyPark Groupons offered now and then are $7.
For one of the best parking options in Seattle, and I’m sure at their other locations, too, $4.92 per day is a great deal. Now if only they would team up with AboutAirportParking.com!
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