How do you decide on Family passes?

[K-ice]

Do any of you have family passes to a zoo, museam, amusement park, science center etc.?

Where do you go?
How do you decide if it is worth it?

I currently have one, it was about $800/year or $150 per day. We have gone about 10 times so I feel it is good value. But the price to renew just shot up to $1400 so I think we need to find something different for next year. We might break even but that is a lot to put out upfront to maybe break even.

Just curious?

[gooki]

Annual family passes here are 4x a single adult pass. I.e. Go twice in one year and you've broken even. I think this price is fair, although I don't choose to purchase any.

[Insanity]

It depends what is included in the pass.  We have family passes to an amusement park near by.  It also also entry to special events that we wouldn't be able to go to without it.  My wife has taken the kids at least three or four times, we have gone together at least two times, and I took the kids once.

They also include parking and a discount on food and merchandise.  We eat there which probably doesn't help the savings.

[LiveLean]

When kids were 5 and under, we found our annual local aquarium pass ($100/family) to be a tremendous value.

When they were 6-8, the annual local zoo pass ($120/family) was terrific.

[DecD]

In our last house, we lived one block from the city pool.  The family pass for the summer was ~$150.  It was a great deal, as we used it at least 4 days a week.  More importantly, it allowed us to drop by for 45 minutes after supper, rather than feeling like we had to stay long enough to get our money's worth for the admission cost. 

[Neustache]

This is our first year not doing a zoo pass - at $75 a year it's a great deal, as you get to ride the train and carousel for free, it's close to our house, and it has a great playground.

However, I was just burned out on it.  Want to explore other parks and trails in the area (free!) and we'll look at it again next year.

Our theme park around here is pretty expensive for a pass and I don't see us doing that until the kids are older.  It's also 30 minutes away, and I just don't like driving that far for entertainment.

We might do a pool pass for our neighborhood pool next year - it's pricey, at $275 a family, but we can walk there and more than likely would swim every weekday.  It only runs Memorial Day - Labor Day, so I'd want to swim a bunch to feel like we were getting our money's worth.

[K-ice]

It depends ... We have family passes to an amusement park near by.  It also also entry to special events that we wouldn't be able to go to without it...

.....  We eat there which probably doesn't help the savings.

I agree extra perks would be nice. Our pass doesn't offer that. They used to save you a bit of time since one wrist band did all attractions but that has reciently changed so we need to line up every time & show our cards again.

I agree with the eating out part, save $ to spend more $. We try to eat before, but each day using the pass ranges between $8-$30 depending how organized or hungry we are.

Anyone on a tight budget should factor this in.

[K-ice]

....More importantly, it allowed us to drop by for 45 minutes after supper, rather than feeling like we had to stay long enough to get our money's worth for the admission cost.

I agree this is one of the best things about a pass. For example ours included mini-golf. At the start, 18 holes was not possible for a 3y old but we just worked upto 18 without any pressure. 

[mm1970]

It depends.

We have a local zoo pass, which is about $100, and includes parking.

One day to get in for four, plus parking is $56.

The family pass is $90, and the family + guest is $125 (grandparent, friend, etc.)

So you go 2x a year and you made your money back.

[mamagoose]

We have a family pass to the Science Center for $130/year and we go at least twice a month, it's only 10 minutes away and a great place to take the toddler to get the wiggles out. Will keep renewing this into perpetuity, if nothing else for the discount on summer camp that pays for itself.

We just bought a family pass to the zoo, $49/year for the family (half off promo). It has a splash pad and playground, great place to spend the morning before nap. Won't go as often since it's 30 minutes away, but it's a nice outing.

I want an annual pass to Disney (for me, DH doesn't want to go) but I can't justify forking over that much cash, so I challenged myself if I could earn the money by selling stuff from my decluttering then I'll buy the pass guilt-free. Kid is still under 3 so she's free.

[tonysemail]

we have a family pass to the zoo currently.
we bought it on groupon at 50% off, so it paid for itself on the first visit.
however, it's not getting much use because we live about 45mins away from this zoo.

the nice thing about the passes is that we get reciprocal discounts at other nearby zoos.
there are 3 other children's parks / zoos nearby that we can visit for 50% off :)
we don't get the pass every year since we'd like to rotate our membership between different parks and zoos.

apart from that, our DD is old enough to enjoy going to art museums.
So we've started taking the family for free.
we live by some local universities which have free entrance to their museums.
bank of america has the museums on us program.

in terms of how we decide whether to become members, we'll probably look out for another groupon for next year.
if we don't find a good deal on membership, then we might take a break for a year and go for more hiking at nearby parks.

[TrMama]

How do you decide if it is worth it?

I decide it's worth it if we'll go enough times to more than pay for the pass. I wouldn't necessarily renew a pass every year, because (usually) you can only do the same activity so many times before it gets dull. I had family passes to the local museum one year (the year they had a dinosaur exhibit). The kids loved it, but after we'd been several times in a year they just weren't as interested in seeing the same things over and over. I chose not to renew.

If you decide not to renew, can you put the $1400 towards some other fun activity that you'll all enjoy?

[tooqk4u22]

I generally go with the 2x rule....if I can breakeven going twice then it is worth it.  Of course its got to be something that I think I would go back a third+ time. 

Other than that it has to be something that we would definitely be doing regularly....like if lived near a ski town and that was a big part of our recreation. 

[K-ice]

I want an annual pass to Disney (for me, DH doesn't want to go) but I can't justify forking over that much cash, so I challenged myself if I could earn the money by selling stuff from my decluttering then I'll buy the pass guilt-free. Kid is still under 3 so she's free.

That's a good idea. What is the price and break even point on the Disney pass? 4,5 ...10 visits?

It seams like most people see value at a 2-4 visit break even point. Our amusement park is crazy for raising their prices.

[Goldielocks]

$800+ is one heck of a lot. Look at the snow sports thread which runs into a similar cost for downhill skiing. Most say it is not in any way a justified choice but a joint family experience, akin to how you plan vacation money.

Pre MMM we bought 120 to $150 annual pass to things that kids would like that I found relaxing too. Zoo, aquarium, museum. Science centres. Etc.  new one each year so we always had a kid friendly place to go.  Very good idea with kids under 8   

I treated winter skiing and amusement parks as a separate budget, and could never justify annual passes. So saved up each time to go, or earned extra money just for it which made it more special.  Maybe 4 times per year for all of this together.   So not saying don't go, but would you get the same pleasure after 5 visits?

[justajane]

$800 for a year? Wow. We don't have anything close to that in our area, but I'm sure it's region dependent.

We have bought many family passes over the years - to children's museums, the science center, etc. They were all bought on discount, usually a steep discount. In my experience, places oftentimes offer discounts on or around Cyber Monday or Black Friday in November. If you don't live in the US, I'm sure your country has equivalent sale periods during the year.

I would like a place on FB, and sometimes they will announce deals via social media.

Sometimes the memberships paid off; sometimes they didn't. This year we have a pass to Six Flags, but since I broke my foot in the spring, we haven't been able to go as often as we wanted. Oh, well.

I agree that the best part of a pass is that you don't feel obligated to spend hours and hours with cranky kids just to feel like you got a good value.

[Merrie]

I think the zoo pass is worth it. I forget how much it is for a year, something like $100-150 and we have 2 guests on our pass so we can take visiting friends.

I regret buying the pass to the science center, because we still have to pay $5 for parking when we go there and as a result of that we don't go much since I hate having to pay for parking.

[Jack]

My wife and I have annual memberships ($90 for the pair) to the botanical garden. We got them after a friend pointed out that out of all the attractions around the city, the botanical garden is the one that makes the most sense to visit often because it changes with the seasons. It also comes with reciprocal membership to a bunch of other botanical gardens, although we haven't yet taken advantage of that particular benefit.

We didn't get a parking pass, but that's because we usually ride our bikes instead. (And if we don't, we park on-street in a nearby neighborhood and walk in rather than paying to park in the deck.)

One year, my wife and I got a summer membership to the water park and I thought it was fun and worthwhile -- like a swimming pool (and IMHO, unlike a theme park with roller coasters), a water park is somewhere you can go often without getting too bored. Being able to go for a few hours on weekday afternoon / evenings, when the lines aren't as long, is pretty great.

[cchrissyy]

When my kids were little, we had a zoo pass, for the reason that it was cheap relative to # of visits, included free parking, and made it possible to  drop by for a short visit, not feel like we had to stay all day to get our $ worth. I'm a cheapskate and looking at the price of a single visit, we might have never gone. But with the pass, we went monthly.

[cchrissyy]

Also, last week I took my kids to Santa Cruz boardwalk. It's local to us but we had never gone.

FYI a season pass is the price of 2 visits - and when you buy it, it includes a day pass for somebody else.  So rather than buy day passes for 2 kids, I bought 1 season pass for 2x the day cost and got a day pass "free". Now one of my kids is free if ever we go again.

[Better Late Than Never]

Have you checked your local library? My town's library has family passes for many of the local museums and zoos. The only downside is they may not be available on the day you want to go, but you can also reserve them in advance.

[Bob W]

We buy annual passes to Silver Dollar City (a fairly close family amusement park that is very cool)   I set us back around $380 for 4 and we get several guess passes as well.   We use it around 8-10 times per year and almost always bring guests.   So for us it seems a good value.   We probably put $1,200 per year into this activity by the time we figure gas, food, lodging, (sometimes we stay over) misc.    So for 10 days of entertainment perhaps $20 per person per day including guests. 

This past weekend my wife,  bless her heart,   signed us up for a 2 night stay there for free with a time share presentation.   She actually thought that $6,000 a year was a good price for a 7 day timeshare deal ---- some people are just not good at math.   Luckily I was there to say no, no, and double no.  But we did enjoy the facility and spent time at the amusement park and checked out some other stuff.

We also have a pass for the child and grand child for a close by indoor kids zone deal.  They have a big tube/ball kids maze area,  indoor roller coaster and bumper cars.    It runs $30 per year per kid and is a good deal as we use it whenever for short spurts probably 10-15 times per year. 

[thd7t]

We do family passes to our city pools and to a local children's museum.  Each is under $100.  When grandparents ask what to get for the kids at birthdays, this is what we ask for.