Theme park prices

Dear Mr. Theme Park

I visit several theme parks each summer with my family. Our local park is Six Flags Mid America and we like to choose another park to visit each summer, usually within a day’s driving of St. Louis. We have a season pass for Six Flags. It is expensive to visit other parks without season passes.  What other options are there?  Since we don’t live in the city of the park we are visiting, sometimes we pay full price. Is there anything new concerning pricing coming to the industry to get better deals?

-        Palmer from St Louis, Missouri

Great question, Palmer. 

The average price to visit a regional theme park is in the mid $50.00 range - that is if you are paying what we call “Rack Rate”.  Very frankly, very few people pay rack rates. You can always go online for the park you are planning to visit to get deals and buy tickets. Almost all parks offer special deals throughout the summer.  If the industry is experiencing an economic downturn, you will find more discounts during these economic drops, yielding bigger savings.

Speaking of yielding savings on admissions, I believe in the not too distant future, we will see a lot of theme parks adopting new pricing programs and breaking away from the standard Pay-One-Price (P.O.P.) ticketing approach. This new approach is called by two names - yield management and dynamic pricing. You may not know these names, but I'll bet you are familiar with this type of pricing. Airlines, hotels, rental car companies, and communications companies all employ this type of pricing. For about 55 years, our industry has utilized the standard P.O.P. system. Before that, it was individual ride tickets bought by the strip. P.O.P. changed the industry and the guests’ perception of how to visit. Dynamic pricing can be the next pricing program in our industry to provide the guests with great pricing alternatives and, at the same time, spin the turnstiles at parks.  This will create attendance increases for park operators.

Sporting teams such as baseball have already embraced dynamic pricing.  It has had a positive impact on their home game attendance, increasing annual attendance and revenues.

There have always been deals on theme park admissions. As we mature and prices continue to rise, parks have to find new ways to grow. Season passes and dynamic pricing coupled together is, in my estimation, the key to better deals for our guests and larger attendance for our theme parks. 

Palmer, keep on searching - the deals are there and we appreciate you visiting.