memberships

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Do you have a membership to a zoo, aquarium, or museum? Do you find it worth it? I have a membership to pretty much everywhere I live. But I have small kids and we go do stuff. But I've found most people don't buy these memberships.

I don't want to point out but maybe I'm looking at the wrong way. But $150 museum membership for a family is 2 visits. But more importantly it's like going to the movies 3x or less if you add in snacks and stuff (i know families who spend $80/visit). So why wouldn't people pay for something like a membership?

Do you find it worth it or not?

[GoodSteward]

I have found memberships are usually only worth it if you can attend more than once a year. Do you want to visit this place more than once a year, or will you visit because you buy the membership? We bought a yearly pass to SeaWorld because we love going there, but found it wasn't as simple to just pack up and go like we thought. We always had something else coming up, and couldn't justify the money. Ended up being a waste. We are about 4 1/2 hours away from Seaworld Orlando.

I also bought a 5-year membership to the creation museum in Ky. The same people who are doing the Ark Encounter. It was 500$ Her family just lives a few hours from there so we thought we could go a couple times a year, but we live 8 hours from her family. We have only been back once in two years. That really wasn't a good call at all. Also, it is nice but not sure you would find a lot to keep you interested going many times a year. lol

I have found most of the time we don't go back to places like we think we would. Time, money, priorities..there is always something else that needs us first it seems. I don't buy memberships much anymore. Good intentions, but it seems it rarely works out.

[MonkeyMama]

When we had small kids we had a lot of memberships. It was a very frugal way to entertain the kids. & then always had something to do that didn't cost money "right now".

Today we don't have any memberships. I might get a museum membership this month, but was thinking of that more from a simplicity and "supporting the museum" standpoint. It wouldn't be to save money. I was thinking more of a nice treat for the adults, also. Which may be some of why we haven't had any memberships for a while. The kids have been more busy with grade school and their own things. It's only now that we are starting to go out more without our kids.

[DaveInPgh]

We don't buy memberships anywhere because there really isn't any place, other than a local pool, that we would want to go to more than once a year.

We haven't bought memberships to a local pool because the one closest to our house is in a different borough and they do not issue to non-residents. The pool in our borough isn't convenient.

[msomnipotent]

I just bought Six Flags season passes today for my family. Their flash sale made buying a pass for the rest of this year and 2017 cheaper than buying tickets for one day. I only plan on going for Fright Fest, but will probably go a few more times now. I used to have memberships for the zoo and a few museums every year, but the exchange students don't seem to be interested anymore and my family is sick of seeing the same things. Plus, it is a royal PITA to park anywhere near the Shedd aquarium or the Field Museum. Forget about going when the Bears play. I made full use of the friend passes and gift shop discounts when I had them. I thought they were a good use of my money. I even bought a year membership to Biltmore once just for the day. It turned out to be cheaper once you factored in the discounts.

I'm not sure if this is applies to all memberships, but my zoo and museum memberships were partially deductible on our taxes as charitable contributions.

[bjl584]

The only membership that I currently have is to my gym. I go 5 days per week.

It costs $29 per month, but my employer reimburses me $20 of that through their health and wellness initiative.

[creditcardfree]

Um I have an Amazon Prime membership!

In the past, yes, we have bought memberships and did get use out of them. History museums, zoo's, children's museums, art museums and science museums. All very worth it when we had young children. We didn't subscribe to all of those at one time however! But one or two a year usually.

[disneysteve]

It's funny that you ask this. About 1-1/2 weeks ago, as I mentioned in another thread, we visited the Museum of Natural History in NYC. We were at a self-serve ticket kiosk ready to purchase our admission and a museum employee came over to see if we needed help. He then told us that they had a special and it would actually be cheaper for us to get a "digital membership" than it would be to just buy 3 tickets for the day. So we did.

I have no expectations of going back there during the year but you never know. My wife and I might make a weekend trip and knowing it won't cost us anything, pop in for a couple of hours.

Other than that, We do currently have annual passes to Walt Disney World. We bought them in November 2015 and have made 3 trips on those passes which made them more than worth it. That saved us hundreds of dollars. I'm not positive if we will renew them or not. We have to figure out our travel plans for the coming year.

When DD was younger, we had a membership to the local discovery museum (a kids museum) and the zoo and maybe somewhere else.

My wife and I have had an annual subscription to a theater to see a few shows but we didn't renew that. It was nice to have, though, and we made full use of it.

[phantom]

When I was a kid, my family had a YMCA membership and membership for the YMCA pool. We spent almost everyday at the pool in the summers. If I stop working when my daughter gets a bit older, I'd definitely like to get a pool membership.

My family also did a zoo membership a few times. It was nice because we could visit the zoo without feeling the need to see the whole thing to get our money's worth. We'd even make a few short trips in the winter months. But, after a year of zoo membership, we were usually ready to stay away from the zoo for awhile.

When my daughter gets a bit older, we might do memberships. But, most things with memberships are 30-45 minutes away, and there are lots of free options less than 10 minutes away, like parks, playgrounds, libraries, and a game preserve.

[disneysteve]

I forgot one. About 4 or 5 years ago, we went to Longwood Gardens, a large and beautiful botanical garden, for the day. We had such a nice time that on the way out, we decided to upgrade our tickets to annual passes. We made a point of going once in each season to see the nice variety of displays and exhibits that they do throughout the year. We only did it for the one year but definitely felt we got our money's worth out of it.

[Jluke]

If you get an annual zoo membership it is usually good for various zoos that are "in the network". It would also include aquariums.

Same type of thing probably exists for museums.

Good for variety and saving money if able to utilize.

[QuarterMillionMan]

One of my subordinates has the Disney Land California annual pass. I'm not sure what it entails but when I brought up the topic with my brother and his wife they said that they would purchase it as well if they lived near it, unfortunately they live in Hawaii. They and their 2 kids love, love, love anything Disney.

[disneysteve]

One of my subordinates has the Disney Land California annual pass. I'm not sure what it entails but when I brought up the topic with my brother and his wife they said that they would purchase it as well if they lived near it, unfortunately they live in Hawaii.

For Disney World in Florida, a 5-day pass is $350. An annual pass (AP) is $800. AP also includes parking which is $20/day. So 2 trips with 5-day passes and paying for parking would be $900 vs. $800 for the AP. We've gone 3 times this year so we saved over $1,000.

The AP also includes Photopass which is any photos taken of you on rides or by the photographers stationed throughout the parks.

The AP also gives a 10% discount on all merchandise purchases on property and a discount on most sit-down restaurants.

The AP also gives discounts on Disney hotel rooms.

So basically, 2 trips more than makes up for the cost of an AP.

[scfr]

No memberships of the type you are talking about. (Only memberships are Costco and AAA.) But if we had children and lived near a place that we wanted to visit multiple times it might be different. One year I gifted a Smithsonian membership to my sister's family.

[kork13]

We haven't had any memberships at all, but we're moving up to Alaska in the next month, and when we went up to find a house, we did get a zoo membership for our family. Our 1y/o son enjoys seeing animals, and we've been told that especially in the winter (and also in spite of it...brrrr....), you need to just get out & do things. We're going to make the zoo one of those "things", since it's easy and kid-friendly. The cost is quite reasonable, at $80 for our family, which pays for itself after 4 visits...we've been once already, and plan/hope to go at least once a month. If we find that goal to be unreasonable/unattainable, we may not continue our membership.

I've considered memberships for a variety of places, though.
- If OKC had a better selection of shows we were interested in (4-5 vs. 1-2 per year), I would have long-since gotten a membership with one of the performance houses.
- I'm not a sports fan... but as a Christmas gift, I bought my brother season tickets to our local minor league baseball team, and he loved it.
- If we lived closer to a theme park (closest is Six Flags in Dallas, 3hrs away), we would likely do a membership there. Notably, my brother & his wife (same brother as the baseball tickets) DO have season passes there, and have been there 2 or 3 times since they got married in April.

In the end, these types of memberships depend on 2 things: (A) your interest in going to them regularly; and (B) the likelihood of you actually using your membership regularly. If both of these are favorable, a membership can be a great option.