They were overpriced to begin with, but they’re raising adult ticket prices by a few bucks anyway. That’s not what they emphasize, of course. They’ve got two marketing tactics.
One is that they’ve lowered prices a bit for young people…but at the same time, they’ve gotten rid of group discounts. I suspect it looks good on paper, but the busloads of kids from the nearby vacation bible school will probably be paying the same amount or more. Still, Quiverful Families will praise the Lord for this change.
The other tactic is laughable. They compare their prices to Disney World. Oh, sure, they’re comparable — in one, you enter a big wooden box which contains fake animals in more wooden boxes with Sunday School lessons on the walls, and in the other…well, does Disney World have papier mache models of dinosaurs, and do they sell postcards and plaques explaining that incest was OK in the Bible? No? Then no contest. And look, the lines are shorter at Answers in Genesis!
Disney’s parks and AiG’s attractions are, in a sense, competing for a family’s time for vacation, offering the best possible quality in all they and we do. However, you can spend many hours waiting in long lines for short rides at amusement parks. At our Ark and museum, however, you can easily spend a full day or two at each location, experiencing edu-tainment all day and rarely standing in a long line.
Watch this silly video of kids discovering that they get to go to Disneyland, and imagine replacing the words “Disneyland” with “AiG’s edu-tainment attractions”. I don’t think they’d get quite the same reaction.
They’d probably rather go to summer school.
Their ultimate reaction was funny, but I do so loathe the “lie to children” genre of videos.
And here I thought museums were supposed to be displays of actual true things. How naive of me..
If I tried that with my kids, I might get eviscerated before I could reveal the “joke”. If my parents had tried that with me, I would have been pretty pissed off and not enjoyed the trip.
A better comparison would be King’s Island, just up to the road, basically. You can get a daily admission for as low as $39.99 and a season pass for as little as $120. And they have, you know, rides and stuff. Kentucky Kingdom, not far away, has similar prices (although a much cheaper season pass if you buy ahead).
Also locally, both the Cincinnati Art Museum and Contemporary Arts Center are free.
Further abroad, the American Museum of Natural History, which isn’t actually predicating on lying about science to their visitors, has a pay what you wish policy, with a suggested adult admission of $23. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a $25 admission for adults, with pay what you wish for residents of NY and adjoining states (it used to be for everyone).
The kids deserve Disneyland, the parents deserve two weeks of Ark park for driving with 5 kids of whom only one is wearing a seatbelt.
The mildly deranged penguin is offering a special discounted offer to Antarctica World, where you get to wait for deliveries of cheese whilst sitting on an egg during the winter. She swears this is lots of fun, especially for the males, who keep coming back and doing it every year. The highlights include yet another blizzard and even colder temperatures with no cheese, whilst knowing your girlfriend is somewhere in the tropics. (Walruses not included.) Prices start at 2956€ including no taxes, an obvious discount on the previously-unannounced price of 2955€ including all taxes(and one free drink, liquid not included). Multi-year advance booking discounts are available, refunds and cheese are not.
It would have been funnier if they had first proposed to take the kids to Disneyland and then taken them to summer school instead.
I wonder what this move by AiG says about their finances. I would be curious if anyone knows what the latest skinny is on that.