Fringies take notice!

[dreamshark]

If you are one of those people who buys a Fringe Ultrapass every year, check your snail mail. They just sent out a little mailing with a form that lets you "preregister" for an Ultrapass for the same price as last year, a fairly reasonable $150. According to this mailing, if you ignore this offer you will be paying the new [outrageous] price of $225!!!  At that price, I have serious doubts about continuing to Ultrapass the Fringe after this year. However, I'm sending in the form right now to take advantage of the reasonable price for possibly the last time.

Note that at $150 you had to see about 15 shows to break even (compared to buying 5-show punch cards). That's not too hard to do. At $225... well, I guess that depends on how much they jack up the prices of the punch cards. 

 

Comments

[mle292.livejournal.com]

Do I still need the button on top of whatever higher price this will be?

A more cynical person than me might think that this was an example of "Art and culture are for people who have money." Good thing I'm not cynical.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, you always need the button. I can't remember if the button is included in the Ultrapass ticket or not, but compared to the cost of the Ultrapass paying $3 for the button is pretty much a non-issue.

There are some examples of "art and culture" that can be experienced for free, but theatrical productions mounted inside theaters are rarely among them. Even with all the volunteers, it does cost money to put them on.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. *BUT* in my possibly rose-tinted memory, The Fringe Festival was, in the earliest years, an example of something that celebrated the vibrant theater community in Minneapolis and also affordable to low income people.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

It's all relative.

Ticket to Guthrie (average): $42
Shakespeare in the Park: free
Single Fringe show $12 (last year's price)
5 Fringe shows $50 (last year's price)

I'd say that Fringe shows still fall into the "affordable" category, although obviously not suitable for people who are having trouble paying rent that month.

Every year the price of the ultra pass has been going up by $5 or $10. I'm fine with that. What I'm annoyed about is a price jump of 50% in the Ultrapass in a single year. I got the impression from their letter that they noticed that many Ultrapass holders were seeing 25+ shows, thus getting a REALLY GOOD DEAL. Gosh, they thought, that's too good a deal! Let's charge more! Then we'll have more money!

I strongly suspect that they will actually take in less money if they do that. There's some upper limit to what people will pay for an Ultrapass. Once they've taken the leap they are incentivized to see as many shows as possible, and in our case we have sometimes seen more than 30. But I would never buy the pass with the ASSUMPTION that I'm going to see that many.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

If it's still around $12 per show, then that's quite reasonable. It looks like it's creeping away, but maybe it's just keeping pace with inflation.

In my day it cost ten cents to go to the theater, and that was with dinner!