Six flags is now charging you to print tickets at home.

Ok now, this is just as bad as them charging you $12 to park your car.

Six Flags is now charging a $5 fee to print your own tickets at home. I really don't understand why we should have to pay to print our own tickets out at home, when it is cheaper for them to let us print our own tickets.

So now, I am using my printer ink and paper and I am charged to do so.

Great move six flags.

Which park are you talking about? I only see that they discount for on-line purchases and print-n-go tickets.

When you go to "print tickets". it lists that there is a $5 fee for print and go. I was on the chicago park website.

According to the article I have linked below it is taking place at Magic Mountain. I just went through the ticket buying motions for SFOT and sure enough, the print-n-go option is an additional $5.00

http://tinyurl.com/dg5v6c

The online ticket price is $31.00 vs $49.00 at the park, but to me this doesn't appear to be a good idea from a marketing standpoint. Why heavily discount the ticket and then tack on a fee for every possible delivery method? I think that most customers would be happier to see a ticket price of $36.00 and free delivery--particularly if they're printing the stupid thing at home. Are they trying to prepare customers for the fact that they will get charged fees everywhere they turn, even before they get to the park?

Well, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Is it possible that the ticket prices are set at the corporate level and the parks themselves have some freedom to charge these fees for extra revenue?

I can't imagine why they would discount up to 10 dollars and then charge back 5 of that. It's a bit of misrepresentation.

Travelling into the way-back machine....we were up in DC for a work conference shortly after Snyder purchased the NFL's Redskins. Well, when they announced the price increases for tickets to the intrasquad game had doubled, and that they would also start charging for parking for the first time for these glorified practice sessions, there was quite the uproar. Seems that Snyder has taught his protege very well.... ;)

I paid a Print-n-go fee for my SFoT ticket I bought back in July of 2008. This is not new.

"Convenience" charges have been around for quite some time. I do not like them one bit. IIRC, Cedar Fair has them as well.

The problem is that you as a company might consider this a premium service or convenience worth paying for, but consumers on the other hand view it as something that saves them money by not having to staff a ticket window.

The wrinkle comes in when you realize that the parks may not be doing this in-house, and that the ticketing agent is actually a third party that isn't free. In that case they're passing the cost to you, but it still feels dirty.

FWIW, Busch does not charge a fee to print at home.

a_hoffman50 said:
"Convenience" charges have been around for quite some time.

There is no greater offender than Ticketmaster, though. On an $84 ticket, I've seen: convenience fee ($14), building fee ($3), order processing fee ($4), print-at-home fee ($3). Disgusting.

Yeah, I tend to agree (with Jeff's post).

I understand convenience fees, but for the most part they come into play when you are paying the same price/cost, but choosing to do it online instead of in person or via mail. The idea of discounting (to incentivize) and then charging a portion back (as a convenience fee) just doesn't seem right.

Why not, as Jeff Seifert suggested, just account for the fee in the discounted price? That certainly would seem less shady anyway.

In the end, there is still a discount so I would still do it. But it doesn't make sense.

Edited because I apparently think slow and type slower and others got in before me. :)

I just bought tickets for a detroit tigers game, and they wanted to charge me to print them at home, but it was free for me to pick the tickets up at will call on the day of the game.

I don't get it.

How can they charge you to print out your own tickets, but not charge you if they have to print the tickets out and have to pay someone to hand them out?

crazy horse said:
I don't get it.

Clearly. ;)

It's almost like the opposite of what airlines are doing. If you book your flight online, there are no additional fees, but if you call them to book, you pay what is essentially a you're-using-paid-employee-time fee.

I'm shocked that so many others are schocked by this. As a recall, it was three dollars per order for sometime. So it's basically a two dollar increase.

As for inlcuding it in the price of an online ticket, that would actually be worse for families. Instead of paying one five dollar fee you would essentially be paying a fee for every person in your party.

Well, I don't really care too much about families. :)

And the thing that is getting me with this isn't the fee itself. It's the fee coupled with the discount. If they offer me a $10 discount to buy online and then take 1/2 of that back once I do, I'm not sure how any rational response wouldn't entail a head scratch and a "Huh? What just happened here?"

Cedar Fair's E-tickets have no additional charges to print them at home.

Well, as of last night they didn't, anyway.

^They (CF) got paid last night, LOL. Picked up my pass last night too. Of course, it does need to be noted that SF gives away their passes, whereas CF passes are anything but free. The nickel-and-diming kinda should be expected when their passes are SO cheap to begin with. My individual SF pass, with parking and discounts, still cost less than half my CF-KI pass...and they'll probably get equal usage. To be fair, CF has passholder events, whereas SF doesn't. I guess where I'm going is that in the end you pretty much get what you pay for....sometimes you just pay for it in more smaller increments (the Wal-Marting of amusements?)... :)

This has been the case for months. When they had the 20% off SP sale in December, it was either $5.00 to print out the voucher for the pass or pay $10 for it to be sent to you.

There wasn't an option to pick up the pass at the park since this was an online only deal after the park had closed for the season.

I paid the $10 since that meant I didn't have to wait in line so the extra $5 was worth it but it was still annoying since they could have easily mailed it for under $1.00 rather than use UPS and I only saved about $8 over buying it in the park last fall (where there was no line to process it)