Universal to let kids in free with adult's pass

Online only though. While thats great and all, you have to plan in advance and buy your tickets online. If your at the Disney resort and decide you want to go to Universal for the day you would still have to pay full price. This seems like the kind of thing they could use to lure Disney resort customers away from Disney, but they aren't using it that way. Interesting...

That one little caveat is odd. In fact, I always wondered why the online deals were always kind of an unmarketed secret. What's the point of having a deal to attract customers if they don't know it's there?

The thing is, the deal has been on the website since at least the beginning of the month.

Back in the Orlando ticket prices news item, I did a big stupid post detailing all the deals. Here's what I found on Universal's site on January 4th:

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Universal has a one-day ticket for $59.75, but that's the bait. The real ticket price is $99 for a 2-day/2-park ticket. The catch here is that for each ticket purchased you get a free child's ticket and 3 additional days added to the ticket.

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So why is it taking local media a month to pick up on things like this?

Yeah, and the five days for $100ish has been around for years. It doesn't seem like anyone knew it. Again, why offer it but not promote it?

THE deal (for those w/out kids) is still the AAA bargain, annual passes on the cheap that include parking and discounts on food and merchandise...

Of course, that still makes more sense for those of us who can visit Universal more frequently... :)

As for why offer and not promote? I dunno, but those 3-day deals at SCD/CC for $79, they weren't displayed ANYWHERE at the Branson parks, but it made for some excellent day/night coasting opportunities...hooray for web-deals... ;)

eightdotthree: Technically, if you were at Disney AND had a laptop, you could still get the deal. I agree, most normal people probably don't travel with their laptops as much as us geeks do.

I saw an ad on The Weather Channel's site today for this promotion. There you have it.

Companies are really trying to push customers visiting their website. Not just in the amusement industry, either. T-Mobile, for example, has a lot of web-only deals that you can't even get if you call up their customer service number. As for the article, I'm thinking that this is supposed to be more like a "secret" that savvy buyers can feel proud that they found more than something to attract more customers. It enhances the value in that guest's mind. Also, it'll keep them checking back to the website periodically to see if they can find any other "secret" deals, which in turn can eventually lead to marketing benefits (i.e. if a good portion of your customer base visits your website, you can take advantage of the relatively free marketing there and spend less on external marketing)