To lie about his age for free admission?

[WaitForCake]

It's DS's 3rd birthday in a couple of weeks. I'm taking him to an attraction.

It's free for under 3s, but adult price at 3 upwards. Money is tight, but after a tough few months between lockdown and his DF moving out after our split, I want to do something nice for him.
As there is no inherent difference in what he'll get from the experience the day before his birthday and on the day of his birthday, WIBU to just buy him a 2 year old ticket?

I can't take him the day earlier due to work (I did consider this already).

YANBU - get the 2 year old ticket
YABU - pay the adult price for him

@BobbieDraper This is theft. If you want to do it then that's your choice, but dont pretend you're not stealing because you are

How is it theft? The OP are still paying for themselves. And it's a £30 difference for the sake of one day! If she took her son the day before, no one would bat an eyelid so why is it such a big deal?

do you really think that expensive luxuries should be available to everybody who wants them regardless?

The sledgehammer approach doesn't work here. There is some leeway in age based admission, as many people have recounted here. Equating passing a child off as a slightly younger child with theft of 'expensive luxuries' is not a valid comparison.

Shops won't let you let you walk out unpaid goods but theme parks do turn a blind eye to passing off children as younger children. If they didn't want to do they would impose proof of age.

If you think a company is greedy or has an unfair price structure, then don't give them your custom and by all means contact them to express your opinions and discuss it on MN and other SM.

I personally think Rolex, Breitling, Patek Philippe et al are extremely overpriced for what they are and, yes, greedy. I don't try to defraud them by dishonestly getting one for half-price or free, though; I just got myself a cheap Casio watch from Argos that does exactly the same basic thing - and won't leave me in floods of tears if I accidentally scratch it against a wall!

Oh honestly

It isn't theft
It isn't fraud
May be slightly dishonest, but not very
It is in no way criminal
She won't have to lie in front of her child or tell her child to lie - she's buying the tickets online
Its not even particularly immoral, as the theme park will be expecting this to happen and doesn't care enough to check ages, no one is affected by this

The business will expect this to happen, obviously. If they don't have any revenue protection measures to ensure they earn the correct amount of revenue, it obviously isn't particularly important to them. If it was, you'd need a birth certificate or they'd charge by height like legoland/paultons. They don't, therefore it's fine.

YABU, it's not a good message to send him. What if they check his age and he blurts out 'I'm 3!'

*but theme parks do turn a blind eye to some passing off children as younger children

And for people saying it’s theft, do not be so ridiculous!!!

What would you call it?
It's not, in the letter of the law, theft, but it is dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage that you are not entitled to.

Yeah but the thing is you can get into Chessington half price with a bit of cardboard from a cereal packet. Are they at pains to tell you that if you don't? No. They'll happily charge you full price. Just as I'll happily get my kid in free if they don't ask for proof of age.

What time of the day was he born? He may still be 2 at the time you enter the attraction.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

If it’s an attraction aimed at children then of course they don’t expect parents to use the rides etc. The pricing structure means that the same admission cost is spread over more people. Would you be happier if adults went in free and only children paid? Then you could congratulate yourself on stealing £60, not £30.

I started a thread along these lines ages ago, asking why we always automatically expect to pay less for children, and I was largely told IWBU by, what seemed to me (just my opinion), people who just couldn't/wouldn't consider any way other than what they've always been used to. I understand at places like the theatre that each bum (except for babies and toddlers) occupies one seat, but it seems bizarre to me that there is a higher adult price to see the Wiggles or Fireman Sam Live or whatever than the discounted price for the children who actually care about seeing it. Two parents accompanying one child (one interested target customer) pay more than one parent accompanying two of them. Indeed, there are some shows aimed at very young children who will get in free and only their DPs, DGPs and bored older siblings being dragged along actually have to pay!

When it's a vast open space, with no real restrictions on numbers, it would make even more sense to charge the highest prices to the age range most likely to make use of the attraction, depending on what the attraction is, rather than the middle-aged/older folk who would have no interest at all in going were they not there because their DC or GC wanted to go. Yes, they might buy food and drink, but that's already priced separately (and not cheaply) and not included in the entrance fee.

However, it's so ingrained that adults pay more, because they're likely to be earning - with the anomaly that 'adult' prices usually kick in from 12 or so, when you're still too young to have your own income - that nobody wants to question it. If we're talking fair, a typical theme park would offer free entry to under 3s, a token fee to the over 30s because they might want to look at the Winter gardens or have a serene ride on the Swans whilst they're there for the kids and then full whack to everybody aged 3-30. Never going to happen, though!

a token fee for the over 30s ??? Wtf

@BobbieDraper thanks for proving my point so beautifully

ONE person doing it isn't harming anyone. If everybody did it, they would lose a lot of money and be in difficulties theirselves.

If people just did it for their 3rd birthday then no, I can't imagine that will fling them into financial difficulties.

Chessington has loads of free ticket offers look on cereal boxes at the supermarket. Problem solved

I did wonder about this. £30 is such a ridiculously high price for a 3 YO that it's obviously priced on the assumption that almost everyone enters on a 'buy one get one free' voucher, because otherwise you're into more money than sense territory.

So after all this argument about dishonesty and the example you're setting to your DS, what you should actually be teaching him is that he cannot go to Chessington unless you can find a voucher or win the lottery.

Apparently you just need to find the right box of cereal

You do know that companies like Chessington are loving these threads that give them a wonderful insight in the mind of their "customers" - not that anything on here is new or hasn't been thought about.

They might very well have decided to put the limit at 3 knowing fully well most parents would cheat and feel smug about it, whilst the limit would be 4 or 5 if people were honest - and checking the actual age is too unpractical.

Why else do you think the limit is actually so young....

I did this a few times, but my DD's are close in age and dd1 has sen (now diagnosed asd) so my then 3 year old was still in the double buggy. Disney still got a lot of money out of us and because dd1 was short she couldn't go on anything her younger sister could

Oh I didn't realise he was 2 for half of it

a token fee for the over 30s ??? Wtf grin

Yes, I know, I'm a grumpy old curmudgeon Even so, there's still a difference between a group of 30-something pals who all go on their own for a fun day out and exhausted parents of the same age, who finally dared to go to stop their kids endlessly pestering them! Not that there's any way of knowing how much value for money any individual adult will gain, though!

Drayton Manor has that kind of price structure, and it's much more reasonable.

£29 for adults, 12+
£15 for 4 - 11
£8.50 for 3 - 4 year olds
Free for under 3s

In fact most other theme parks offer different price structures for different ages, as few 11 unders can access the 'adult' rides due to height restrictions.

You’ve entirely missed the point again. The manner in which the admission fee is divvied up between age groups is the attraction’s choice, because each theme park is different. If you prefer Drayton Manor’s pricing structure, go there instead, as @JaniceWebster suggests.

Their pricing structure works for them. I’m not familiar with Drayton, but their break even may be lower than Chessington’s, and the mix of age groups may be different. Either way, both parks will have worked out what works best for them with ticket pricing and differential pricing for different groups.You, the customer, either like it or lump it.

You want to go to Chessington because it has a sea life centre and a zoo as well as rides. All of those things cost money. How much does it cost to build a massive aquarium? Merlin Entertainments, the parent company of Chessington, spent £94m on new attractions in 2019. They recoup the cost of those investments through ticket prices, which are arranged according to what the operator wants to charge and what people are prepared to pay. If the flat ticket pricing policy wasn’t working, and they weren’t getting visitors, they’d have changed it. That they haven’t rather speaks volumes about who is being unreasonable.

I looked at Merlin’s 2019 annual report and accounts. In 2019 their profit before tax was £133m on a turnover of £1.7 Bn. They will pay £53m of that in corporation tax. They employ loads of people in the parks and provide work for businesses manufacturing and maintaining the rides and other attractions. Nothing in that paragraph says ‘greedy’ to me.

Take him the day before his birthday?

How about this offer ? 25 Pounds for you and child ?

The park don't know he's 3, just do it and pay forward in some way when you can afford to, if you need to assuage the guilt.

God just do it whilst you can. He will soon look older and you won’t get away with it

This offer

We have actually got posters looking up merlins accounts and reports. Peak mumsnet. 😂 If you’re that short of things to do, do you want to come and do my ironing ...

I’d do it. My mum had issues as me and my brother were tall so she sometimes had to argue on the bus that we were under 5. Her friend has a very small son and as the bus drove past the primary school he’d shout ‘look mummy there’s my school’ and she say ‘aye next year son, next year’