To be shocked by the cost of this?

[squashedsandwich]

It’s £20.95 per adult to walk around our Christmas light trail this year. Tickets have just been released. It does look fantastic, but it’s only a mile long.

It’s £15.95 for a 3-15 year old, and free for under 2s.

They’re doing family tickets, 2 adults and 2 kids for £60.

I think it’s sad that at some point soon these activities are reserved for only those who can afford them. Maybe that has always been the case and I have been living under a rock but as someone who is pregnant with their first, I can’t see how families aren’t bankrupt over the school holidays and festive periods just simply from doing these kinds of activities! As with anything, the more DC you have the more it bumps the price up. I know you can intersperse them with free things to do, but I’m sure lots of families at Christmas will feel compelled to pay over the odds just to make it a nice and magical time.

We will likely go. It will be nice for baby’s first Christmas. £40 for us and an under 2 would be affordable right now but I can imagine when you have two in primary the cost must get crazy.

AIBU thinking these companies are taking the mick?

Agree with this. One we go to most years in Pitlochry ( The Enchanted Forest) is fabulous, but the cost of putting it on must be colossal. It's a similar walking distance to the OP's for one complete walk round - although you can go round more than once. Costs are expensive: Adult Tickets £27.50 Child Tickets £14.75 and Family Tickets £76
Children Under 3 and carers get in free

Yes there will be people who would like to go and simply can't afford it but hasn't it always been thus? The difference currently is so many more people are struggling to make ends meet at the moment, due to the cost of living rises. But plenty of people will still find and pay the money, because they have it. It may be hard, but it's a fact

folks only have an issue when it’s unaffordable or tight for them, if it’s easily affordable for them, they don’t care.

Sadly this. The OP even said she'll probably still go.

I think it’s sad that at some point soon these activities are reserved for only those who can afford them. Maybe that has always been the case and I have been living under a rock

This is such an odd thing to say. You realise that there are families that could afford it if it was £2 each, right? Everything with a cost - direct or indirect, like bus fare - is reserved only for those that can afford it.

I wouldn’t go for baby’s first Xmas for a baby that hasn’t been born yet. I’d save my money for things when they’re older and can enjoy it.

It’s like anything else you go for what you perceive as worthwhile and can afford.
I love the theatre. If it’s something cheap I’ll get the good tickets regardless. If it’s expensive I’ll weigh up paying £15 each for the super cheap seats in the gods without a fab view vs £60+ each for decent stalls ones. If you don’t feel the £60 is worth it you pick something else and do that.

Big productions (including light trails at Christmas) are expensive to put on & operate to make a profit so it’s hardly surprising prices are high

You are not being unreasonable, the price of everything has gone up like crazy and I am constantly shocked. There are many things I just don't do now or I have substituted for cheaper versions. I am not sure what can be done as like others have said, businesses will charge what they have to in order to make a profit and cover costs.

I can see no appeal for something like this and certainly wouldn't pay. I thought we were all supposed to be v. energy efficient now as much as possible. Are they ''energy efficient''?

I call it eventification. Everything has to be a ticketed event now, and the costs are insane.

Here in Edinburgh we lose our minds every year about the Christmas Market and funfair. The two complaints are that nobody can afford it, and that it's far too busy.

Unless the OP is CEO of a lighting company how on earth would she know what is a reasonable cost? It blows my mind that people are outraged at what private companies charge for non-compulsory events. I can't afford a stay at The Savoy but I'm not going to come on MN and say £150 a night sounds reasonable to me.

These things are set up as businesses. They are not there to give families a nice magical Christmas experience, they are there for profit. Something like a light trail only has a short and limited amount of time to make back the costs of providing the experience and the electricity bill must be massive, so I don’t think the cost is unreasonable. It’s not cheap, but the real problem is that everyone expects to be able to do everything even when they’re on a low income.

The difference is now that parenting seems to be very child centred. It is not uncommon for ordinary working people to have birthday parties for a 4 year old, that involves inviting the whole class, with entertainment provided etc. To have extra curricular activities, and so on. The fuss some people will make for their babies first christmas, and the opportunity to spend money on trinkets marketed to that effect. The whole point of it all is to make money from as many people as possible, willing to pay these ridiculous prices.

A lot of these 'Christmas lights' walks are attended by people who already pay membership fees to the sites (eg, National Trust). I think it would be entirely reasonable there should be a lower 'member's price' that takes this into account.

The cost of putting events on has gone through the roof in the last 2 years. In my area several popular festivals including ones that have been hugely successful for decades closed this year due to the set up and running budgets no longer being sustainable.

Controversial but I also wonder is the pricing is aiming (directly or indirectly) at selecting the type of people who will attend.

I go to the one at Kew every year and didn’t see the same things I saw at a cheap one we have locally (people walking with a can of beer in hand, bad language, littering along the trail, people being loud and pushing past, etc). 2 events, very close from one another, only difference being the price point.

Come to London and walk around. There’s plenty of free lights here.

Sounds like a load of nonsense. I'm sure they didn't have stuff like that when I was a kid. There were Christmas lights in the west end, and you could get ripped off by a creepy Santa (not that I ever wanted to sit on a strange old man's knee)
But now everything is just so unnecessary.
I guess I'm a bit of a Scrooge but looking at lights doesn't even sound that interesting?

I’ve heard the NT are raising their parking prices to £8 in some places soon, which is so unreasonable. On top of entry prices, it’s all getting out of control.

I won’t be going this year to any of the Christmas things as we can’t afford it any more.

The two complaints are that nobody can afford it, and that it's far too busy

I never took my children to anything like this. Always out of our reach, financially. But we still go and see the local houses that are all lit up, even though they're now adults. One street charges and gives the money to charity. In my opinion, kids get just as much enjoyment from watching their local town's lights get switched on as they would from an organised trail.

This is what I usually do. There are a few that do more than average and have a donation box which they give to the local hospice.

It does sound like a lot for what it is.

But I think it’s sad that at some point soon these activities are reserved for only those who can afford them. This has always been the case. It's just that more people are now finding themselves in the bracket of people who can't afford to do things.

And it's a shock for some of those people.

A local Xmas garden cost £90 for us as a family of 5 a couple of years ago. I imagine the cost will on,y have went up. Hot chocolate I think was nearly a fiver each extra. There were no presents or Santa either. Needless to say I didn’t book.

'babies first Christmas' wait until they are old enough to remember it.

But at National Trust, you can join for about a tenner a month, which makes entry and parking completely free. Plus there's free entry vouchers in the weekend papers fairly regularly.

You'd only have to go to a couple of the more expensive venues in a year to cover the cost of membership and you could then go somewhere dozens of times in the year for the cost of petrol. The people who're paying £8 for parking will only be going very occasionally, otherwise they'd probably have a membership, as it's such good value.

i NEver went round an illuminated trail as a child.

I grew up to be a normal well rounded adult.

YABVU, @squashedsandwich - staging these things costs an absolute fortune!

The prices are set to cover the costs plus a reasonable profit for the short period of the year the venture can run. They are eyerwateringly pricy to do, expensive to run and costly to insure. If they priced them at what random people on Mumsnet think is a fair whack, they would be bankrupt and STILL some people couldn't afford them.

It's not "normal" to do lots of these things with children every year. They are a treat, a one-off, to be chosen amongst the many options available to families. One year, maybe a panto. Another year, Christmas light show, a third, perhaps a walk around a Christmas fair... again, if you family can afford it.

Grown up life is very expensive. We can't have all the things we want, and the COL and fuel and food crises will only make these things more expensive as time goes on. It's not profiteering assholes rubbing their money-grubbing hands together most of the time, it's businesses trying desperately to stay afloat.