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Letter to the editor

A scream for $3 more

Busch Gardens' daily price goes up, but it's still less than Disney.

By MARK ALBRIGHT, Times Staff Writer
Published November 10, 2007

TAMPA - Anheuser-Busch Cos. raised daily admission prices by $3 Friday at its Florida theme parks and created some deals to cushion the blow.

Busch Gardens Africa in Tampa now costs $64.95 plus tax and Sea World will be priced closer to its major crosstown Orlando rival parks at $67.95. A day at Walt Disney World is $71 a day, which, with tax, pushed theme park tickets past the $75 barrier months ago.

Busch, however, also, made permanent what had been periodic discounts that offer Florida residents an adult ticket at a kid ticket price, a $10 discount, if it's bought online. Vacationers can get the same deal if they buy seven days in advance.

The Busch parks also will bring back for the eighth year their Florida Fun Card. The card, which will be sold online at the park Web site and at Publix Super Markets beginning Nov. 26, offers Florida residents a year of visits for the full price of one day with no blackout dates.

In addition, Busch extended its discounted multiday and multipark tickets to include Aquatica, Busch's new water park that opens in Orlando in March.

A multiday ticket that includes Sea World, Busch Gardens and Aquatica will cost $134.95, or $44.95 a day. Aquatica is priced at $38.95 for its debut, $2 more than Busch's Adventure Island in Tampa.

Discovery Cove in Orlando, Busch's limited attendance water park that features dolphin encounters, now costs $289 a day in peak season. That's $89 more than when it opened seven years ago. The price of a Florida resident off-season discount admission jumped $20 to $219 under the new scheme.

Theme parks use multiday and multipark discounting to corral more of a visitors' vacation time and use the flexibility of extra days free in many packages to remain an integral part of a growing number of vacationers who visit more than one park a day.

With rock concert, pro sports and Broadway theater tickets now frequently priced above $100 for a two- or three-hour experience, theme parks, which offer a full day of entertainment, argue that they are competitively priced. Florida theme parks once raised prices in lockstep every January.

But that ended a few years ago when Disney World raised prices twice in one year. So depending on your point of view, Busch is either ending the last cycle of price increases or kicking off the next round.

"We set our prices independent of what the other parks do," said Joe Couceiro, vice president of marketing for Busch Entertainment Corp. "Our philosophy is to price a top quality experience as a real value that exceeds our customer expectations."

Couceiro said Busch's Florida parks are on track to post attendance increases this year.

Busch also unveiled a new umbrella slogan for its collection of theme parks which will be positioned as "Worlds of Discovery" so they can be marketed as a group of parks offering different yet compatible experiences.

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8252.

[Last modified November 9, 2007, 23:07:24]