Andrew+M+R11

Having been to a couple museums in and outside of Wisconsin, I feel that admission price usually reflects the quality of the experience inside. When comparing the Milwaukee Public Museum’s admission of $12.50 to Discovery World’s $16.95, the extra $4.45 was worth the increase. Discovery World offered modern design aesthetic, an inviting, open environment on the lake and far more interactivity.

When comparing Discovery World to the San Francisco Academy of Sciences the price jump of $13 to an admission fee of $29.95, while expensive, also corresponds to the experience inside. With the extra admission comes an IMAX like planetarium, indoor living rain forest, larger aquarium and a much larger facility as a whole.

When it comes to special exhibits I feel that these should be included in the ticket price because all museums should always have a rotating exhibition area. The Milwaukee Art Museum is usually good about this. It’s important for museums to always have something new, but more importantly, travel is expensive and I know I’ll never be able to travel the entire globe, which makes traveling exhibitions important. Paying a higher admission fee upfront for a constantly changing area of a museum is what brings locals back and adds to a continuing education.

Switching gears to the admission prices for websites is a topic that’s long been debated. I feel most website should be free unless they provide a service, such as ancestry.com, which I pay $15 a month for. I feel the time and human effort the site puts into gathering millions of historical documents is a service that warrants payment. They also offer tiered pricing, which is a smart move, that grants access to foreign documents at a higher monthly fee.

Another site I pay for is deviantart.com, which charges $30 per year. A premium membership adds extra junk to profile customization and the ability to sell your prints through the site, but I enjoy the ad free browsing experience along with the ability to customize search results and browsing preferences. Paying for the site also supports the development team and over the course of my time on the site I have a better user experience with each version.

The desire to pay for something comes down to whether or not you find it valuable. People often don’t like paying for something that isn’t tangible, but an enjoyable experience at a museum or on a website should be paid for just as a song or movie should; experiences such as these often require many people to create them and even more for their upkeep and distribution.