We are changing the format of our annual Gala this year and allowing patrons to choose whether they’d like to attend the full Gala for $125 which starts at 6 pm and includes food, drinks, silent auction and concert OR they can pay $50 and arrive for the concert only at 7:30 pm. I’m trying to figure out the best way to set this up in Theatre Manager. Has anyone experienced this and can you offer advice on event set up, ticket set up, pricing, etc.?
Hey Stephanie,
We did this for our 90th Anniversary Gala–but we had a couple of other kinks that made it more difficult (we had show only, dinner only, couples packages)…it was…a mess. LOL Lessons learned.
If you are just doing 2 packages and flat pricing for each, the easiest way to do it is probably to build the event and make 2 sales promotions “Gala Dinner & Concert” and “Gala Concert Only.” Make those 2 promotions the only available promotions online and at the box office–either with a flat rate or building your tier pricing if you need to. Patrons will have to use the drop down to pick which price they want. In the Web Settings Performance Notes, just include information about what each price level includes. “Gala Dinner & Show starts at 6:00 pm and includes food drinks, silent auction and concert. Gala Concert Only begins at 7:30” …or however you want to word it.
We did all tickets at will call and did a registration table for the Gala and gave out the concert tickets when they registered for the dinner…then did regular will call for the people who were show only.
It took some finagling from the box office (and by that, I mean me since I am a box office of 1)–but in the end it worked for us. We’re a small theater, however, and we had about 60 at the gala and less than 200 at the concert.
Hope this helps!
Jeffrey
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I agree with Jeffrey - that is the best way to do it.
To add, if you were considering limiting how many people can purchase each set of tickets (for example, if you only wanted to sell 100 tickets for the dinner for capacity reasons) you can also do this!
Open up the Promotion that you would like to put a cap on and click on the “Edits” Tab. In the “Maximum Use” box, you can limit how many of this particular promotion you want to sell PER performance. This has been extremely useful for us for events!
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Hi there - Jeffrey and MichC’s comments are spot on and our preferred method as well. Just to note, we have had variations on this need as well when we add a gala option around an already on-sale reserved seating concert that needs separately reported income for a producer. The reserved seating events already on-sale typically have so many pricing tiers that creating a range of gala+concert ticket prices got complex quickly. We’ve primarily handled this two ways over the years and each has their benefits/downsides:
One option: We created another set of standard promos (window, phone, internet, frequent buyer discount, etc) in the concert that included an upcharge for the gala in the third ticket fee so we could send it to a different account and not include it in reports to the concert producers.
Another option: We made a separate event for the gala piece so it could be booked on its own, then used performance notes in the concert event to guide patrons online to “add-on” the gala. Obviously this only worked smoothly because there was no price break on the gala for also getting the concert.
Anyway, hopefully you can avoid that level of complexity and can use Jeffrey and MichC’s dedicated promo/price options!
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Thank you everyone for your advice. I appreciate it! We are anticipating 200 for the Gala and an additional 200 for the concert-only. So unlike Jeffrey’s venue, I’d prefer not to keep all of the tickets at will-call.
So my next question is, how would you set up your event and Ticket Face parameters to make sure the Gala attendees and Concert-Only attendees have the correct information printed on their tickets?
I’m struggling with when I set up my event in Theatre Manager, should I have the event start time at 6 pm (Gala start time) or 7:30 pm (concert start time)? Or is there a way to override the automatic insertion of this information on the Ticket Face? I’m still a novice when it comes to Ticket Face parameters. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Hi Stephie,
Will the Gala attendee tickets use a different promotion then concert only. In that case I think you could make the Gala start time appearing on the ticket face conditional based on whether the ticket was booked with that particular promo. Does that sound like something that would work for this instance?
Yes! I have gone back and reconfigured how the promotions and pricing will work for the Gala and Concert Only options. How do I write a Ticket Face Parameter now that will reflect the different start times, etc. based on the promotion information? Thank you in advance for your help!
Sorry for the delay, we’re just getting past a couple intense weeks.
One option is this below
pick(SC_TITLE=‘gala promotion name here’,’ ',‘Gala time’)
This would display the Gala Time, for ticket booked using the Gala promo and leaves non-gala promo tickets blank.
Does that help?
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Thanks to everyone for your help. With some assistance from the maestro, Darwin, I have the ticket face printing exactly what I need for the Gala patrons and Concert Only patrons. Here are the lines of code I changed:
This one states that patrons who were sold Promotion Codes # 215 or 217 Concert Only tickets will have 90 minutes added to the event start time on their tickets: Row 110 Col 1040 jst(jst(pick(SC_SEQ=215|SC_SEQ=217,PB_PERFORM_TIME,PB_PERFORM_TIME+90),‘T:h:NA’),’-8’)
This one states the same thing:
Row 155 Col 101
jst(con(jst(PB_PERFORM_DATE,‘D:w, m D, y’),’ ‘,jst(pick(SC_SEQ=215|SC_SEQ=217,PB_PERFORM_TIME,PB_PERFORM_TIME+90),‘T:h:NA’)),’^38’)
This one states that everyone will receive a message on their ticket about the Gala “Includes silent auction, open bar…” except those with Promotion Codes #215 or 217. The message on their ticket will read “CONCERT ONLY - Entry begins…”
Row 205 Col 101 jst(pick(SC_SEQ=215|SC_SEQ=217,“Includes silent auction, open bar, hors doeuvres and concert”,“CONCERT ONLY - Entry Begins at 7:00 PM”),’^76’)
This one states that everyone will receive a message on their ticket about Gala seating “Enter Atrium…” except those with Concert Only tickets. Their seating message will read “Enter Door 10…”
jst(pick(SC_SEQ=215|SC_SEQ=217,con(“Enter Atrium and use Portal Door”,MS_DOOR),“Enter Door 10, South Side of Bldg”),’^57’)
If anyone needs a copy of the entire ticket face I am happy to share what I have learned with you.
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