We were discussing fictional vacation destinations last year when my then 4-year-old had a strange request.
“Mommy, I want to go meet the Fresh Beat Band! I want to meet Marina! Let’s go there!”
Well, I didn’t think the Fresh Beat Band – or the Beats as my kids like to call them – was accepting visitors at its Los Angeles homestead. So I looked for the next best thing – will the Beats ever come our way? My kids would go bananas. Bananas, I tell you — part of the name of one of their favorite Beats songs — “We just got to go bananas.”
I scoured the Internet to find any sign that the Beats might be touring. You see, my kids love concerts. They think Justin Roberts is their best bud. They’ve danced around the room to Ralph’s World. They’ve bopped to Dan Zanes.
I found no evidence that the Fresh Beat Band (Nick Jr.’s made-for-TV “rockers”) would be leaving the comfort of their fake, fabricated studio and go touring.
That was then.
Today, I stumbled upon the announcement that not only will the Beats be touring – they will come as close to Champaign-Urbana as Peoria! And if not Peoria, then Chicago and Indy … all before the end of March.
Wow, I thought. I could really make my kids’ dream come true this Chanukah. In fact, it would be a Chanukah miracle!
And then my bubble burst. My friend Rayne pointed out to me, as I blathered on about this on Twitter, that the tickets for the concerts were “crazy expensive.”
How expensive could they be, I wondered. It didn’t take long to find out – just a simple google search. And wow: CRAZY EXPENSIVE INDEED. (At first I REALLY overreacted because I stumbled upon a ticket broker website that said they were $77 apiece — to start. Then I figured out my mistake).
Tickets to the Peoria Civic Center show on Feb. 25 are at three different price points — $25, $29 and $35. Still, that’s not a drop in the bucket.
I looked around a bit for some sort of precedent for such an ask. Tickets for the Wiggles concert tour which took place this past summer generally averaged around $45-$50 per ticket, with entry as low as $10 – $15 and as high as $70-75 for the most premium of seats. The Imagination Movers, Disney’s made-for-TV rock group, will be in St. Louis in March; those tickets range from $25-$35.
So here’s my question. For our family of four, it will cost — let’s just say for argument sake we buy the $29 tickets — $116 to go to a kiddie concert. And that’s not counting parking, gas, etc. And I’ll be abut 38 weeks pregnant then, so quite possibly, the doctor will say no. Am I crazy?
At least it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than going to L.A.
Laura Weisskopf Bleill is the co-founder and editor of chambanamoms.com. You can reach her at laura@chambanamoms(dot)com.