Ticket prices

[KP '06]

Athletics was handing out flyers to every freshman at Registration today, with details on season ticket sales. The date is Saturday, October 2nd (no mention of when the line starts :-P ) and the price is a whopping $144 for undergrads! Below this, it says the price increase is due to the addition of the ECAC home playoff games as part of the season package, as well as the reduction of the undergraduate activity fee. More details to come on CornellBigRed.com ...

Seem a little iffy to anyone else?

[KeithK]

[q]Seem a little iffy to anyone else?[/q]
Nope.  There are 14 RS games, plus one exhibition and up to three playoff games.  At $8 per ticket, that's $144.  Not surprising, and not really that unreasonable.
Including the playoff games is annoying (or would be if I was likely to have season tickets this year) but sondiering the playoff format it's pretty likely that there will be  playoff games at Lynah next March.

[billhoward]

What's this: Students back on campus with a third of August yet left? Did Professor Maas have to come back early from vacation to check out the freshman women? So unfair!

Cornell MUST go to a quarterly system: fall, winter, spring, and summer semesters. Like Dartmouth. You have to do one of each over your four (or so) years, the rest is up to you. If you have a reason not to, like say athletics, I suppose you get a waiver. Or take advantage of the system.

The fall semester can start *after* Labor Day and still end nicely before Xmas. You carry four courses in each of three terms rather than five or six in two. If you have a bad semester, you only flunk four courses, not three. (Why I like it.)

It also means an athlete can back off by one course in his heaviest season. Four down to three is a bigger improvement than six down to five. Or if you're a hockey/baskdtball player, you could take off the winter semester entirely and be in school in the summer.

I spent one glorius summer at Cornell and can't believe how nice it was. That was when you could sort of legally swim in the reservoir and clothing was optional.

It would be nicer still if Cornell air-conditioned the dorms. If my Google stock skyrockets, I'm going to endow the Carrier chair of air conditioned dorms.

[billhoward]

In the adult world the raising of ticket prices and including extras into the gross price (playoff games that may come to pass) is called yield management.

Disney uses yield management. Disney finds that once you've paid a mess of money to fly to Orlando and pay for the hotel (ka-ching if it's a Disney property), it doesn't matter if the Magic Kingdom ticket costs $39, $42, or $47 a day, but it it costs $70 a day, you will squawk. So they raise prices to $47 a day and people bitch but they still come. I think our last trip, Disney tapped us for close to $750 a day if you consider Disney to incllude the airfare and tickets and hotels and the breakfast with the Disney characters. For the kids, it was the second best experience in their life.

Why Disney is called the "happiest place on earth" turns out to be an accounting term.

[KeithK]

[q]Cornell MUST go to a quarterly system[/q]Quarters?  Ewwwwwwwww.

Freshmen arriving on 8/20 isn't really that early.  I'd rather arrive on campus a little before Labor Day (without looking I assume classes start next Thursday 8/26) and get out in early May than have to be in school until June.

Yes, summer in Ithaca can be great.  But you can do summers and summer classes without having a quarter system.

[billhoward]

You do summer clases without the quarter system, it feels like you're on an island. No Cornell Sun, no student activities, no major Cornell activities, shorter hours for the campus store, your frat house is closed. Not the same. OK, the campus store hours are not a big thing.

God created Labor Day as a barricade against going back to campus in August unless you were on the Miami or Nebraska football team.

Plus in case you do still have a family (if you're a student), it means you can't plan the last 2 weeks of August for a whole-family vacation. This is good if you have a disfunctional family, and I'd argue most of us do, or believe we do (did). Otherwise it's bad.

[KeithK]

[q]You do summer clases without the quarter system, it feels like you're on an island. No Cornell Sun, no student activities, no major Cornell activities, shorter hours for the campus store, your frat house is closed. Not the same. OK, the campus store hours are not a big thing. [/q]Not having the usual list of Cornell activities was part of what made summer at Cornell particularly enjoyable.  Not that I'd have wanted to spend all of my time on the hill under those conditions - far from it.  But the difference was a good thing.

I thought God created Labor Day so we could celebrate work by playing all day...

[Josh '99]

I have a friend who's paying about $1500/year for prime seats at BU's new arena.  Makes $144 seem downright reasonable to me.

[French Rage]

[q] Cornell MUST go to a quarterly system: fall, winter, spring, and summer semesters. Like Dartmouth. You have to do one of each over your four (or so) years, the rest is up to you. If you have a reason not to, like say athletics, I suppose you get a waiver. Or take advantage of the system.[/q]

Stanford has quarters, so everyone should transfer out there.  Including the hockey team.  Especially the hockey team.  Then I wouldnt be stuck hundreds of miles from the nearest D-I college hockey team.  ::help::

[Give My Regards]

Back to the ticket info, and just out of curiosity... to anyone who got one of those flyers, does it give any information on what happens with the playoff tickets if Cornell does NOT host an ECAC playoff series this year?  I just read a post on USCHO about Union's season ticket package, which includes playoff tickets ( ::rolleyes:: ).  If Union somehow fails to host a playoff series, the buyer has the option of either applying the cost of those tix to the season ticket package the following year, or just donating the cost to Union hockey.  Wondering if Cornell has done something similar...

[billhoward]

Not that Cornell (or Brown or whoever) isn't a worthy charity, but usually a mail in ticket order has a pre-filled line adding $5 to the athletic fund and you can cross it out.

I'll bet Cornell's is some kind of affirmative action required for rebate, eg if no playoffs, you get your money back so long as you ask by June 30 and if you forget, thanks for the cash. If it isn't, they'll think of it next year.

Mandatory voluntary contributions are annoying. To this day I won't donate to PIRG because they were such putzes freshman year. They forced a voluntary contribution onto and top of the student fee because they were a "good" organization and how could anyone not agree, and if you didn't like that, you could go down to the Straight and apply for your money back. I only have 30 or 40 years left, so maybe they can get money from my grandkids.

[Anne 85]

I can't speak for the student tickets, but the notice I received from the ticket office states that money will "automatically" be refunded if there aren't any home playoff games.

And, I think the total price for 2 Section C tickets is actually a little lower this year (I assumed that there are fewer home games this season).

[Tom Pasniewski 98]

Was up on campus over the last few days and noticed that the season ticket prices for grad students was $128.  With 14 RS games and the presumed minimum of two playoff games, that's a total of 16 games so it looks like grad students remain at $7 a game while undergrads go up $1 a game to $8 a game.  

Also noticed that the ice surface was already down in Lynah and the team appeared to be practicing.  I don't in the past recall the ice going down until September so besides talking about classes with a chunk of August still to go, how about ice in Lynah in August.  Maybe the ice was there in other years too but I definitely remember my freshman year, CIT was having a computer demonstration and sale on the Lynah floor during orientation week.

[KeithK]

It's 18 games - 14 RS, 1 Ex. and 3 playoff (if they're going to bother to make you pay for 2 playoff games in advance they're going to go for 3).

Lynah ice in August?  Pretty cool.  We had initial freshmen registration (ID's, etc.) on the Lynah floor on my first day at Cornell.  Fifteen years ago to the day, as a matter of fact (*cringe*).  I'll speculate and say that the new cooling system and floor they put in a few years back allows them to maintain ice for a larger portion of the year than in the past.  I'm pretty sure the original floor couldn't handle year-round ice.

[billhoward]

There were summer youth hockey camps in August. Got to have ice for that.