Add-On Plug in - Use Case

Hi!
At Shedd Aquarium we moved away from packages and add-ons as much as possible when we moved to timed admission. Chances of a guest picking a compatible entry and experience time was too tricky. So now, all our experiences and encounters "include admission" and our only add-ons are 4D shows, which are separate performances/ticket. 

We have a custom website though so we are able to tag performances as add-ons which will determine if they show as a 'normal' ticket in the purchase paths or on the add-on page and we associate 'base' productions with 'add-on' production in our website CMS/admin. 

Are you talking about the v16 add-on events function? Or a plug-in? I'm not familiar with the plug-in, but I was all set to use the add-on events function for an event we had earlier this year when I thought we were going to be live on v16. We have an annual event that has a main ticket and then optional activities. Technically you are supposed to be registered for the main even to attend the others, so we have done it as a flex package but those are confusing in a museum setting (or at least to our audience). I was going to use the add-on function to suggest the optional events once the main event was added. I also plan to use it for guided tours -- because our museum admission is free, people often skip booking a museum ticket when they book a paid guided tour ticket. Packages were too much for this situation, so I've been using a message-only pricing rule to remind people to get a museum ticket and link to the production season, but the add-on event will be much more direct because you can base it on the day the tour ticket is for. 

That is great to know Amanda. I may have additional questions about that in the future. 

Anne, we are not on v16 so this is the plug-in. Ya we are looking at the plug-in because the flex packages are just too much (we build 90+ a month) and they are confusing to our audience too. I have created fake events for each day for the calendar, which then leads to that days specific flex package. But since admission is required and the tour and Brilliant are just additional options, I am trying to move away from flex packages, especially since we are working on building a new website. But I was not sure if anyone used it who also has timed entry for all the offerings.  

We use add-ons in version 15.  Mostly it's used for our movie experiences, where we sell a box of food to go along with their experience.  The flow on the add-on module in v15 takes you to a secondary page after they add the primary into the cart.  

We don't use it for tours right now, but once we switch to v16 we'll probably explore using it in that manner.  If they come to the museum on Friday, we want to also show them some of the other things happening on Friday and let them purchase those.  I think overall the experience for the users is pretty easy.  The only complaint we've really had is that the add-on screen they have to enter the quantity, and then add to cart, and the proceed.  Sometimes, customers have entered the quantity, and just proceeded to the end without their extra foot.

Our add-on in version 15 requires you to add the link between each primary performance to the add-on performances.  If we were using this for daily admission we'd have to add those records and keywords for each day which is a bit overwhelming.  Our movie experience is limited to about a dozen times per year, so it's easier to maintain.  I think in version 16 it has gotten more flexible, and also redirects the user to the actual performance page instead of a subset of the performance information.

In case it's useful to anyone, we have a very lo-fi "add on" system where we advertise additional performances relevant to a specific performance (in our case this can be parking and cafe reservations) buy putting copy and links into the Additional Cart Text in TNEW.  This gives us targeted links (so the specific parking and reservations times appropriate to the selected show), they appear immediately after the event is reserved, they don't go away (the way that a pricing rule message might) and they don't have any configuration overhead beyond the TNEW Admin work (not trivial, of course, if you have a lot of shows to set up: I try to run a script which outputs the html with relevant links for each show so that the web admins can just copy and paste).

I don't use the plugin and we have a custom website, but here's our page offering "packages" which is actually just a custom web page and a product volume pricing rule.  We don't use packages any more and I love it.
https://www.sct.org/cyo/

We don't have any add on performances live right now, but I went ahead and copied an old one in our test environment.  This link will be short-lived as we'll likely do a live to test at the first of the new year.

https://nama-tnew-test.tnhs.cloud/0/43342

The different graze boxes are zones in the graze box performance.   I hope that helps answer what it looks like for us in v15.

I'm kind of loving your last sentence!  I may want to pick your brain one day about how you made the switch to "no more packages"...

I would happily have my brain picked and will evangelize this to no end. The setup is so much easier.  However, I recognize there's a lot of politics around renewing subscribers that we didn't have to navigate because we are a children's theatre. Our audience is mostly younger leaning than other theatres and our audience turns over every 5-10 years, so we don't have as many "I need MY seat" type patrons. Subscriptions have been dying for years anyway. Our first season back from Covid we only sold single tickets.  Enough people said "hey where's my discount?" that we decided to add back in a package in 22-23 and our web devs suggested this alternative and I was like "yes, please!"