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I have talked about experience gifts several different times in the past, and so have some guest posters, including Jordann’s post on Minimalist Wedding Gifts. The great thing about experience gifts is that they create a memory for the recipient. If I were to ask you what you received for Christmas last year, chances are decent that you won’t remember several of the items, ditto if I ask about your birthday gifts from two birthdays ago. However, you likely remember the evening of your last theatre show, or the time you saw a baby giraffe. The great thing about experience based gifts is that you can often find one set of tickets that will work for the individual, couple or whole family that you want to give a gift to. Here are several different types of ticket gift ideas that would make great gifts for a whole bunch of different occasions.
Experience Based Ticket Gift Ideas
Zoo Tickets – Believe it or not, most adults haven’t really grown up yet either. Have you seen a 20-something coo over babies at the zoo? Yup. Have you seen someone’s face light up while a snake devours a creature for dinner? Yup. Oh, right. It’s also a fantastic gift idea for a family, complete with learning about the world!
Theatre Tickets – There are so, so many different shows out there. You could go to a local murder mystery dinner theatre, you could see a small local theatre’s production, a university or college production, a fringe festival, Shakespeare in the Park, a matinee of the Lion King or Beauty and the Beast with your toddler or the latest Broadway production to hit your city. So many choices and far too many to list here!
Music Tickets – Again, there’s a huge variety of ticket gift ideas that came come from the genre of “music.” Tickets can run the gambit from a kiddie song performer to an opera or an orchestra. There are choral sings, jazz festivals, and local bars to massive stadiums to pick from! Maybe you even watch to catch the Biebs before he retires next year.
Show Tickets – Children’s entertainers, hypnotists, magic shows, Cirque de Soleil, horse performance shows, rodeos, and the circus!
Sports Tickets – I think you can all figure this one out. Don’t forget your OHL/QMJ/WHL teams, your soccer teams, your lacrosse teams, your curling championships and your figure skating! (Yes, I’m Canadian, can you tell?)
Event and Festival Tickets – Indy Races, Stampede, Charity galas, Dîner en Blanc, Drag races, Body works displays and more.
Attraction Tickets – Theme parks, water parks, amusement parks, PNE/CNE/Expos, science centres and more!
Gallery and Museum Tickets – Galleries are normally free, but there are a whole host of museums, covering airplanes to dinosaurs to local history to children to music!
Paint Ball or Laser Tag – This is a great father-son or father-daughter gift idea, or maybe you could take your entire family!
How to Pull it All Together
First up, look for sales and deals. Many of these types of things show up as groupons. For Canada, I love the site alldailydeals.ca. Next, if the tickets total less than you would like to spend, think about how to bring the whole day together. That might mean a gift certificate for lunch or dinner, coffee, money for parking, a picnic lunch kit, a gift certificate for a photo book, transit day passes or a voucher for your babysitting services!
Get a nice card or envelope, write an awesome message, and give it to your recipient(s)!
Have you ever received a gift of tickets before?
[Photo – Creative Commons Attribution – Martin Pettitt]
