Is it Ok to Lie For Free Admission?

Posted on 12 10, 2006 under Master Debaters by Noodad | Comments

coupon_kids_free_newYou're standing in line at a major theme park. As you approach the ticket counter you see the jaw-dropping admission prices. It's $18 for adults, $12 for kids 5 to 12, and Free for kids 4 and under. Your daughter, small for her age, just turned 5 a couple of months ago. What do you do?

Isn't it tempting to just say your kid is 4 years old and get the free admission? Which brings us to this week's question:


Is it ok to lie about your kid's age to get free admission?

This the latest installment of our Master Debaters Question of the Week Series. There are some topics that seem to fall into the consensus category: drunk driving is bad, guns kill people, Transformers are better than GoBots. But that only covers less than 1% of the decisions you and your spouse make towards the upbringing of your kids. The majority of issues tend to fall more in the gray area.

Here at Noodad.com, we take pride in delivering important advice for dads. But we realize that some of our advice is subjective. The collected readership surely have things to add and unique perspectives to contribute.

So where do you weigh in?

 

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Viewing 5 Comments

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    No.

    If you get in the habit of lying on the small things, you\'ll teach your kids that lying is ok (they\'re not stupid, they pick up on this fast) and you\'ll also be much more likely to start lying on the big things.

    You can\'t buy role-model status with the money you save by lying.
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    Do it. Dooo it. What\'s a couple of months? The kids don\'t have to see that you\'re slightly fibbing. Have the other parent divert their attention while you say, \"Oh, my daughter is four and my son is three...\" Theme parks are a pain in the stinking ass. The food sucks. The souvenirs are crap. Half the rides are usually shut down and the restrooms blow. They are usually overpriced for the amount of time you spend there with children under the age of needing a nap during the day-which is usually about two hours before a child has a breakdown. It\'s not like you\'re dressing your twelve year old child in diapers and carrying them to the gates and trying to lie to get them in. No one gets hurt here, folks...the kids can\'t hear what\'s going on so they don\'t learn any bad habits and the theme park is already raking in ridiculous amounts of dough...it\'s a win win for everyone! I\'m a petite girl and growing up with five other kids, my peeps milked that \"she\'s underage\" thing until I was 16. I was paying kids prices to the movies until I was 15. Sometimes, I can still order off of the kids menu at restaurants.
    Ain\'t nothing wrong with this. The theme park man is gonna make his money back with that cheapo Nora the Excavator-Dora the Explorer knock off dolls and really cheap and ugly t-shirts and keychains.
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    Ahhhh, what a conundrum. I\'m a huge rule follower, yet I have let my son pass as younger than his true age to gain free admission to theme parks. The catch is that I didn\'t proactively seek the free entry. If the ticket clerk assumed he met the age requirement, we waltzed right in to the park. On the small scale, this happened at Story Land in New Hampshire. On the biggest possible scale, this happened at Disney, Universal, Sea World, and even Gatorland during a sweep through the greater Orlando area. We saved hundreds on that trip, and in each case it was the ticket clerk who said \"you don\'t have to pay for him.\"
    So, my feeling is that if it is the park worker\'s mistake, enjoy the freebie; but I don\'t think it is okay to lie if you\'re asked. You also can\'t justify the lie because you think the park is lame, food is lousy, and souvenirs are crappy. If you don\'t like the product or think it costs too much, then don\'t use/buy it.
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    It doesn\'t really matter what I think of the park....my kid is gonna drag me there when she is old enough regardless...Just like I did to my parents and my parents did to their parents. Lots of times the workers called my folks out on this-I mean, I had zits and my brother began to sprout facial hair. BUT when you can slide, take the stinking slide. There is no use hating on my mad skills. I don\'t steal or lie or commit tax fraud-so taking small freebies when given is cool. If I found a twenty on the side of the street, I\'d try to find the owner. But if someone was giving me a twenty dollar ticket to a theme park for being underage-I\'m not going to argue. I\'m just trying to save some money.
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    I\'m with wahoodad on this. If the kids ask about it you can always say you don\'t know :). Seriously folks, if the teller likes the way you smile and mis-understands the admission fee, its not all bad is it?

    Now if your at a supermarket and you notice a product isn\'t rung on, then what? For me thats a different story...
 

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