Peak nights, fast passes and season passes: what to publish before you open

How do I charge more for the Saturday before Halloween?

By publishing separate ticket types with their own prices and their own sale windows, not by editing a price as the season warms up. Each rung — first release, general, the last-Saturday price — carries an opens-at and a closes-at, and keeps its own inventory pool.

The important part is where that is enforced. The checkout hides a rung outside its window, but the gate is on the money path: a brave soul who left the early-bird page open for a week and finally clicks buy is refused, with nothing charged and no order created. Because prices are captured on the order line at purchase, what somebody paid in August is still readable in November after the ladder has moved three times — which is what you need when they email asking why their friend paid less.

How should I sell a fast pass?

As its own ticket type at its own price, with its own stock in each slot it applies to. The pool is the point: it is what stops you selling more priority than the queue can absorb, and it lets you offer twenty on a Saturday and none at all on a wet Tuesday without a second price list.

The other shape that works is an add-on bought alongside an ordinary entry — a catalogue item with its own stock, priced from the catalogue rather than the form, charged in the same basket. That suits a haunt whose fast pass is really an upgrade on the band rather than a separate admission.

What bindro does not do, in either shape, is manage the queue. Nothing calls the next group, holds a virtual place or tells a fast-pass holder when to come back. It sells the pass and issues the credential; the line is run by your people, and the pass is worth what your door team makes it worth.

Is a season pass worth it, and what does it cost me?

A season pass is a ticket type flagged as a pass. It is bought through the same checkout as anything else, carries the same single credential, refunds the same way, and admits its holder at every session of the event it was sold under.

It costs you in two places, both worth knowing before you publish. First, capacity: a pass does not consume a seat at each night it covers, so a slot sized at eighty with thirty pass holders likely to appear is a slot you should have sized at fifty. Second, structure: a pass reaches only sessions of its own event — which collides directly with the way you would otherwise arrange your cash flow.

When does the money actually arrive, and how do I make it arrive sooner?

One payout per event, scheduled only once every session of that event has ended, and released two days later. Haunts sit in the low risk tier, so no reserve is withheld — but nothing is ever released before delivery, and that is not configurable. It is the rule that protects the person who paid in August for a night in October, and it protects you from the version of this industry where a platform pays out early and a cancelled season becomes everybody’s problem.

So the structure you choose IS your cash flow. A whole October published as one event pays once, two days after closing night, however early the season sold out. The same October published as five weekly events pays five times, each two days after that weekend ends. Nothing else about the two setups differs — same slots, same prices, same door.

And here is the collision: a season pass sold against one weekly event admits only at that weekend. If you want a pass that spans the run, the run has to be one event, and you wait for the money. Most haunts should take the weekly structure and sell the season pass only if it is genuinely a product people ask for; a haunt with a loyal following and enough float can do the opposite knowingly. What you should not do is find out in November.

• One event, one payout, two days after its final session — no exceptions, no partial releases.
• Weekly events pay weekly; a season-long event pays once.
• A season pass admits only within its own event, so it cannot span weekly events.
• Low risk tier: no reserve withheld on this vertical.

Who pays the platform fee, and is tax added?

The fee is 2.5% plus ninety-nine cents on the order — once per order, not per entry in it — and nothing at all on a free night. You choose per event who bears it: you absorb it, the buyer pays it, or you split it. The fee never changes with that choice; only which side of the sale it comes from, and the checkout shows the buyer exactly what they are paying.

Sales tax is yours to set as a rate on the event. It is added on top of your published price in the US convention, itemised at checkout, kept out of the fee base, and posted to a tax account rather than to your balance — so collected tax is not part of what is paid out to you. On a refund it reverses in a fixed order: your proceeds first, then the tax, then the fee. Deciding the rate, filing and remitting stay with you.

What about promo codes and comped entries?

Promo codes give you a community night, a local-radio code or a scare-actor discount without a second price list, with redemption caps enforced in the database rather than by hope. Comps are the back-office route for sponsors, volunteers and the people who lent you the barn: they consume real inventory and scan normally, but write no revenue lines at all, so they are separated from revenue in every report and never flatter what the season took.