Buying Theme Park Passes Saves My Family a Ton of Money. Here's Why

Could theme park passes be a good option for affordable family entertainment?

Until I became a parent, I had no idea how expensive it was to keep kids entertained. I am not a huge fan of pretend play, so I prefer to take my children out to different places in order to keep them happy and occupied during the day. But it can get very expensive to visit zoos, Chuck-E-Cheese, and other attractions catered to young people -- and free activities are usually available only during limited hours.

Fortunately, our family found a solution that works really well for us: We buy theme park passes. This is a bigger expense upfront on our credit cards, but it ends up saving us money throughout the year for a few key reasons.

We researched which theme park offers the most bang for our buck

We are lucky enough to live in Orlando, which means we have a huge variety of park options very close to us. Since we have a vast selection, we researched our options carefully to decide which provided the best deal.

Ultimately, we decided on SeaWorld passes rather than the much costlier Disney passes. SeaWorld's most expensive annual pass comes in at $438 per year and offers tons of perks, including free preferred seating, a free animal encounter, and monthly bonuses. By comparison, Disney's most expensive pass (when available) costs $1,399 annually.

While Disney offers more parks, SeaWorld provides plenty of opportunities for fun at a fraction of the cost -- especially since my kids are pretty young.

A pass costs less than visiting a few times

Single-day tickets to SeaWorld come in at $99 on discount. This means that by paying for the equivalent of about four visits to the park, I would be able to buy the premium pass and visit as many times as I want. My pass also got me admission to other attractions including the Aquatica waterpark and Busch Gardens.

Since I am always looking for activities for my kids, it's well worth it to us to pay for the passes upfront and then go several times over the course of the year. In fact, we bought our passes in November, and we've already been to the parks more than seven times, so we're already better off for having purchased passes.

Our passes also came with guest tickets, which is a feature many theme parks offer to passholders. So when we've had out-of-town guests, we've brought them with us at no cost, saving them a ton of money and allowing us to avoid extra spending entertaining them.

We opt for the theme park as our default activity

Since we are passholders and we can visit the theme park for free anytime we want, we've made that our default activity when our kids are bored. This means we don't end up spending money on tons of other things like arcade tokens.

Since we pay once for the bulk of our annual entertainment, we end up saving a fortune throughout the year by not having to spend on other things for our kids to do. That's money we get to keep in our bank account.

Now, this may work better for people who live in areas with multiple theme parks, but if you're like me and want to take your kids out often, you should look into whether theme park passes in your area may be an affordable way to prepay for entertainment once and enjoy for the whole year.

And if you make the passes a holiday gift, as we do, this can give you even more bang for your buck since you avoid having to purchase extra toys too. Less clutter, more fun, and lower costs -- it's a win, win, win.