Tickets and pricing at Bumbershoot are confusing this year. Here’s a guide to help you figure it out.
Update, 2 p.m. Friday, Sept. 4: By 1 p.m., Friday, Sept. 4, Saturday-only tickets for Bumbershoot were available again.
Original story: Confused about Bumbershoot tickets? You aren’t the only one. With AEGLive running the festival this year, pricing and availability have changed. Here’s how:
When you pay for admission to Bumbershoot this year, whether for a single day or for a three-day pass, your “ticket” is an electronic wristband. By contrast to previous Bumbershoot festivals, this wristband is not a special pass issued inside the grounds for admission to big concerts. The wristband is your ticket, allowing you entry through the gates of Seattle Center and to every venue inside, except the comedy rooms, which require another (free, first-come-first-served) pass, available inside the grounds.
If you take your wristband off (by cutting it or other means), it is no longer valid and it will cost you $10 to get a replacement; ditto, if you lose it. You can’t take it off and give it to someone else, and you have to keep it on in the shower.
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This policy applies to three-day wristbands, too, which you will need to wear all weekend, day and night. This means you cannot share your three-day pass, as you could in the past. It is valid for you only, all three days.
Why is this important? Because on Wednesday, Bumbershoot stopped selling single-day tickets for Saturday. This means that if you want to attend on Saturday, you will need to buy a three-day pass (or a $250 “V.I.P.” ticket). And because of the wristband policy, you won’t be able to share that three-day ticket with anyone else.
The mechanism for price increases has also changed this year. In years past, Bumbershoot sold cheap tickets early, then increased the price as the festival approached, on specific dates, announced in advance. This year, like airline pricing, tickets started cheap but go up unpredictably, based on the quantity of tickets sold.
That’s why, at the time of this writing, single-day tickets for Saturday, according to the Bumbershoot website, are no longer available; Sunday-only tickets are $89 (final increment, $109); Monday-only tickets are $99 (final increment, $109); and three-day passes are $189.50 (final increment, $209.50).