Museum and zoo memberships offer pretty good value if you visit frequently and many have reciprocal agreements with other museums across the country. But until recently I never really considered it a good option for me and my family. While we love taking the kids to children’s museums, science centers, and zoos, the few places we have in the area aren’t too impressive and aren’t very close. So it’s unusual for us to visit the same place more than once in a year, making it unlikely we would save much with a membership. But in doing research for upcoming travels I kept reading about the value of memberships and decided to take a closer look.

I quickly found that several places we were looking at visiting this year are part of the same program (ASTC) as the Museum of Innovation & Science (miSci) in Schenectady. MiSci is a pretty good science center and the kids always seem to enjoy it. But it’s about a 40 minute drive and it’s not very big, so we don’t go too often and wouldn’t consider it worthwhile to get a membership ($129 vs $48 for one trip). Even with the planetarium and guest passes they include with the family membership, we would barely break even with two trips. But this doesn’t account for the value of the ASTC reciprocal program. We already have a trip booked for Rochester and plan to visit the Rochester Museum and Science Center, which offers a significant discount for ASTC members. With one trip to miSci and this one additional trip we’d be within $2 of breaking even and would have eleven more months to use the membership. With hundreds of participating museums and science centers around the country, there’s plenty of opportunity to get a lot of value from this membership. We’ll definitely hit the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia when visiting my parents. And if we actually pull off our Texas trip this year, there are three member museums that could be on our itinerary.

After considering the value of the reciprocal memberships, it seemed like a no-brainer. So I purchased the family membership and we took a trip to miSci this weekend. After purchasing I discovered they participate in the Empire State Museums Reciprocal Program as well. This gives us access to over twenty museums in NY state. Most aren’t near us, but it does include the Saratoga Automobile Museum. This is another example of a great place that isn’t big enough to warrant paying for frequent visits. But it’s close and with this membership I’ll definitely make a few visits with my son. There are also a few places on the list that we wouldn’t normally visit, but might check out now.

During our first visit as members I quickly realized an additional benefit to museum membership – flexibility. Whenever we visit one of these places I feel like we need to get the most out of it because it’s expensive and we probably won’t be back any time soon. But with a membership, I no longer feel this stress. If we get a late start or need to leave early for some reason, it’s not a big deal because we can always come back for no additional cost. This will also give us more flexibility when traveling and visiting new museums. Even if we can’t spend a full day, or are unsure how good the places is, the cost is now low enough that we can give it a try without worrying about wasting our money. We’ll have to wait and see how the rest of the year goes, but I definitely recommend looking into membership at your local museum or zoo, especially if you are going to be traveling with children.