How to Eliminate Drive-Thru Holiday Light Display Frustration and Friction with SimpleTix
-
by
Riley Manning has worked as a travel and entertainment writer for more than 10 years. Today, he writes about unique events and the technology that helps make them happen.
During the Winter holiday season and especially during the month of December, some of the most beloved and popular attractions are the local drive-thru Christmas light displays. As magical and lovely as these lights can be, holiday light drive-thrus can have issues that can make your guests’ experience less than ideal.
Leverage your event ticketing platform to help you eliminate:
- Frustrations around sold-out events
- Traffic on the main roads
- Long lines at the entry
- Wait-times for concessions
Instead of your attendees waiting in seemingly unending lines this year, why not make their experience a bit easier and merrier and help them plan this year’s holiday lights visit with SimpleTix, the Eventbrite alternative that will help save you and your attendees time and money so that they can focus on enjoying this holiday tradition with their loved ones.
Holiday light attractions are just one of many types of events SimpleTix serves to make your attendees’ experiences smoother and more delightful!
Timed Entry and Pre-Sale Tickets
Some advantages to using SimpleTix when attending drive-thru holiday lights this year include timed entry and presale ticketing features. Presale ticketing and timed entry help attendees avoid those long lines, which allows you to be more effective with crowd control.
Timed entry ticketing lets you place attendees in specific time slots, so they don’t arrive all at once. This way, the main neighborhood roads in addition to surrounding residential side streets won’t be bottlenecked in bumper-to-bumper traffic at 7 PM–you can stagger the guests to come throughout the evening. Timed entry is also key when it comes to overall safety because it limits the number of people and cars in a neighborhood or at a venue at any given time.
With pre-sale only tickets, you can also limit the number of cars per day, again decreasing traffic along the holiday lights route, which can eliminate families waiting in line for what seems like forever only to spend a minute or two driving by each attraction’s festive light displays.
An Eventbrite alternative like SimpleTix will also help families pre-plan when they are expected to enter the light attraction rather than driving all the way there in an attempt to see the lights only to find out that the line is too extensive.
Reduce Long Lines
It’s pretty clear at this point that the biggest drawbacks of drive-thru holiday light attractions are definitely the high-traffic routes and the dense lines. Creating lasting experiences like seeing neighborhood lights not only brings the family together but makes the holiday season truly special.
It’s a shame to let the frustrations of the system get in the way of your attendees’ fun. That’s why it’s so important to spread the word about SimpleTix, which can help reduce the frustration of waiting in line by getting people into the gate faster so that they can spend more time taking in the experience, not wasting hours stuck in line!
With an Eventbrite alternative like SimpleTix, presale tickets allow entry lines to move along more quickly because no one is purchasing their tickets at the point of entry and clogging up the line.
Furthermore, there’s no time spent exchanging cash for admission, calculating totals, making change, or even paying per head. You can charge a flat rate per car rather than per person in each car, which makes the experience more affordable and easier for families to plan to see.
Paying per car means they no longer have to wonder which of their friends and family will attend–they can bring their whole family or several groups of friends in a few cars. Even without a flat rate, SimpleTix allows for bulk scanning; a single QR code can be used to scan an entire car, which allows lines to move along faster.
In addition to being an inconvenience for those traveling to see the lights, traffic can also be a major hassle for the residents of the nearby communities putting on the light displays. Many residents are unable to access or leave their homes due to the traffic jams and long lines of cars.
With an Eventbrite alternative like SimpleTix, you can be sure that carloads of families will be moving along smoothly and safely and that residents are not unable to leave or return home simply because they live in a neighborhood that features a holiday light display. Neighbors will be free to come and go as they please without worrying about long lines of visitors boxing them in at night.
Pre-sale Concessions
Another way in which SimpleTix, an Eventbrite alternative, allows your attendees to enjoy the drive-through holiday lights experience is through the presale of concessions. People love hot chocolate and other seasonal holiday treats!
No more schlepping to the event with a thermos of lukewarm cocoa and some stale sugar cookies. No more complaining kids turning what should be a magical holiday full of light, wonder, and lifelong memories into a visit from the Grinch!
If your venue offers concessions, you can offer holiday treats as pre-sales. With pre-sale tickets, you can also offer upsells of hot cocoa, cider, coffee, tea, s’mores, gingerbread cookies, and other assorted festive treats before the event gets started. You can also deliver these food items to the corresponding cars and have the goodies ready for each time slot with timed entry.
If your Christmas light experience also offers cocoa and treats, your light display is likely to be more popular and well-attended! Also, many families opt to visit drive-thru holiday lights close to dinnertime, often skipping the meal or going to a drive-thru fast food chain.
On top of selling cocoa and treats, with SimpleTix, you could sell hot meals so that event-goers can enjoy dinner from the comfort of their cars as they take in the twinkling lights.
SimpleTix also integrates with Square, which makes purchasing meals and treats a cinch when planning a visit to see holiday lights. In addition, pre-selling concessions are great for resource allocation, waste management, and cost effectiveness!
The Eventbrite Alternative that Helps Make Christmas Lights Memorable
This year, help your guests make this holiday lights experience their most memorable yet with SimpleTix, the Eventbrite alternative that will save you time and money so they can focus on what matters most this holiday season: making memories with their friends and loved ones!
SimpleTix has offered an affordable, premium event ticketing platform that outperforms Eventbrite and similar apps for over 12 years. Compared to the competition, SimpleTix offers better options at a better price point. To learn more, call us at +1 (855) 550-3670 or email us at support@simpletix.com.
Latest News
Related Articles
Eventbrite Pricing 2026: Fees, Refunds & What’s Actually Changed
-
by
Eventbrite pricing 2026 is a lot for event organizers to sort through. There are longstanding policies that quietly cost paid-event operators real money, and there is genuine news under new ownership. This guide covers what the fees actually cost you today, what actually changed under the Bending Spoons acquisition, and how the alternatives compare on real numbers. Below is the honest breakdown, sourced to Eventbrite's own pricing page and SEC filings. Eventbrite pricing 2026: current fee structure As of 2026, Eventbrite charges 3.7% + $1.79 per paid ticket for the service fee, plus 2.9% for payment processing. In-person sales carry a $1 + 2.9% fee. There is no per-ticket fee cap. For a quick benchmark of total organizer-side fees: On a $25 ticket, fees total about $3.44 (13.8%) On a $50 ticket, fees total about $5.09 (10.2%) On a $100 ticket, fees total about $8.39 (8.4%) On a $500 ticket, fees total about $34.79 (7.0%) On a $1,000 ticket, fees total about $67.79 (6.8%) The fees scale with ticket price with no ceiling. That is the story for anyone selling premium tickets, season passes, VIP tiers, or corporate packages. Eventbrite pricing 2026: no per-ticket fee cap Eventbrite does not cap total ticket fees. This has been true since 2018, when Eventbrite removed the previous cap during its IPO. For most organizers selling everyday tickets ($20 to $50), the absence of a cap rarely comes up in the math. But for organizers selling premium tickets, the uncapped structure translates into real per-event cost. Take a conference selling three ticket tiers on Eventbrite: $150 general admission: fee about $12.34 (8.2%) $400 VIP ticket: fee about $27.09 (6.8%) $800 sponsor ticket: fee about $50.90 (6.4%) For a 200-person conference with a mix of GA and VIP tickets, that translates into hundreds of dollars...
Haunted House Ticketing Software: Timed Entry, Scanning & Capacity Control for 2026
-
by
If you run a haunted attraction, October is your Super Bowl. So how you sell tickets from June through September decides how the whole season goes. This guide covers what haunted house ticketing software actually needs to do in 2026, how to pick one, and what SimpleTix costs for haunts of any size. What haunted house ticketing software needs to do Selling haunted house tickets is not like selling concert tickets. First, capacity is measured in throughput per hour, not in seats. Second, weather can shut you down without warning. Third, most of your revenue happens across three or four weekends. And fourth, your staff is often in costume at 9pm in a field with spotty cell service. So the ticketing software has to handle all of that. Here is the checklist most haunt operators use: Timed entry with per-slot capacity control so lines stay manageable Fast scanning at the gate, including offline mode for outdoor venues Re-entry passes for multi-attraction ticketing Add-ons for photos, upcharges, VIP fast-pass Group and family bundles so a family of five is one checkout, not five Waitlists for when peak-hour slots sell out Attendee wallet passes so guests are not fumbling for paper Same-day or fast payouts during the season crunch If your current tool cannot do all of that, it is worth switching now. The last thing you want is to be debugging your ticketing at 8pm on the first weekend of October. How does timed entry work for haunted houses? Timed entry lets you release a fixed number of tickets per time slot (typically every 15 or 30 minutes) so guests arrive in waves instead of a single 7pm crush. For a walkthrough haunt with a 45-minute experience, that usually means 20 to 40 guests per 15-minute window. So over a four-hour...
Partiful Just Launched Ticketing: What Event Organizers Need to Know
-
by
Partiful just launched ticketing. As of June 2, 2026, hosts can now sell tickets directly inside the Partiful app on iOS, Android, and web. Initially, the feature is rolling out to U.S. hosts. Then broader availability is planned in the coming months. If you have run events before, you probably already know Partiful. It is the social-first invitation platform with millions of monthly active users. Until now, every paid event on Partiful had to push guests off-platform to actually buy a ticket. So this launch closes that gap. But here is the question every event organizer needs to ask. Is Partiful's new ticketing the right platform for your event? Or is it built for a different kind of host? Below is the honest breakdown. What Partiful Ticketing actually does Partiful's launch covers the basics every casual social host needs: Ticket tiers with multiple pricing levels Capacity limits to cap attendance Promo codes for special guest pricing QR code check-in at the door SMS notifications to attendees Staff permissions so bouncers or co-hosts can check guests in Sales tracking for real-time payouts and attendance Also, payment processing runs through Stripe. Then payouts are available roughly three days after the event ends. Meanwhile, free tickets carry no fees. Paid ticket fees scale with event size and ticket price. So Partiful shows hosts the exact fee during setup, and hosts can pass it on or absorb it. CEO Shreya Murthy framed the launch this way: "Ticketing has always lived outside the social experience of an event — you buy a ticket somewhere else, then figure out who's going. We think that's backwards." So if your event lives or dies on word of mouth and the "who else is going" dynamic, Partiful's pitch is real. The platform is built around social discovery, dynamic invites,...