ATG vs DMT memberships - which is better?

Agree of course with the monkey.

Depends where you live. ATG is MUCH better outside of London. I go to Manchester and Bristol a lot and advance priority booking for the big musicals like Miss Saigon and Les Mis has been great. More recently have also used for &Juliet, Back to the Future and Mamma Mia. There are also great discounts to be had.

For the ATG London theatres however I rarely see discounts.

DMT varies in how useful it is depending on whether shows you are interested in are at DMT venues. I have that too through and again advance priority booking was great for Les Mis Concert, Mary Poppins etc etc. Almost never see discounts for members through. In fact I'll re-phrase that - never seen any!

Very much agree - have had ATG for years and get a lot of use out of it.

DMT I got this year when the Les Mis concert was announced - purely as I wanted to get advance booking. Then I also used it for a couple of other things. I don't think I will renew it however!

Surely someone as prestigious as West End Wilma doesn't need to buy tickets to review shows

ATG definitely worth it if you visit regional ATG theatres regularly. Amazing deals during priority booking times as well as various offers and reductions. Got Book of Mormon stall seats for Bristol for £13, and Amelie stalls tickets for Oxford for £15. All great seats.

^ Yes that's right.

Got an e-mail yesterday offering ATG membership for £25 as part of their Summer Savers offers, got until the 5th Sep to decide but at that price does seem to be a no-brainier.

Not sure if the offer is available to all but worth checking your in-boxes / junk folders if you’ve booked with ATG in the past and considering becoming a member.

Thanks for that, I have done the deed!

I got that e mail also but when I clicked on the "find out more" button a screen came up to say that the membership is usually £35 so it's actually a £10 saving and not £20 as the e mail says. Plus I didn't think you got much for your money apart from 25% off drinks and I dont drink anyway. The rest of the benefits were neither here nor there

Yeah, I ended up paying for ATG by card to avoid accidentally auto-renewing, since I only find it so-so usually. The priority booking was worth it for getting decent Betrayal Seats before dynamic pricing kicked in, and for the free ticket exchanges - pretty sure I broke even on that so any fees I’ve saved since are ‘profit’.

But buying the ATG member tickets means you don’t get cash back via TopCashBack or Quidco - and if you’re buying expensive tickets because you can’t book early the cash back is probably worth more than the per ticket fee. So it’s worth having a think about your own buying patterns before signing up.

This would actually stack with ATG member ticket discounts/fee waiver though. If you are going through a cashback site then you won’t get cashback on ATG member ticket sales, only the ‘normal’ tickets

At one point I did manage to get them to give me cashback on them when it didn’t automatically track, but they have tightened by the t&cs now to specifically exclude them.

Slightly off-topic but an alternative to cashback payment cards which works well for me is having one ostensibly issued by John Lewis, though of course provided and managed by a bank. Instead of cashback you accumulate points towards vouchers to use in JL stores or Waitrose. As I shop in both regularly I save the vouchers for treats and have just used some to buy a new GPS watch (£150 and cheapest from JL anyway), as the battery on my much-used old one was giving out before I'd done even 30 miles.

So sitting in the theatre, having no exercise, has paid for a great gadget to use on another, more active interest.