I disagree. $600 for a membership is just more than I can afford, ever. I really don't know where all the gunnutz work in order to be able to afford that.
For me and my wife to come for two hours of shooting, it costs $80, with our own guns and ammo. No one spends an entire "day" shooting at the range, so the concept of the "day pass" is a little inaccurate.
$600/$80 is equivalent to coming in about once every 7 weeks per year. We don't come in that often. And we can't come in that much because 1) we can't afford the $80, 2) we can't afford the $600, 3) we can't afford the amount of ammo we'd shoot coming in more often to make it worth it, 4) we won't skip shooting for over a year to save the $600 to finally get a membership for one year which we won't use to its full potential 5) it doubles or triples the cost of reloading my brass.
If a pass for two hours of shooting was $20 or $25 per person, that'd be fine, and we'd come in more often then. I would think you'd attract more people too.
I also think a membership of $350 would be fine, without any ammo price privileges or something.
Anyway, I've been waiting all winter for the snow to clear so that I can go back out to the free range at Homestead, because I just can not afford shooting 200-300 rounds of ammo for reloading at $80 which therefore more than doubles the cost of my reload brass. I'd have to shoot over 1000 rounds per visit to make reloading my brass shot at TSE to be worth it.
Flame away if you want about coughing up the money...we really can't afford it. We share one car, live in a small condo, and eat cheap food, and there's just no money left. Although, I guess I have been able to pay for my guns and reloading equipment. But that was with a small amount of bonus money which no longer exists or will be forthcoming.
The $600 membership leaves it open only to the nuttiest of gunnutz, who shoot upwards or greater than 10,000 rds per year. Now maybe that's the POINT, which is fine. If that's a model that works then that's good for business, and I support that.
But I think there's likely lots of people like me who love shooting too, but shoot only around ~1000-2000 rds per year, in batches of ~200 rds at a time.
But anyway, I do love the TSE, the people there really are great, I agree, especially the owner guy who's a lot of fun. And it's a great facility too with lots of recent improvements.
People will always complain about the price of anything, even if it was free, so I apologize for contributing to that