This year is my 3rd season. This was my mother's idea to get season tickets, and at first I was wary of making such a commitment, but I'm happy I took the plunge. When you but season tickets, you get a discount over the regular ticket price and priority seating - so you're very likely to get the middle of the front row of the section (but you have to do this as soon as the registration opens in March; I'd venture a guess that the best Family Circle/Balcony tickets are sold even faster).

You pick a day of the week and the particular series for the day (there's 3-4) with 7-8 operas. There's usually a balance of popular/obscure, new/existing productions. For example, my season is: Boris Godunov, Pelleas et Melisande, La Traviata, Don Pasquale, La Boheme, Tosca, Capriccio and Rigoletto. As a season subscriber, you also get exchange privileges - if for some reason you can't make it to a performance, you can exchange the ticket at no cost (maybe $3 or $5?) for any other performance.

The discount is especially useful for Friday series, because those are more expensive (by 23% for my particular seat, but because I bought a package, it's actually 13% less than the equivalent Tuesday seat and 33% less than the single Friday ticket face value).

And priority seating is a big deal: for example, we're in the first row of the "Rear" section, and the very next row over ("Front" is 45% more expensive (comparing face-value tickets). And for Family Circle/Balcony, there's such a huge area that it matters whether you're in the first or the last row of the section. And those tickets are frequently simply gone unless you get them months in advance.