Going from Family/Household Memberships to Individual Passes

Hello all!


I am DBA at a zoo with about 12,000 memberships sold annually covering about 45,000 individuals. We are in the process of going from memberships that encompass multiple members (couples, couples and children, single parents and children, etc.) to indivudal passes for everyone, including children. I am working to figure out the best way to track these and preserve as much membership history as possible. So far, we have just converted our dual membership (two adults living in the same household) to individual, and I think that is going okay. We have been keeping the original membership number for the primary member and generating a new one for the second passholder. This way the primary contact maintains a record of their history.


My main dilemma is what to do with children when we go fully individual. Because we are a zoo, almost half of our members are children. I don't think it is feasible or wise to add every child as a constituent. The only thing I can think is to create an additional membership on the parent record for each child. I understand that if these children grow up and become adult members, that presents issues in tracking membership history, but I just can't see a way around it. 


Does anyone have any experience using the membership module to track individual memberships like this? Any ideas? I am also concerned about the amount of time this will add to data entry, and the training it will take to get our seasonal staff up to speed each year. But those are other bridges to cross later!


Any advice is much appreciated. I still have plenty of cleanup to do in our database (I've been here two years but we spent seven without anyone with any formal RE training using it) and I don't want to make matters worse.


Thanks in advance!