account allow apply approach avoid bit button cart code create date day depending discount friday indeed individual issue item money note option order ordered orders passed prices product products receipt regular show stock tag taking text thank-you value variant variants variations week

I just need a nod that this is indeed how things work.
I have a tangible product with variants of the day of the week. If the product is ordered on Saturday I would like one price, if it is ordered on Friday, I would like a $2 discount. If I apply an item discount to the product via the order button for Friday (e.g. "https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?c=cart&i=xxxxxx&cl=xxxxxx&ejc=2& on0=Show Date&os0="+ mshowday +"&on1=Seat&os1="+ mseat + "&discount_code=thurfri";) and then add another order for Saturday without the &discount_code tag, both orders show in the cart with the regular price and the discount applied to both.
Is it the case that in order to do what I want, I will have to create two products, one for Friday and one for Saturday with the two different prices?
Thanks!

It looks like you're using "Variations which tell more...", whereas "Variants having individual price/weight/stock/SKU" would allow you to alter the price depending on what option values are passed for the item, without needing to apply any discounts:
http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.variants.htm#variants

Note that if the Show Date affects the price but Seat does not, you could use Variants for the Date and Variations for the Seat, e.g.:

"https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?c=cart&i=xxxxxx&cl=xxxxxx&ejc=2& o1="+ mshowday +"&on0=Seat&os0="+ mseat;

Thank you very much. That does, indeed, work to avoid the discount issue. It does add another bit of text to the order and final receipt that I'd rather not see - the variant name to the order and it's name and value to the receipt. But I suppose after some thought there could be some clever naming to make it more transparent.
Thank you too for not taking the approach of "let's make more money" by having me add more products to my account!