coasterbill

I don't really see how dining plans ever made sense. I'm sure they made a profit on them from a select few people, but in most cases the people with those plans were likely either going to pay for their food each time otherwise in which case they would have made more money, or lived nearby and abused them like crazy. I can't even count the number of times I was going up the Nitro lift in the dead of winter in a dead park looking at a steady stream of people coming in an hour before close. You know all of those people were just coming to get free food, spend $0 and leave... in many cases with their food in to-go boxes.

It's very much in-line with everything else that they've been doing lately. I'd assume it's the latter but they'll blame the former.

The park has cancelled the remainder of their Saturday night Fireworks shows and cut the operating hours back by 2 hours every Saturday the same day that they doubled the price of their season passes. They’ll run a 5 hour operating day all Winter. lol

Choice Stay Twice Get a Free Night is back for the first time in way too long. It’s masquerading as a $50 gas card promotion but it’s not. It’s just giving you enough points to redeem for a gas card. Choice has quietly devalued their points, but this is still lucrative. All you have to do is Register here. Remember that this will trigger on EVERY second night between now and March 12th. If you have a trip planned and you have a rental car so this isn’t especially annoying you can hotel hop every night to trigger new stays. You cannot check in and out of the same hotel on consecutive nights though.

Worst case, you have it for one season...

You should 100% buy a membership with dining as part of the membership (not purchased separately) now and get grandfathered in. Anyone considering this at-all would be crazy not to buy a membership ASAP.

Other parks already do it, it's just a clusterfuck because it's Six Flags. Great Adventure and New England have been allowing people to buy extras at the Flash Pass buildings but not advertising that at all. Then for Holiday in the Park, Great Adventure put signs with QR codes up about buying line skips in front of the Justice League and Skull Mountain queues (those rides tend to be popular for the event because one of them has heat and one of them doesn't have heat but people think that it might before they get in line and don't realize the error of their ways until later).

I'm fine with them raising prices, but why not just keep memberships, maybe tweak the discount percentages, kill the dining plans that aren't really attached to those anyway and raise the prices? This is the Six-Flagsiest thing and the "I'm glad they simplified the confusing pass system" crowd should probably be sitting down for this one. The new pass system is actually more confusing than the old one, as prices vary by park and benefits also vary by park. Example: At Magic Mountain, the Ultimate Pass is $329.99 and includes a $50 attractions credit (whatever that means). At Fiesta Texas, Over Texas and Discovery Kingdom, the same pass is $299, but it doesn't have the attractions credit and instead has a $25 Merchandise Credit and a $25 Food credit. Actually, every different pass level varies in price depending on the park. The Ultimate Pass earns 35% off merchandise at Over Texas, Discovery Kingdom and Fiesta Texas but only 30% off at Magic Mountain. The Extreme Pass earns 35% Off merchandise at Over Texas and Fiesta Texas but only 25% off at Magic Mountain. The Extreme Pass earns 15% off food at Magic Mountain, but 20% off at Fiesta Texas, Discovery Kingdom and Over Texas. The Ultimate Pass earns a 50% off all season Flash Pass discount at Discovery Kingdom, Over Texas and Fiesta Texas but that benefit does not exist at Magic Mountain. The discounts are the same across the highest 2 pass levels at most parks but at Magic Mountain, they're tiered. Discovery Kingdom has a 35% animal attraction discount. So if you go to other parks, what discount do you get? Let's all find out together... lol

Oh yeah, I’m totally on board with giving people the choice to pay in full or monthly like they had been doing. This is weird though because they spent years forcing people into memberships and then immediately reversed course and went back to the pass system they had back in 1999 overnight.

^^I mean, if that’s true then they do a horrible job communicating that… Edit: Beat me to it. Also, I’m not saying Bert is wrong, he’s very likely right and this chain is just a mess but I can’t tell from this, and I’m not even convinced that the parks know.

That's hilarious, but it probably won't last. They were gone for awhile and they have a page here where in the FAQ it states that you can't buy them but the website is (and has always been) a five-alarm tire fire.

So… raise the price of memberships? They’re still offering a dirt cheap season pass that gets you into every park. The structure that you’re describing kind-of already exists. They’re actually not able to get rid of Diamond Elite VIP memberships. They’re stuck with those forever (though I don’t see any verbiage saying that they can’t raise the price to force people out of them). As for the others, they have a page up calling them Legacy memberships

The Texas parks have discontinued the sale of new memberships also. WTF are they doing? Most of their recent changes have been cost cutting and things that are just openly negative for guests but attempts to increase profits. I'm actually not sure how this benefits anyone, including them. PS: Selling season passes and not annual passes to year-round parks is dumb.

That hasn't been the case exactly. Most everything gets fixed, but flip a coin each day on if it broke again... lol

Great photos! I’ve always wanted to go to this event since they’re happy to run their log flume in the snow and those are my kind of people…

Think of Hagrid’s as Verbolten on a Universal budget more than something like Motocoaster or Pony Express.

Agreed. Thanks to that, I was totally spoiler free for my first ride and I was totally surprised by that fourth drop track. Did. Not. See. That. Coming...

I feel like my tastes are clearly a lot different than yours, so it's hard for me to gauge how to answer this but Velocicoaster is one of the best coasters in America and possibly the world if that helps. If you only care about big coasters, don't buy a park hopper just to ride Rockit. If you have any interest in also riding one of the best dark rides in America in addition to Rockit then yeah... buy a park hopper.

So you're dedicating a full day to SeaWorld but just want to ride two rides at Universal and bounce? This doesn't compute... help me understand.

... and we laughed and laughed

I'm not formally participating in the timeshare but if you guys let us crash on the couch occasionally I promise to keep the beer fridge fully-stocked.

Brit has spoken Pégase Express and Wonder Mountain's Guardian are making moves...

Per the app, it looks like Opening Day will be March 26th, 3 weeks later than last year… It’s like Cedar Fair and Six Flags switched places.

Six Flags Mexico has paused the sale of all memberships but they're still selling annual passes. No clue what Six Flags is up to, but given the direction they're currently heading in I assume that it's nothing that guests will be happy about.

I was loving a lot of what they were doing under the old ownership. The new regime that stepped in a few months ago has really done nothing good whatsoever from a fan perspective. Obviously what we want vs what the shareholders want isn’t always the same thing, but as a consumer yeah… there’s really been nothing but bad news out of this company lately. Lots of firings and cuts everywhere…