2005 Season Pass Options

Since that time of the year is drawing near, I'm wondering how they'll handle Geauga Lake with the season's passes. I see three possible options, and various pricing options within those:

1. Automatically include Geauga Lake with any other Cedar Fair pass. Any Cedar Fair pass is good at any Cedar Fair park. You get it whether you want it or not. The question here is do you raise the price of a Cedar Point pass, since they're so close to each other? If so, how much? Too high, and you alienate your good Cedar Point customers who don't care to attend GL. Even $10 more might be pushing it.

2. Make Geauga Lake an optional "add-on" at a reduced price. Much like you get a Joe Cool or Parking insignia, you'd get a Geauga Lake insignia and your CP pass would be good there. Where's the price point on this option? $15? (in addition to the usual CP pass cost)? $20? I don't think it should be the full GL pass cost, since they're already hitting you up for a CP pass. If they did this approach, how many of you would add GL to your CP pass?

3. Keep Geauga Lake separate. Status quo - same as this year. You need separate GL and CP passes and you pay the listed price for each. No discount for buying two.

I think option 3 is the least likely, as it obviously didn't work this year. They even went out of their way to indicate this would be the policy only for this year and would be reviewed.

Any votes on 1 vs. 2? I gave my idea of price points. What are yours? Would you have different GL prices depending on whether the CP pass included Soak City or not? How about parking? Would one $35 parking (on a GL/CP combo pass) cover both parks? How about a Joe Cool program (early entry, discounted food, etc.) for GL? Do you get JC at both parks for your $15 or is it more (how much)?

Lots of questions. No answers (yet.) Time to speculate...

I think #1 will most likely happen.

I'm counting on #2, though the out-of-state passes will be eligible for admission to either one. That's the only thing I can think of that makes sense for the company as a whole.

If that's the case, expect a whole buttload of Michigan Adventure and Dorney Park passes to be issued this next year!

Well if they do this, we better be seeing some new rides at GL, MA, and Dorney.

I honestly think this is a real dilemma for Cedar Fair. They can't raise CP passes (if they include GL on everything) too much without alienating CP "die hards". Similarly, I don't think GL warrants too big a premium as an "add-on". You'll just force people to choose (my opinion) between GL and Soak City... They won't get everything.

The parking, Joe Cool, etc. questions are even more interesting. Can you imagine this for option 2?

CP Pass $90, GL add-on $20

CP parking $35, GL parking add-on $15

Joe Cool CP $15, Joe Cool GL add-on $10

TOTAL $185?? Yikes. I doubt they sell many. GL isn't worth that much to me. I'd get the CP/SC pass + JC + parking and forget GL.

IMO, the price for GL/CP+JC (both parks) + parking(both parks) will have to be equal to or less than CP/SC+JC+parking, if they want to sell any. I think they'll also need to offer a "GL-only" pass. The folks around Aurora won't pay anywhere near $90 if they only plan on using GL.

An even more interesting question is if you price a $50 GL season pass, will it have a CP add-on? Will it include CP? They'll sell a bundle of GL passes if so :-)

2005 Passes will probably be $100-$150 like they were this year. I doubt prices will be raised like that.

I highly doubt next year's standard CP season pass will include GL. They'd have to issue a separate "combo CP/GL pass". Many people don't care to go to GL and would probably be uneasy with paying more for a pass that includes both parks without the option for one or the other.

I've always been led to believe that the parking pass that you buy is only good at the park from where it was issued. In other words, my C.P. parking pass isn't valid at Michigan's Adventure or any other Cedar Fair park. (is that correct?)

Also, isn't the Joe Cool Club program in effect only at Cedar Point? I've never been under the impression that other parks offer Joe Cool as an add-on to their respective season passes.

Their press release didn't say, but seemed to imply, that the "separate" Geauga Lake pass was going to be a 2004-only thing.

I think they'll still need to keep a separate (inexpensive) GL pass (but lower in price, maybe in the $40-$45 range), but I bet they include (or offer as a very cheap add-on) a GL option on the CP pass.

It would be a nice touch to include GL parking if you purchase CP parking. If they do start a Joe Cool club at GL, (why not? Let's have some ERT's, discounted food/souvenirs, etc) it would also be nice if they included that w/ a CP JC purchase.

There's little doubt GL is struggling. Including GL (no charge) with the CP passes might get them over the hump. Including bonuses like parking and JC (even if just for 2005) would certainly encourage the "reluctant" visitor to make a stop and check it out.

They were too harsh with the pass policy in 2004 IMO, and it cost them. Maybe they didn't want the attention while they cleaned the place up. Who knows? Being a little more lenient in 2005 should help. If they truly changed the park, they'll make believers in just a visit or two. It's getting them to make that visit or two that will be tough.

If for some reason they don't include GL passes, they should at least give some free vouchers (maybe 2 per CP pass, good through the end of June) as an incentive to visit... That sure wouldn't hurt much, and if the park really improved they'd probably sell a couple GL passes for the effort.

The more I think about the CP/GL combo (assuming they offer as an add-on), for me it will come down to a decision between GL and Soak City.

Most of the CP pass holders (living between CP & GL) who want a water park (probably quite a few people in this category) will simply choose the cheapest option. If they can add GL cheaper than SC, then GL it will be.

It will be interesting to see if/how much the Soak City pass sales suffer. If I get GL w/ my CP pass (regardless of price), there's no way I'll be adding SC on next year.

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If that's the case, expect a whole buttload of Michigan Adventure and Dorney Park passes to be issued this next year!

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Nonsense. I live 3 hours from MiA and 2 from CP. With an MiA pass, I can't get Soak City. With an MiA pass, I can't get the parking permit on the pass, only on the car. The convenience of these two is worth a fair bit. Add in the cost of driving the extra distance compared to renewing by mail at CP, and there's no contest.

Edit: as for the GL vs. SC question: if you're going to be at CP much more often than GL, having a waterpark right next door to cool off in the heat of the afternoon (and at the peak of the crowds) is worth an awful lot.

Maybe I value convenience much more highly than some, I don't know. *** Edited 9/1/2004 3:53:05 PM UTC by Brian Noble***

Brian, I live right between the two parks, and we seldom do "both" a water park & rides in the same day. For me, if GL is priced less than SC, I'll just go there on those days we feel like "water-parkin' it".

The good news is that Cedar Fair can direct me whichever way they want by how they price the options. The bad news is that the more expensive option won't get my business.

For my family of 4, the "convenience" of having both SC and GL isn't worth an extra $200 on the season pass bill. It will be one or the other.

Furthering Brian's comments, I recall visiting both Dorney and MA with my CP pass and saw on the paper tracking sheet a half-dozen people using their CF passes that day. Doing the same thing for Paramount, where they also track these on paper, I saw a dozen names in the middle of July at PKD when I used my PKI pass.

The point is, chain-wide pass use is a nice little perk, but accounts for a tiny, tiny portion of attendance. Only the CP-GL connection could be considered significant because they're so close to each other.

My guess is that the number of Cedar Point pass holders in the Cleveland vicinity (and the corridor all the way down to Medina) is significant. Those people can "easily" go one place or the other (or both).

This close proximity is an "issue" (or a potential advantage) that Six Flags or Paramount hasn't had to deal with.

Choosing price points and options for GL/CP passes will affect a number of 2005 customer decisions (most importantly, mine!) I'm interested to see whether Cedar Fair offers me a sufficient incentive to attend Geauga Lake on a somewhat-regular basis. I'm happy with CP/SC, but if the price is right, I'll trek eastward.

They also have other options to couple CP/GL visits (maybe something similar to the Ride & Slide? I envision a two-part ticket: one day for CP & another for GL, maybe offered for $40-$45, maybe even coupled with a resort stay overnight.) It wouldn't surprise me to see them take advantage of the synergy in other ways as well.

There would be a lot more people coming into GL with CP passes yes, but those people will have more money to spend on things like merchandise and food. There is a lot of profit outside of admissions that can be earned by getting the masses inside the door

I am thinking you show your Cedar Fair pass and they give a discount on admission. Maybe 20 buck or something off

I'm thinking GL will be an add-on, but I guess the other question is how will GL passes work? If you buy a GL pass, will that automatically get you the Point, or will you have to do a major upgrade on that pass too? It's a strange situation, but personally from the day the acquisition went into effect, I have budgeted $200 for a CP pass with parking that will get me into GL too for this year. I don't see how that's paying too much ...

Regardless of what they decide to do, you're not going to see one pass with upgrade be less expensive than the other pass with upgrade. The math might be different, but the total would have to be the same. Otherwise, who would bother buying the CP pass with GL if the GL with CP pass was cheaper?

My only concern is how they're going to work parking if you get both parks on one pass.