2015 Dining Plan options announced

Ffej said:

Yesterday, they informed us it'd be an extra $8 if we wanted to redeem.

Then I heard that Subway was added at CP, but now it's a $2 upcharge. Can anyone that has redeemed with Subway confirm if there is a $2 upcharge right now? Finally, at Panda Express (which is advertised as any 2-entree plate and an add-on), my friend was told that if he wanted the shrimp, it'd be an extra $2.

They finally have it updated on the website.

• Midway Market: enjoy the buffet for a $5 upcharge (All Day Dining Plan) or an $8 upcharge (All Season Dining Plan)
• Subway $2 upcharge for All Season Dining: 6-inch sub & choice of chips or 2 cookies (excludes roast beef, club & chicken breast subs)
• Panda Express: 2 entree plate (All Day Dining Plan) or 2 entree plate with add-on (All Season Dining Plan)

I used Midway Market on Thursday, and they informed me right away of the 8 dollar (8.42, actually) up charge, before she even rang it.
I was good with that, the food was good, I could eat what I wanted, and I got FreeStyle included. (and one to go)
I was full, so I didn't much want my Pinks dinner, but I ate it late anyway.

And by the way, there was a young man training at the register at MM and his hair, combed back and under a hat, was well below collar length. Like, below the bottom of the collar by several inches.
Just sayin...

Here is the updated info for those looking for it straight from Cedar Point, and Chick-fil-A is listed.

All Day & All Season Dining Plan Locations & Meals*

• Burger Patio (entree & choice of fries, side salad or fruit cup): Cheeseburger or veggie burger
• Celebration Station: Brat Combo (bratwurst & chips)
• Chick-fil-A: Chick-fil-A sandwich & waffle fries
• Coasters (entree & choice of fries, fruit cup or side salad): cheeseburger, chicken fingers or grilled chicken sandwich
• Corral: Hot Dog-on-a-Stick Combo (hot dog-on-a-stick & choice of chips or fruit cup), Cheese-on-a-Stick Combo (cheese-on-a-stick & choice of chips or fruit cup), Chicken Finger Combo (chicken fingers & choice of fries, side salad or fruit cup), Pizza Combo (slice of pizza & choice of chips, side salad or fruit cup) or Hot Dog Combo (hot dog & choice of fries or fruit cup)
• Dragon's Inn (entree & choice of fries or fruit cup): chicken fingers, hot dog-on-a-stick, (6) cheesesticks or hot dog
• Grandstand: Hot Dog Combo (hot dog & choice of chips or fruit cup)
• Grist Mill: Pizza Combo (slice of pizza & choice of 2 breadsticks or side salad), Chicken Finger Combo (chicken fingers & choice of fries or side salad) or Breadstick Combo (6 breadsticks & side salad)
• Happy Friar: Mini Corn Dog Combo (6 mini corn dogs & fresh cut fries)
• Hot Potato: Mini Corn Dog Combo (6 mini corn dogs & fresh cut fries)
• Hurricane Hannah's (entree & choice of chips or side salad): chicken fingers or pizza slice
• Lakeside Express: Cheeseburger Combo (cheeseburger & choice of fries, chips or fruit cup), Hot Dog-on-a-Stick Combo (hot dog-on-a-stick & choice of chips or fruit cup), Pizza Combo (slice of pizza & choice of chips or fruit cup) or Cheese-on-a-Stick Combo (cheese-on-a-stick & choice of chips or fruit cup)
• Last Chance Saloon (entree & choice of chips or fruit cup): pulled pork sandwich or hot dog
• Los Gatos (entree & side of chips and salsa): burrito or 2 tacos
• Midway Market: enjoy the buffet for a $5 upcharge (All Day Dining Plan) or an $8 upcharge (All Season Dining Plan)
• Mr. Potato: 6 mini corn dogs & fresh cut fries
• Panda Express: 2 entree plate (All Day Dining Plan) or 2 entree plate with add-on (All Season Dining Plan)
• Pink's (entree & choice of fries, onion rings or fruit cup): Naked Dog, Chili Cheese Dog, Long Island Dog, Bacon Chili Cheese Dog, Chicago (mild or spicy) Dog, Turkey Burger, Cheeseburger or Turkey Dog
• Pretzel Fillers: regular pretzel & fruit cup
• Raging River: Pizza Combo (slice of pizza & choice of fries or fruit cup)
• Rapid Waves (entree & choice of fries, side salad or fruit cup): chicken fingers, cheeseburger, hot dog or grilled chicken sandwich
• Red Garter Saloon (entree & choice of chips or fruit cup): ham & turkey sub, pulled pork sandwich or hot dog
• Round Up (entree & choice of fries, side salad or fruit cup): cheeseburger or chicken fingers
• Sagebrush Sue's: regular pretzel & fruit cup, Hot Dog-on-a-Stick Combo (hot dog-on-a-stick & choice of chips or fruit cup) or Cheese on-a-Stick Combo (cheese on-a-stick & choice of chips or fruit cup)
• Stockade (entree & choice of fries, side salad or fruit cup): pizza, chicken fingers, cheeseburger, grilled chicken sandwich or veggie burger
• Subway $2 upcharge for All Season Dining: 6-inch sub & choice of chips or 2 cookies (excludes roast beef, club & chicken breast subs)

*Locations & menu selections subject to change without notice.

https://www.cedarpoint.com/things-to-do/dining-plans

The meal plans are a profit maker to an extent. Yes if you go to the parks every other weekend all weekend and go through 12 meals a month and you've been hitting CF parks since early April, yeah it hurts em a bit. One way they make it up quick though is the lack of drink. That $4 Coke Freestyle or whatever you get is damn near instant profit. The cups are dirt cheap and freestyle machines using the micro dispensing deal are genius. Then a 5 gallon bag in box syrup used at most places without freestyle is about $90. So in 23 drinks in a day that's paid off, and that 5 gallon syrup lasts quite a long time in use wise, and the drink sales add up.

Yes drink sales make up the difference. Although they are running a $5 all-day recharge on the souvenir cups which includes the freestyle machines.

Went to MM for lunch around 1 Sunday. Cashier mentioned the $8 up charge, no problem. Daughter and I had a great experience there. Seems it can be hit or miss sometimes, but today was a hit. We spent almost an hour there, as we had a window table, and just grazed and people watched in air conditioned comfort.

Hmmm. I have the all season dining plan and ate at Subway Sunday evening and was not charged the $2.

Has anyone else looked at the all-day meal plan and thought that it looks too good to be true? A meal every 90 minutes? That could be get you quite a bit of food on a normal operating day. Is there a catch somewhere that I'm missing?

There is no catch, but how much can you eat? They give you the option of a meal every 90 minutes but I doubt you will be able to eat that much food. It seems to benefit the park the same as an all you can eat buffet. They know how much the average person can eat and price it accordingly, even though you are allowed to eat more.

Things to consider...

• You have to be near a participating place (admittedly, not so hard lately with the addition of participating places)
• That place needs to have food you're interested in eating
• You have to wait in line (sometimes can be long)
• You don't get a pop (which I consider to be a benefit actually - I don't need pop temptation)

So yeah, theoretically you can get in 8 meals or so in one day. In actual practice, I've gotten in 3 or 4, and that's sharing it with a young'un or 2. Still better than single meal deals, or ala carte. As for the waiting, say you get six meals, if you wait 10 minutes each line, you've spent an entire hour just waiting in line for food.

Also, you can only buy the all-day voucher online or at a ticket window, then you take that to a place and they give you the wristband. Don't go to a food place and expect to buy the all day plan, as they can't sell it to you.

We purchased the All Day Dining Plan this past Saturday, and found it to be an excellent value.

However, getting the meal plan was not easy. While redeeming my souvenir cup voucher at a food stand, I noticed some folks redeeming their drink wristbands, so I asked whether you could purchase a dining plan there. Unsurprisingly, they informed me that we had to visit Guest Services. Off we went.

When purchasing the dining plan, we asked where we could redeem our voucher for the wristband. Why they don't just give you the wristband right there at Guest Services is beyond me, but I digress. They informed us that we could get our wristband at any participating location, and that the nearest such eatery was Pink's. Off we went.

Once at Pink's we were informed that you can't simply redeem your voucher there, and instead had to purchase a meal in order to redeem the voucher. OK, fine, I guess that makes sense. Off we went to Panda Express.

After waiting in an understandably-long line, we arrived at the cashier with our food, presented the voucher, only to be told that they cannot redeem vouchers there. Ohhh kayyy... The cashier informed us that Red Garter Saloon could take of that for us, which was luckily right across the midway. Off I went.

Once there, the cashier informed me (after a few unsuccessful attempts at redeeming my voucher) that they can't redeem dining plan vouchers there, and that I'd have to go to Grist Mill, all the way down by SRF, to get the wristband. I ran back to Panda Express to inform my Wife and the cashier that I'd be back in a while, because I had to run clear down to the other end of Frontier Trail.

Thankfully, the cashier took mercy on us, and allowed us to eat our meal before going to redeem the voucher. This was a rare, but welcome, moment of customer service throughout the ordeal. Though it did result in us loosing some considerable time on our meal plan, at least we were able to eat our orange chicken while it was still lukewarm.

I understand that seasonal employees will be slow an inefficient during the first couple weeks of the season. But this was a systematic failure, brought on the needlessly complex system. Why don't they just give you a friggin' wrist band at Guest Services?

Nevertheless, we really loved the value of the dining plan, and we'll get it anytime we're planning on a long day in the park.

So far I have two complaints about the way the season long dining plan works at Point.

1) Confusion about the quantity of food given. Example: At Corral my brother ordered (who also has all season dining) a hot dog on a stick combo and received 1 hot dog on a stick and a small bag of chips. I, on the same trip ordered the same combo at Dragon's Inn and received 2 hot dogs on a stick and a large basket of fries... Now I asked a gentlemen who was at the stand wearing the neon green polo with "Supervisor" on it. Which I have since learned are just the team leads, but I digress. He informed me the meal plan combo should be 2 hot dogs on a stick. Yesterday, my brother was at the park again and at The Corral they insisted it was only 1. Does the quantity of food served really very THAT much between stands offering the same meal?

2) Why does the All-Day dining receive more food in general then Season long? Now I don't mean the every 90 mins versus 2 meals four hours apart. Example: A pizza stand, forget the name, said the all day plan gets 2 slices of pizza in their meal plan while season dining gets 1. To me that should be the opposite.

It's almost like Point is trying to discourage the purchase of season long dining, which in the long term is probably better for the park, individuals buying all day over season. But it's almost like they are trampling customer service for their season pass base at the expense of single day visitors. I do understand that the single day visitors make up for about 95% of their yearly attendance. It's a business thing, more money off the single day visitors then pass holders. At this rate though, I may not purchase a plan next season and just revert back to a cooler in my car and eating outside the park.

The odd thing is out of four CF parks I've used dining at this season, Point is the only park that has left me scratching my head about their service, quality and quantity.

I think the people at Dragon's Inn were confused. This is on the CP website:

Corral: Hot Dog-on-a-Stick Combo (hot dog-on-a-stick & choice of chips or fruit cup

Dragon's Inn (entree & choice of fries or fruit cup): chicken fingers, hot dog-on-a-stick, (6) cheesesticks or hot dog

As you can see, you are only supposed to get one hot dog-on-a-stick at either location with the season dining plan. This single meal deal gets you 2 hot dogs-on-a-stick at either location, so they were confused about the plans at Dragon's Inn.

Yeah, the folks at Los Gatos were completely confused as well, which was surprising a week in, considering here are only a few meals they have to commit to memory. After waiting in line for 20 minutes, we ordered the all day dining plan meal: two tacos with chips & salsa. Even after showing the cashier the card with the meals on it, he still rang up the wrong meal, and scanned my wristband. This resulted in us owing ~$10, so there was obviously something wrong. He had rung us up for some meal that would have cost almost $20.

Once a supervisor corrected the issue, she informed us that there was going to be a long wait. You know, in addition to the 20 minutes already spend in line. According to her, they were still backed up around 20 orders, and were putting out about one order per minute. So, she suggested going elsewhere for food, unless we were willing to wait 40 minutes for tacos and chips. It was pretty staggering just how long the folks in the kitchen were taking to assemble food. They're literally just combining already-cooked items. Anyhow...

I asked the supervisor if we'd be able to use our wristband elsewhere, given that the cashier had already scanned ours. She assured us that we would, because she had voided the order. Once we arrived at Pretzel Fillers, the cashier was getting an error saying that we were trying to use it before the allotted 90 minutes was up. Thankfully, once we explained the issue, they took mercy on us, and let us walk away with the food "for free".

One other thing - the pretzel deal we purchased comes with a fruit cup. When we asked the cashier for a fork, he looked at us like we had just asked him for a nuclear warhead. "We don't have utensils here". So, I'm still unsure as to how they expected us to eat our fruit cup (spoiler alert: we never did).

As I said above, I do expect some level of incompetence this early in the season, but this ordeal was pretty amazing, for all the wrong reasons.

Pete said:

There is no catch, but how much can you eat? They give you the option of a meal every 90 minutes but I doubt you will be able to eat that much food. It seems to benefit the park the same as an all you can eat buffet. They know how much the average person can eat and price it accordingly, even though you are allowed to eat more.

It isn't really a matter of how much one person can eat...but rather how much food can be obtained with one wristband. One person probably can't eat a full meal every 90 minutes but they and a family member or friend could "snack" together all day long or even alternate meals and never go hungry. I don't know if many people would do that or not (I probably would if I was a college kid haha) but it just surprises me that they'd have a plan where that would even be a possibility especially considering the price of their food.

djDaemon- we probably crossed paths Saturday morning trying to redeem our All day Meal plan vouchers. We purchased online and planned to eat at Panda Express before the line got long. In the end I had my husband buy a meal at Panda Express and I got the all day band and used it for a hot dog on a stick at Dragons Inn so we didn't have to drag the kids back and forth to all the places!
We enjoy the all day meals- but I feel like we spend the day eating or looking for a place to eat. Friday at the Stockade our grilled chicken sandwich took forever to get and was delicious, Saturday the grilled chicken took forever and was ice cold- I took it back (walked all the way from Happy Friar where our family was) and traded it for a cheeseburger- which was hot and ready.
The Happy Friar kept serving us 9 -10 mini corn dogs (as the menu stated). instead of the 6 on the plan on the website. They were good!

^^^^^Yeah, the season long plan does seem to be lacking compared to the single day deal. I've been tempted to get a season dining plan, but I'd just rather stop at Thirsty Pony, Quaker Steak or Wendy's on the way out. I'd be more likely to get something like a snack plan that offered funnel cakes, pretzels, etc or a drink plan since that's mostly all I get while I'm in the park. And from what I've been reading, it seems like employee training has been poor this year. I think if possible, they should let the returning employees do the guest interaction in the first 2 weeks allowing them to train the new employees in the process before cutting the new employees loose. I know that may not be possible since not all locations may have many returning employees from previous years.

djDaemon said:{

Once there, the cashier informed me (after a few unsuccessful attempts at redeeming my voucher) that they can't redeem dining plan vouchers there, and that I'd have to go to Grist Mill, all the way down by SRF, to get the wristband. I ran back to Panda Express to inform my Wife and the cashier that I'd be back in a while, because I had to run clear down to the other end of Frontier Trail.

So is that the only location where you can redeem the band? Has anyone had any success getting them elsewhere?

No, you can redeem the voucher at Pink's, but only if you're getting your first meal there.

When I was at Grist Mill, I noticed a big round "Redeemable Here" meal plan sign, so I guess you just have to walk around the park until you find one of those signs. Or I suppose you need to be specific when asking at Guest Services, that you want to redeem your voucher without having to buy your first meal.

They could have easily identified redemption locations on the little card they have at Guest Services, but for some reason they didn't. This is the type of oversight I would have expected last year, not this year.

But I really, really want to hear their justification for not just giving you the wristband at Guest Services.

My brother redeemed his voucher at the Dragons Inn and then went to Panda Express for his meal. We also got the all day bands at Corral on Friday.