All Park Passport

Found via Reddit, the park announced - mistakenly, apparently, since it was removed shortly after being posted; cached page link below - the "All Park Passport" pass add-on, available for the Gold and Prestige passes, which provides access to and benefits at all Cedar Fair parks.

All Park Passport is a premium season pass add-on available for purchase with a 2024 Cedar Point Gold or Prestige pass. Instead of purchasing a separate pass product, this add-on now grants you access to all parks in the Cedar Fair family with either a Gold or Prestige pass. Not only that, but your Gold and Prestige benefits are also valid at other parks as well. The All Park Passport is $100 with the purchase of a 2024 Gold Pass and $125 with the purchase of a 2024 Prestige Pass.

So, the Platinum Pass is no more, and this simplifies their pass strategy. Basic park access with Gold, park access plus premium features with Prestige, and you can extend those to the chain with this add-on.

EDIT - Had difficulty posting a webcache link for whatever reason.

https://webcache.googleuser...k-passport

The pass options are getting bloated, not sure this helps much.

The reddit comments cover my concerns pretty well. How will it effect early entry, meal plan and fastlane addons, and prices. If the point is to simplify, why different passport prices.

"I'm sure that there will be some uncomfortable biproducts that result in higher prices or an important benefit lost."

I think it does help because it actually eliminates the mid-tier (platinum) and just simplifies things. I think there was a lot of confusion with the prestige because it was technically a higher tier than platinum but couldn't be used at all parks. Now there's only two tiers and "all-parks" is simply an add-on. Makes sense to me.

The most interesting thing about this to me is that gold passholders don’t get early entry to the park. So the only way to get early entry rides is to buy a prestige pass or stay on-property.

I know that this year's rides weren’t exactly worth it for early entry for many people, but you would assume next year that TTD 2.0 will be on the list for next year's early entry. People are going to want that privilege.

I wonder how many platinum passholders will bite the bullet for prestige just for early entry.

Hudson:

How will it effect early entry, meal plan and fastlane addons,

Based on this part of the archived announcement sounds like those add ons carry over to other parks with the Passport:

^^In my opinion, that's absolutely the correct thing to do. Put value in staying onsite at the resorts, or require a top-tier pass to get those benefits.

^ I agree. I will say I haven't used the early entry in benefit in years. For some reason, I don't like being at the park right when it's opening; I'd much rather enter into an established setting. That, and it always seems crowded enough.

Idk why they keep making their pass system overly complicated, literally they should just follow Ikon/Epic for the pass structure.

For years now many of us have felt the park (and others in the chain) are undervaluing themselves by quite a bit. Hopefully this helps to balance that out. Sort of do the discount airline method. The Gold Pass is now the bare bones option. It gets you into the park (and possibly not even on all days) and that's it. If you want some perks it is going to cost.

And then in 2025, parking won't be included in the Gold pass, and you'll have to buy the "Parking Plus Prestige" add-on...

Beanie :

Idk why they keep making their pass system overly complicated

I don't see how this move makes the pass lineup more complicated. Don't they currently have Summer, Gold, Platinum, Prestige, and Prestige+? Each of which provides a different level of access and perks? And at least one of which provides admission to other CF parks? But there's also one pass that extends your "home park" benefits to other parks in the chain?

Now it seems they've replaced all that noise with two passes: Gold and Prestige. The former is a basic all season park access pass, the latter is an upgraded version that includes benefits, such as early entry, etc. And then if you want you can extend your pass of choice to the entire chain. I don't understand how this is more complicated.

^ I would assume they keep the Summer Pass too. It’s super popular with high school and college students who don’t need/want water park or Halloweekends access.

Even with three passes, it seems more straightforward to me. It's "good, better, best" with the option to extend two of them to the chain. I get that at the end of the day it's still 5 pass combinations, but this just seems more straightforward than the Prestige Plus Worldwide AAA Diamond Medallion VIP naming conventions they were using.

Like others have noted, it's a big step in the right direction to limit Early Entry to the resorts and highest-tier pass. In recent years the lack of exclusivity was a factor in our family choosing other ways to spend our entertainment dollars.

Correct me if I’m wrong. But isn’t this system essentially just the old Gold/Platinum system with an extra step? Didn’t the gold pass before the days of the $99 fall sale not include ERT? Platinum used to be the only ERT. They are essentially going back to that system with new names for the Platinum and giving Gold the option to add park hopping.

More or less, yes, which is why I am dumbfounded at all the hand-wringing about how confusing this supposedly is. Unless I'm missing something, this is a simplification.

djDaemon:

Prestige Plus Worldwide AAA Diamond Medallion VIP

Playing around with numbers as if they were to condense it down to one pass with addons.
115 Pass
20 Halloweekends
25 Shores
100 All park passport
52 Early entry
52 Vip areas
52 Premium parking
52 1 Fastlane/day
950 Fastlane wristband
115 Dining plan
35 Drink plan
67 Funpix

I could be wrong, but I believe that ever since Gold Pass was introduced, it always included ERT in some form. I know that at some point they reduced it from the full hour to 30 minutes, and also only made certain rides available. That was the biggest gripe for Platinum holders at the time, who saw a $99 pass with 90% of the benefits of their platinum pass. It's really going back to the old "Season Pass" / Platinum set-up, which is what I think SpeedDemon was really talking about.

^ Yep that’s what I was thinking of!

Dvo:

It's really going back to the old "Season Pass" / Platinum set-up, which is what I think SpeedDemon was really talking about.

Agreed, which is why I find all the "this is so confusing" discourse so completely bizarre. They've reduced the number of passes and made it more clear how to get access to other CF parks.