Cedar Point Dining Plan

Will do! I'll give an update later tonight haha

Pretty sure that for the season long plan, it's always been two meals with 4 hours in between. If you get the daily, it's just 90 minutes in between so you can use it 5-6 times if you want. Actually I take that back... I think the first year, the waiting period was something less (90 minutes or 2 hours) and then they changed to the 4 hours.

Interesting that this thread started with Six Flags doing season long meal plans and now I'm pretty sure they've done away with the season long meal plans after some well publicized instances of people "abusing" them. I do see they offer a four meal plan to add to a pass for $40 which isn't a terrible deal if you like the food enough.

It may have always been only 2 per day, but that's more prominently shown on the webpage now than it was in the past. It could have been buried in the fine print before. If some employees were more generous with the overrides, and some supervisors had to start cracking down on it, that could explain the inconsistency.

I hope the meal plan provides enough income for the park to continue or improve it, but aside from adding the new restaurants, it does seem like it may not.

UPDATE: Was denied 3rd meal again today. This is the first year we've been aware of this rule and it being enforced. Kings Island didn't enforce it earlier this week when we were there and neither did Canada's Wonderland when we went last weekend

I hope you checked before you had them serve you food that would then be thrown away when you got to the register.

MrJohnJLewis, I hope you did the right thing and paid for it instead.
In my years of having the dining plan I was always aware that it was good only twice a day. And I never once thought to see how many meals I could cheat the park out of otherwise. To be honest, I dropped the dining plan because seldom did I feel like I could squeeze even two full meals into a visit.
I hope this obsession with how you used to get over and why it’s suddenly not working now is done. And it’s clear you don’t care what others think, but seriously, it’s not a good look, sir. Waste is abhorrent, and is right up there with scamming over and over just to see if one get away with it.

I was curious and went on a hunt through the web archive to see what was listed.

I've learned two things.

1. As far back as 2015 (this was a very brief search) they mentioned lunch and dinner on the pass add-on.
2. Sometime between 2010 and 2015 the moved to accesso from order form and added those pass options online.

It's interesting to look back at the old website and details!

For anyone else interested here is the link to Aug 20 2012 (closest date I could get to an exact decade ago) https://web.archive.org/web/20120820000109/https://www.cedarpoint.com/

There's even a John Deere slide in the footer!

I wrote a little web app for myself to keep track of what time I used my 1st meal because I got tired of asking the cashiers to check if it was ready yet. I only use it on weekends anymore though.

I stopped trying to get 3 meals after they told me I couldn't (honestly didn't realize it was an issue before that), then I cut back even more around the time they did the 'scan codes around the park to win fast lane tickets' promotion. Realized planning my visit around stuff like that and trying to squeeze 2 meals in was not fun.

The meal plan's still a good deal for me even if I do 1 a day and I can eat when I want. and I don't have to stay 4 hours if I don't want to.

MrJohnJLewis said:

UPDATE: Was denied 3rd meal again today.

The fact that you even tried is pretty telling.

Speaking of dining plans.... I had a question about the season-long drink plans. I've been a gold passholder at Cedar Point for the past few years and this year I added season long drinks. However, I just upgraded for 2023 to a Carowinds Platinum pass. (We are planning on hitting multiple parks next summer and Carowinds had the "free 2022 fast lane with purchase of a 2023 Platinum pass" deal - So we are heading there in a few weeks. It is actually the closest Cedar Fair park to me, but I've never been.)

I noticed there was no distinction between Gold and Platinum drink passes... Are they park specific, or can you use them at all CF parks if you have a Platinum pass?

PP drink plan can be used at all Cedar Fair parks.

RCMAC said:

I hope this obsession with how you used to get over and why it’s suddenly not working now is done. And it’s clear you don’t care what others think, but seriously, it’s not a good look, sir. Waste is abhorrent, and is right up there with scamming over and over just to see if one get away with it.

Seems a bit strong of a reaction to this. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he just became aware of the limitation on Saturday and then it was declared an apparent obsession the next day and the pitchforks were brought out. I'm not sure how you got to "it clear you don't care what others think" based on the couple of posts on this.

Did I miss a bunch of posts concerning this?

Well, I'm not sure that his "ignorance" in the matter is actually genuine. I mean, it's pretty apparent that it's supposed to be two meals per day on all the literature. However, even if we were to give him the benefit of the doubt:

"MrJohnJLewis said:

Not because we were hungry, but just because we could."

So, they decided to get food "just because they can" even if they're not hungry. Why? I mean, to each his own but this seems wasteful. Are they getting the food just to throw it away?

However, after learning and admitting that it includes only two meals he tried again. At this point, it went from "innocent ignorance" to petty theft and/or "scamming" as RC points out. I know I'm rare breed though. I remember telling a story to some people about going back into a Sam's Club because I forgot to pay for the beer under my cart and getting made fun of by everyone. To me, there's right and there's wrong. No matter how big or small.

Yeah, it's one thing to take advantage of a situation where there's a policy that the park has elected not to enforce, and quite another to try and get away with it after it's become clear they're attempting to enforce the policy. Theft is theft as far as I'm concerned.

What's especially awful is that upon not being allowed to get their third meal, they abandoned the food instead of paying for it when they first encountered the issue:

After being confused, I left without my third meal of the day...

I sure as hell hope when they tried to steal food the second time they at least had the decency to pay for it instead of abandoning it.

So, let me get this straight. You can buy a dining plan to add to a season pass. When you buy food, you have your pass scanned to activate this benefit. However, the system does not validate the rule of only 2 meals per day and relies on a cashier to enforce this? And apparently it has been like this for years at all parks in the chain?

Seems like they have all the data within the system to enforce the rule. I mean they certainly are tracking how and where season passes are being used. Things like this and the underwhelming pass perks and mobile app make me question how much Cedar Fair is investing in their technology updates.

I generally dislike the dining plan as a whole. I know of several people/families that have the dining plan and absolutely maximize its usage whether they are hungry or not just to "get their money's worth". I don't think that is uncommon behavior.

From what I've witnessed, the system will flag if there was more than 2 meals used or the 4 hour window is not over yet. Then here is an override command which the cashier can use. I'd say the simple solution would be to remove the override command except for say if someone is within 30 min of their 4 hour window. But perhaps the override is there to deal with Karen's/ Johns as the park would rather not deal with argument and delays caused by these 1 off people.

Definitely some pearl clutching going on here. As I originally stated: we did not know there was a 2 meal limit per day. For years. We are from NY and only go for about 3 days a year. So yes to make sure we get our money's worth, we wanted to maximize the meals we could get. That's why we set 4 hour timers on our phone as a reminder that when we got off of whatever ride we were on, that we could go eat. We were only aware of the 4 hour rule, and not the 2 meal limit. After being told about the rule, initially I was confused and angry, but I looked back and it has definitely been a rule for as long as we have been getting dining plans. So that is 100% my bad. But nobody has enforced the rule until this visit. Even when at other parks, it has never been enforced.

I wasn't sure if it was suddenly being enforced because management wanted to stop it, or because they were training a new cashier. So when we tried again the next night, I went to get my third meal while my wife and child waited outside and when it was denied, I used my wife's unused 2nd meal. There was no waste. We don't get meals and then just immediately throw them out. I am not stealing anything. I only tried the get a third meal again because I was trying to figure out why it was being enforced this trip. For research.

I appreciate you Shades for being rational and actually understanding what I'm saying before everyone put their Karen wigs on.

Pro tip: If you only visit 3 times per year, then you're best bang for the buck is to just buy the all-day dining each day instead of all-season. Assuming that you had a Gold pass with all-season meals and even at the lowest price, you're looking at $109 each so you spent $218. If you bought all-day dining instead each of the three days, the total amount paid would've been $191.94.

Not only do you spend less, but you can get a meal every 90 minutes instead of four hours and there is not a daily limit. So no need to plan your day around 4 hour intervals to try and maximize the value. Makes for a day with less planning and more food to boot. Just an FYI.

That is a valid point. I guess the main reason why I've been getting all season was just in case we spontaneously wanted to stay an extra night, or maybe go for Halloweekends. This year we got Platinum Passes because we had a Canada's Wonderland trip planned with my parents, sister and her two kids. And we wanted to revisit Kings Island. We went in 2019, but didn't get to ride Diamondback due to the rain and they've built Orion since; so we wanted to go get the credits. So we definitely made out good this season

I don't see how it's pearl clutching or whatever to call out the fact that you abandoned a meal instead of paying for it when you first encountered the limitation. Glad to hear the second meal wasn't abandoned though.

But yeah, the all season dining plan really only makes sense if you're a local who spends many days in the park each season. Otherwise the all day dining plan is the way to go, which is what we do, and we've never had to get more than one plan per day. A meal every 90-ish minutes is more than enough to keep the four of us satiated throughout the day. We have struggled to keep track of when our next meal is available, which led to us going too early once, but we just paid for it instead of leaving it behind.