Early Entry

Looks like the park has recently granted full early entry to Gold Pass holders, leaving only one real benefit to having a platinum pass.

The race to the bottom continues.

Yep, and it's amazing how many people I've seen on facebook calling platinum passholders "Karens" for being upset about it. I rarely use early entry because I'm not a morning person but if the only benefit I get for the extra $100 is that maybe if I make it to Kings Island it will be free not so sure platinum will be worth it for us if they don't raise the price of the gold. If that's the way it's going to be maybe I'll just start getting gold and if I can make the trip I'll upgrade the week before we leave or something.

When they first announced the 9:30 early entry for Gold Passes my first thought was, "well, that's not going to be logistically fun to control". I wonder if the change is at least somewhat staffing-related. With a lean staff, the more streamlined and simple procedures are, the better.

We were platinum pass holders for years, mainly because we like to hit up other parks in the chain during the summer. The Gold Pass deal was just too cheap to pass up.

You know what turned out to be even cheaper? My hesitant decision to renew our 2020 Platinums + add-ones through Canada’s Wonderland back in late 2019. I have about 3 payments to make on them that are still deferred.

Kevinj said:

When they first announced the 9:30 early entry for Gold Passes my first thought was, "well, that's not going to be logistically fun to control". I wonder if the change is at least somewhat staffing-related. With a lean staff, the more streamlined and simple procedures are, the better.

We were platinum pass holders for years, mainly because we like to hit up other parks in the chain during the summer. The Gold Pass deal was just too cheap to pass up.

My thought was maybe there weren’t enough Platinum Pass holders using early entry to justify the additional staff needed, so they just opened the flood gates.

Interesting theory. Well, this ought to fix it if that's the problem. Of course now this will feel even less like a perk. And if you are a resort guest dropping hundreds of dollars on a pricey stay, you may be wondering why "exclusive " entry doesn't feel so exclusive anymore. But the more, the merrier, right?

We stayed at the Breakers with our Gold Passes, it was a hassle to have our pass and find our confirmation number to prove it since they couldn’t just scan the pass once we got in the gate. Had to show both to get on Millennium, too.

Gplez90 said:

My thought was maybe there weren’t enough Platinum Pass holders using early entry to justify the additional staff needed, so they just opened the flood gates.

That might make sense if they had anything in the park capable of generating revenue open during early entry, but it's pretty much just rides. None of the photo booths, food, drink, merch is open so the staffing for those rides is sunk nomatter how many people are in there.

Kevinj said:

When they first announced the 9:30 early entry for Gold Passes my first thought was, "well, that's not going to be logistically fun to control". I wonder if the change is at least somewhat staffing-related. With a lean staff, the more streamlined and simple procedures are, the better.

I thought the same as well initially since there is no longer a barricade, and that takes a decent amount of staff to run. However they now let everyone have the full run of the park, even those on a regular day ticket. At rides they were checking for passes or resort slips, and day tickets had to line up outside the queue. Not sure why they couldn’t turn away gold passes before 9:30 or on certain rides in the same fashion.

Also it appears the resort gate restriction is lifted as there were some locals in line. Saturday the resort gate line was to the beach in front of breakers west at 9:15. (Not sure if that’s normal, but seemed excessive) Monday we got of Maverick at 9:20 at the switchbacks outside the Queue house were already filling up. Not super exclusive.

Wait.

They are letting everyone in the entire park at 9:00?

If you can't tell, we haven't been to the park yet.

Wow, this is a shocking move, and quite frankly I fail to see the logic behind it on two fronts. Not only would it be a trivial matter to hold off Gold Passholders until 9:30 (either at the gate or at the rides themselves), but I thought this season's initial setup of limiting Gold Entry to the front half of the park was quite effective. Not only did it limit the Gold crowds to the B&M capacity powerhouses (Raptor/Valravn/GateKeeper), but it also prevented the back half's lower-capacity rides from getting swamped by those crowds and devaluing the Resort/Platinum guest experience. Not a good move to alienate those who pay more in the belief that they are getting more exclusive access, especially the resort guests. After all, if early entry is no longer much of a benefit for resort guests, paying the extra money for a CP resort vs. a non-CP resort becomes more difficult to justify.

The website page for early entry, as well as the blog post announcing it have both been revised. The blog post indicates it was updated on 25 May.

Indeed, on the pass benefits comparison page, the only difference between Gold and Platinum is FLP for FL price and admission to all CF parks.

So not only are they giving away the gate, they're devaluing the resorts. Completely baffling, to me anyway.

Wow...
One more reason to hate the GP

^ That's great!

djDaemon said:

...So not only are they giving away the gate, they're devaluing the resorts. Completely baffling, to me anyway.

Yeah that's definitely puzzling. It's one thing to devalue the Platinum passes which isn't a huge deal. But the resorts, yeah that really doesn't make sense.

There is one case where I think devaluing the resorts makes a little bit of sense, and it would be very unique to this year if so. If their resort bookings are not what they have expected for this season, but the number of gold pass holders they are seeing come in for day trips is up, leaning towards the favor of gold pass holders instead of resort guests, I can see them wanting to make the gold pass more incentivized to get more of them in the park. This theory only applies if their resort revenue is already below what's expected.

That only makes sense to me if they had a low attendance problem, but they are limiting attendance.

TwistedCircuits said:

If their resort bookings are not what they have expected for this season...

There does not appear to be any availability at Breakers through mid-July.

My first thought was that perhaps that's due to limited capacity, but I glanced at the webcam last weekend and was a bit surprised to see the Breakers lots full, which is somewhat rare this early in the season. So they don't appear to be capping capacity at Breakers, nor does there seem to be a demand problem.