Gold Pass - Justification

I've never been to Worlds of Fun, but I suspect that if I were to run in, ride "the coasters" in an hour, and then leave, I probably wouldn't get a good feel for the park as a whole. And I'm not sure why you think water cups are the real burning platform for 2020, but I suspect they'll be able to manage their cup inventory....

What are these tiers? How many tiers are there? If there are only two tiers I’d put WoF there. If there’s nine tiers I’d put it toward the top.

https://www.kshb.com/news/crime/police-break-up-massive-brawl-at-world-of-fun

Yeah! Seems like a great place.

I believe the determining factor in the tiers is number of coasters according to the post which means I believe Magic Kingdom is in that same tier

I just find it so interesting that the same people who have been complaining about the bad signs of the "attendance down, revenue and per-caps up" that FUN has reported for so many years suddenly thinks that when they pull a stunt that may reverse that trend it's a bad idea. Basically FUN can do no right here.

The Gold Pass has been available for years at most of the other parks in the chain; certainly at all of the former Paramount parks. I honestly don't understand why there should be any difference between the Gold Pass and the Platinum Pass in terms of early entry; traditionally at Kings Island the Gold Pass is the promotional pass sold in the fall and in the pre-season, and it has all of the benefits of the Platinum Pass EXCEPT access to the other parks. The "normal" pass that goes on sale after the season starts is more expensive, lacks these special benefits, and expires after Labor Day.

It's no secret that FUN's attendance has been soft lately. So soft, in fact, that they've run dramatic ticketing promotions at Cedar Point in an effort to reverse what starts to look like a trend. This year they have a very special promotional opportunity, they need to get bodies into the parks, and essentially they crafted a perfect storm to make it happen with the Gold Pass. They have pretty much told us that the $99 price point is a stunt, that it won't last forever, and it probably won't be back next year (though the Gold Pass is probably here to stay). They are doing what most of the major parks in the industry are doing at this time of year: they are selling season passes instead of deeply discounting daily admission. We have no idea how that is going to drive admissions next season. Yes, lots of Gold Passes have been sold. But how many of those have been sold to people who previously bought Platinum Passes for the waterpark and parking access and never went to any other FUN parks? How many of those were sold to entire families who would previously buy a single Platinum Pass and a standard Season Pass for everybody else? And how many of those passes were sold to single-day customers who will now buy a Gold Pass every two years instead of buying day tickets every year?
Personally, I don't think this is the end of the world, but I think Cedar Point was not very smart about their bonus perks for renewals and new passes. If they must hand out free FastLane+ vouchers, they really should have made them valid through, say, mid June of next season. Likewise any Bring-A-Friend tickets should be good through the slow part of the 2020 season, rather than dumping all those comp tickets on the busiest part of the 2019 season.
Apart from that, it looks like their objective here is to juice the attendance numbers for the 2020 season, in a way that previous promotions and major new ride installations have failed to pay off. If they can manage the capacity next year, keep the traffic moving, keep the ride lines moving, and keep the food joints open, they may be able to reverse some of the long term damage they've done in previous years. And then they'll be able to sell pre-season Gold Passes for $151 instead of $99.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

In the grand scheme of everything aren't they going for the out of park spending? As much as it upsets people who drive to and from each day. Are they a destination or a day trip? If they can drive up their resorts, which are expanding, by giving up the gate for a year. In my opinion, they would create a new market for their resorts. With the economics of the last 10 years who's to say they don't need to replenish or grow their resort base.

Not gonna lie. I bought fast lane plus for fast line price the last 2 times I went of a Saturday during Halloweekends. Also stayed at the resort. Only way to do it. I'd rather go in the spring.

CED23 said:In summary with a wide array of experiences WOF is a "lower tier" park and is bottom 3 in the Cedar Fair Chain,

So Worlds of Fun is in the bottom three of Cedar Fair's holdings -- in your opinion. That's fine. Everyone has an opinion; don't get me started on Chik-Fil-A. :-)

It seemed to me you were presenting its status as a third tier park as common knowledge. I know people who consider WOF to be the best park in the chain aside from CP.

noggin said:

CED23 said:In summary with a wide array of experiences WOF is a "lower tier" park and is bottom 3 in the Cedar Fair Chain,

So Worlds of Fun is in the bottom three of Cedar Fair's holdings -- in your opinion. That's fine. Everyone has an opinion; don't get me started on Chik-Fil-A. :-)

It seemed to me you were presenting its status as a third tier park as common knowledge. I know people who consider WOF to be the best park in the chain aside from CP.

WOFis a bottom tier park..period end of sentence...not in question if you have been to many parks. Nobody in their right mind other than a delusional WOF local fanboy thinks it's the 2nd best park in the chain.

Also, the impact of attendance may not be all that significant at the end of the day. Let's say they see a marginal bump of 3% on the average day. On a busy day with 30,000 in the park that's an increase of 900 guests. I wouldn't even think an extra 900 guests would be that noticeable as you go about your day.

Based on roughly 150 operating days, if the park hits 3.1 mil guests that's an average of about 20,700 guests per day. Again a 3% increase on the daily average attendance would be an extra 620 +/- guests in the park daily.

Being there with 20,700 guests in the park or 21,300 guests in the park there shouldn't really be a noticeable change.

Even a more generous 5% average bump would be an extra 1,040 guests on average.

In the end, no one knows for sure what the exact 2020 attendance could be. The weather could be s**t and gas prices could explode and the park could actually have a down year. Or there could be a perfect storm and attendance could see a more substantial increase.

(All my numbers were rounded for easy math)

That's not remotely how things work..ie..all operating days are created equal and 3.1M attendance would mean a 20% drop. ...Lol.

I was hoping that the when the rumors of Six Flags trying to acquire Cedar Fair, that Six Flags was actually going after the bottom tier parks like Worlds Of Fun, Valleyfair, Michigan's Adventure and Dorney Park.

Don't get me wrong, I truly enjoy parks like Dorney, but lets face it Cedar Fair doesn't put tons of money into these parks and could use some investment of new coasters.

Six Flags would at least put a star flyer or some other flat in there every year.

RideMan said:

I just find it so interesting that the same people who have been complaining about the bad signs of the "attendance down, revenue and per-caps up" that FUN has reported for so many years suddenly thinks that when they pull a stunt that may reverse that trend it's a bad idea. Basically FUN can do no right here.

Actually, a bad sign & worrying would be increased attendance, low revenue growth, and low per caps. That's what Six Flags just reported in Q3. The stock went from 12% within minutes and keeps falling..now at just over $41. Wall Street wants the per caps and revenue to keep increasing, they will essentially ignore stale attendance if you're producing the former. Lack of organic growth is what worries them & that's SF, Cedar Fair is producing organic growth & growing revenue & per caps. The thru Labor Day numbers show that which are essentially a preview of Q3 as it's 2/3rd thru the quarter & after labor dayis weekend operations besides Knotts.

To the rest of your post:

Offering the Gold Pass is not the problem, it's the $99 cost point, Kings Island is not Cedar Point, their early entry has few Platinum holders. KI is a locals park, CP is a destination park hence the resort/hotel, which KI doesn't have despite more than enough land. The Gold should not have the same early entry time not only b/c of Platinum, but that hour is a huge selling point for staying at CP properties. The Gold even having 930 early entry devalues the Platinum and CP properties guests benefits.

CP has not been running dramatic promotions. Their bignew promo in 2019 was wildcard which was only thru June. It made sense b/c May is normally very light during weekday daily operations (from all reports & the first 2 to 3 weeks of June light b/c schools are still in. I make one of my 2 week log trips before schools get out in June every year The wild card increased attendance in June. But the wildcard was $60 and did not include parking. so every usage CP got another $20(online prepay) from parking, more if at the gate.

Don't necessarily bank on the price going away from $99, at first they said it was only thru Oct 27th now it's Jan 5th The Gold Pass will stay in some form but the price should have been at what regular passes used to be. CP said, come Jan thee will be a regular pass offered which will be more than the $99 Gold. Like before, I could see them extending Gold more.

If former 1 platinum and rest of family regular go to all Gold that means CP cannibalized itself..Platinums are $191 and regular were $137(fall sale prices in 2018). Now they are just getting $99 for all family members.

Fastlane vouchers in the fall makes sense to create urgency, also it's when they are needed though not able to be used on saturday's.during haunt.

If peopleare buying $99 Gold b/c it's $99,which is the consensus from every article quote from buyers, you're not going to be able to sell them for $151, as you said in 2021. Under pricing severely limits you're pricing pricing power unless you don't mind losing a significant portion of the buyers. Gold Pass should have been priced at the old regular pass price if parking was included & that was still a good deal. If they were going to do $99 it should not have included parking, Gold passes at Knotts & Wonderland don't include parking.

The level of ridiculousness of the $99 Gold pass. Several parks had their preseason best price expire on Oct 31st. For example, WOF just raised their Gold pass to $115 from $105 while Cedar Point's extends $99 for 2 more months.

Holy hell where the hell did this guy come from?

Exhausting, isn’t it?

Incredibly so.

In all actuality the Platinum Pass holders that renewed go screwed over. The Platinum Pass should have been lowered just like the Golden Pass.

For some reason I feel like I need to be "Made Whole" by Cedar Point for getting less exclusive ride time than previously and because Cedar Point didn't give me the bonus discount that they gave to Golden Pass customers.

This is just too screwed up, I wonder how many people went from a Platinum Pass to a Golden Pass?

...okay, I think I'm done with this thread.

May I suggest reading the Twitter comments from Tony’s post about long lines at Gemini.
There’s plenty of gold pass talk there too.
It got more comments in the first 7 hours when I read it than any other post he had.

Exactly, that just shows how upset people are with the Golden Pass and how Cedar Point needs to get back to actually running all rides at full capacity like I stated when I started this topic.

Just Coasting said:

Since the park has decided to cross the line and discount the joint, this then justifies them returning to full train ops on many of the rides that they reduced.

Gemini needs to get back to a 6 train ops so it can hit 4,000 riders per hour as designed.

Corkscrew needs to get back to 3 train ops and return the white train to its former glory.

Cedar Creek Mine Ride needs to go back to the 5 train ops as in the 1970's and unload as you enter the station as it did in the past.

Iron Dragon needs to get back to 3 train ops.

Blue Streak needs to go back to the original days, unload where they currently load and then load at the front of the station where the transfer table is.

Open all 4 Power Tower launching towers, not 2 or 3.

All the cars need to be operating on Antique Cars and Cadillac Cars at all times.

Oh yes, the slight changes over the years to reduce capacity now needs to be reinstated for the sake of guests being able to ride rides.

Hour wait for Blue Streak and Cedar Creek Mine Ride is an absolute joke.

Enjoy the ride for 2020 you all~~~~~~~~~~

Lets face it, operating Steel Vengeance, the newborn child of the park at a capacity of 600 to 800 people per hour is atrocious and a complete joke. This ride was touted to cycle through 1,200 riders per hour. I guarantee you that not once in the 2 years it has operated has it ever had 1,200 riders per hour let alone 1,000 riders per hour.

Yet, nothing has been done about. Parking nightmare, nothing was done about it. Horrible staffing, nothing has been done about it. Rides running at under capacity, again nothing has been done about it.

As for Early Entry, I was at early entry 25 times this season and only once did "Steel Vengeance" have the line open at 9:00 A.M. Every other time you had to wait an extra 15 minutes plus because they were not through with getting the ride ready for the day.

I don't want to hear about this horse crap saying that they needed to work on putting more supports on the ride etc......

Hey here is an idea, have those people start an hour earlier and the problem would take care of itself.