Gold pass sales.

My son stated that he heard they have sold 300,000 gold passes. That seems very high, although I am worried about crowds etc next year.

I cannot find anything stating sales numbers online. Does anyone know if they have released any figures regarding gold passes, or even past season pass numbers?

I don't think the park ever releases any data regarding the number of passes sold, so unless your son has some affiliation with the park, I'd take it with a grain of salt.

I am not even going to touch this click bait.

Yea. I couldn't find anything, so I assume they dont publish it. I am just concerned about how bad the crowds will be next year. We'll see come May.

In my mind; I bet it will be like all these Halloweekend Saturdays have been this season. The SV will be 4 Hrs, and the Fast lane will be 1 hr waiting or longer. All other Coasters will have Long waits too. The Park will be like a Mad House next year.

Just Coasting said:

I am not even going to touch this click bait.

And yet.. Here you are.

You clicked on it, so you could reply saying that you weren't going to touch it.

From what I've been reading on Facebook, by far the biggest problem CP has had so far with the influx of Gold Passes is parking.

People talk about sitting in traffic for more than an hour, being turned away because all the lots are full, etc.

IMO, the best way for Cedar Point to solve this problem is to do what Disney World does: have a bus system.

Create parking lots off of Route 6 and bus people in from there. Make one of the lanes of the causeway a dedicated bus lane, that way the busses would never sit in traffic. Put nonremovable pylons between that lane and the car lanes so no jerks would try to move into the bus lane.

Of course there would be the expense of creating and maintaining the bus line, but it would drastically cut down the amount of traffic clogging the causeway and the chaussee, and CP could of course charge a nominal fee to ride the bus so they'd still make money. And I bet the lot would still be pretty close to full.

I'm not saying that shuttles are a bad idea, but Cedar Point hasn't really shown much interest in that yet. I was a little surprised to see that don't have a shuttle to/from the Express Hotel.

Same thing with the Ferry people suggest. The tried it from Sandusky several times, they tried it from Castaway Bay. It never really took off. Some people suggest one from Sawmill Creek, but the market doesn't seem to be there. Even with the Jet Express making stops, I've never really seen hordes of people disembarking or a line of people waiting to board.

Perhaps that will change in the future. If Jet Express was a little more regularly scheduled and ran late into the night, I'd probably consider paying some extra bucks to avoid a logjam on the causeway.

The Jet Express already runs pretty late. The ferries go to 11 at night.

As rough as Lake Erie can get on both sides of Cedar Point, that ferry ride can be very interesting for some passengers. Especially after ingesting amusement park food.

I bought one rather than renewing my PP. It's a bargain for me right now.

^^Call it the REAL Ocean Motion.

This issue has been exacerbated by the current Cedar Fair philosophy Sheer unadulterated greed over guest experience. What CP should do (but never will) would be to add a parking fee to the admission costs and just eradicate the tollbooths entirely.

cptedsdisciple2 said:
This issue has been exacerbated by the current Cedar Fair philosophy Sheer unadulterated greed over guest experience. What CP should do (but never will) would be to add a parking fee to the admission costs and just eradicate the tollbooths entirely.

So, you assume every ticket holder is driving by themselves? I’m guessing there are some 12 year olds that would disagree.

Hey, they gotta make money somehow and evidently it’s not going to be through admission. The toll booths create a bottleneck which is creating traffic jams which are affecting city traffic. So 12 year olds don’t drive? A lot of senior citizens do not ride roller coasters either but that doesn’t stop Cedar Fair from shaking them down.

To be honest, it seems like the toll booths should be less of a bottleneck right now than in the past, assuming they are staffed. The percentage of people coming with season passes vs paying cash/credit at the toll booths HAS to be at its highest ever right now. Are the booths themselves really the problem or is it more the lack of direction/confusion after the booths? I remember 15 years ago, they seemed to have a lot more people out there guiding everyone to their spots and now there are a couple, but people kind of ignore them and park wherever they want. This probably leads to the spaces not being maximized, the lot filling sooner, and then the big backups happen.

With a $99 season pass that includes parking, can you really say they're being greedy on parking? I'm not a fan of the strategy with this gold pass (I think it's a good short term money grab, but I am not sure I like the long term repercussions), but I'm not really sure how a cheap pass promo translates to parking greed. Two thirds of people coming through probably aren't paying for parking on the way in anyway as it's "included" with their pass.

The price of parking could be added into a ticket without adding the full $20 to each ticket, maybe more like $4 based on averages of how many people are in most vehicles entering the park but I really don't think the toll booths are the issue on a day like today. They could have just waved every car through and it likely would not have mattered it was just too many cars trying to all go to the same place all at once. Even if every car was perfectly parked with no random spots missed the lot would have still been full before everyone got in and they would have eventually run out of grass and had the remnants of the Sandcastle Suites parking lot full to. No matter how efficient you are, full is full.

They stopped staffing the parking gates in the early evening a few weeks ago. Didn’t matter because those 10 or so lanes all have to go down to 1 to get on perimeter road once the main lots are full. That’s were the bottleneck occurred and causes the whole causeway to get backed up.

if parking is still available in the main lots, traffic and least still flows ok since they can essentially send the 2 lanes coming in the 3 ways they do. Once the main lot is full they would almost be better off limiting the lanes open. Makes little sense to have 2 lanes open to 3, then to 10, only to have it go back down to what is essentially 2 lanes again. (If they stop charging for parking again that is...)

There is plenty of parking over on the beach. Who uses the beach in October? This is easy, Marston Mat has been used the world over since the 1930s and works great. I bet that beach is long enough all the Breakers guests could land their Gulfstreams on it Friday afternoons as well.