HalloWeekends Fast Lane

I was researching Fast Lane HalloWeekend prices. Currently they are not available.

Is this something new this year or they just haven't set prices yet?

There has always been Fast Lane but I never noticed when the cost was posted.

Anybody familiar if in past years they got posted later?

It’s dynamic. Perhaps it’s yet to be determined.

Expect Halloweekend Saturdays to be the most expensive Fastlane of the season. I believe it hit the $200 mark last year.

New this year there will be a priest giving communion and blessings to anyone entering the park on Halloweekends Saturdays

While I'm sure it was in jest, that would actually be a great addition for every day at Halloweekends.

It's been a while since I've been to a Halloweekends and actually gotten to go into the haunts (pre-covid going with younger family will do that), so I've not been privy to how busy the haunted houses themselves get... Would it be reasonable to offer a cheaper fastpass just for the haunted houses or have they been manageable versus the rides themselves?

The last time I was there, there were two separate products.

Fast Lane/Fast Lane Plus, and Fright Lane, which provides shorter waits for the haunted houses, but could only be used once per house.

^^HalloWeekends is expanding to Thursday nights this season, so a lot of this may change, but in previous years, the haunted house lines tended to be most manageable on Sundays. If I had to pin a number on it, the longest haunt line you'd encounter is usually around 30 minutes on Sundays. Friday night lines were quite a bit busier (maximum line is about 45-60min), and I've never even once thought about going to HW on a Saturday, but I've heard that a 60-90min+ wait is common for the haunts on Saturdays. Even then, the line lengths vary between the houses due to location and visibility. Fearground Freakshow in Frontier Town always has the longest line because it's right out in the open, whereas Deprivation's line tends to be one of the shortest because its entrance is tucked back behind Steel Vengeance. (Plus, with three pathways Deprivation is essentially three attractions in one, boosting capacity, but I digress.) Ultimately, I would say that Fright Lane is helpful if you want to knock everything out in a single day (especially Friday nights and Saturdays), but you are likely able to do them all on a Sunday, so it is likely not needed on a Sunday. Like I said, I do not know how crowds will translate to the new Thursday nights, but I would expect that Fridays will become very busy, now that they have been expanded to a full day. (Probably not to Saturday crowd levels, but definitely up there.)

Thursday nights are not new, they did Thursday nights last year. So far, crowds are much lower on Thursdays.

And Friday nights last year were the same busy they have been for about ten years. But Thursday nights and Friday afternoons were like the Friday nights of old.

Whoops, totally forgot that happened last year. My bad!

The Thursday nights last year were only in October. This year it's the whole event.

Unless I've just missed where they've released it (which would be a marketing fail), it does seem pretty lazy for Cedar Point to have no info released on houses or scare zones less than a month before this event begins. (And this is Cedar Fair wide, of course, as King's Island suffers from the same.)

A quick search seems to indicate that they typically announce HW stuff later in August or early September.

Regardless, it's pretty ridiculous to say they're lazy simply because they're not releasing information when you personally want them to.

djDaemon said:

A quick search seems to indicate that they typically announce HW stuff later in August or early September.

Regardless, it's pretty ridiculous to say they're lazy simply because they're not releasing information when you personally want them to.

It's poor planning if you can't clarify your event a month out. People need to make travel plans (or decide not to make them.)

Believe me, I think the crap Cedar Point gets for the Boardwalk not being 1,000,000% what people envisioned, or not adding a 500-foot rollercoaster to the lineup, is tiresome and frustrating.

Expecting a corporation to detail an event with more than a few weeks' notice is far from ridiculous.

Is the theme of any given scare zone or haunted house critical to whether or not you visit during HW? If so, you are probably among the 3 or 4 people for whom that's true.

HW will happen, there will be haunted houses, scare zones, and decorations. And the park will be absolutely packed regardless of whether or not their PR schedule is to your liking.

They are also likely still seeing how their hiring forecast is panning out before they over or under promise on what attractions they think will have open on any given day. Pretty tough to nail that since the hiring is always ongoing. They always seem to do a great job of delivering what is promised once the schedules are out. I'd rather have them wait a few weeks to get about the right idea then plan something 3 months out and find out there are a bunch of attractions closed.

djDaemon said:

Is the theme of any given scare zone or haunted house critical to whether or not you visit during HW? If so, you are probably among the 3 or 4 people for whom that's true.

HW will happen, there will be haunted houses, scare zones, and decorations. And the park will be absolutely packed regardless of whether or not their PR schedule is to your liking.

They're critical to me deciding if I visit both King's Island HW and Cedar Point HW in the same limited time in Ohio, yes.

It's also just basic marketing? The defense of everything on here can be so weird...

^The park doesn't really market the individual houses; it mostly just markets the event itself. And the attendance numbers, despite virtually no changes year-to-year from a haunted house lineup, justify them putting little effort into it. To Brandon's point, your opinion is assuredly the very, very strong minority. So if they miss a few attendees because their house lineup wasn't available sooner, that won't really affect the bottom line.