How Cedar Point Covertly Doubled Their Admission Price (And How Apple Stole a Page Out of Their Playbook)

Jeff said:
I'm sure some people do, but as a percentage, it's likely small. So with that realization, Fastlaners are in front of you whether they are in FL or the next person in front of you in standby. You cant even argue that a longer composite line is a deterrent, because the posted wait will be the same in either situation.

Are these real percentages for Cedar Fair as a whole or solely Cedar Point lines? I need links to these percentages or it isn’t true. ERROR #6 for not providing ;)

Cedar Point Admission: $73

Fast Lane Plus Pass: $120

The expression on Zoug's face as smiling Fast Lane users pass him by: Priceless!

"This gives you the normal wait times you'd have expected 5-10 years ago. This is the new "typical day at the park"."

This statement is flat out wrong. I personally never waited in longer lines than I did in 2004, my first trip to the point, when I waited over 2 hours for Mantis and Raptor. I think, if anything, the additional coasters make up for any additional lines Fast Lane might have caused.

^exactly

ABSOLUTELY AGREE. Lines are consistently shorter in the last few years with multiple new major attractions, plus generally better availability of TTD and Maverick than their first few seasons. Stuff like GateKeeper, Raptor, Gemini, Skyhawk, Power Tower, Blue Streak, Millennium, Magnum and Rougarou are usually short waits on all but the busiest late season saturdays. With the park adding to the beach scene and emphasis on the waterpark plus all the new attractions... It's a great time to ride. (Also I'm betting some of the fast lane revenue helped to justify and support the massive investment of the last 6 seasons)

Kids today don't remember when the park "only" had a dozen coasters. I remember in the late 90's, Magnum and Raptor waits were consistently an hour or more most of the year. Millennium Force was always a 2-hour commitment its first few years. The park has added at least 6,000 people per hour of capacity since that time.

Devil’s advocate, but here we go...

“For those who can't do math, they let 58.3% of the seats on the train my group should have loaded go to FL users and only 41.6% of the seats go to the regular guests.”

So I’m good at math. Check this out. If you and another guest paid the gate price of $70 to get into Cedar Point, then the other guest also paid $149 for Fast Lane Plus, you paid 31.9% what they did to use the park. So if standby is still getting 41.6% of the train, the FL+ guest is getting ripped off and should immediately go to Guest Services to be made whole. Math is fun. And again, Devil’s advocate....

I say we just copy/paste this for all future FL complaint posts.

I finally had time to loop back to this. I've been crazy busy at work. Holy crap this blew up.

Most of the responses were as I anticipated... They seem to fall into one of three categories:

1. "I'm a local and can go on a random Tuesday afternoon in May when it's not busy. You should do this too... The long lines are your fault since you can't plan better."

2. "Fast Lane doesn't significantly affect the normal line wait, so stop complaining."

3. CP has the right to charge whatever they want and you're a whiny entitled Millennial.

For those in the first category... That's really hampered by my work schedule and, I dunno, the fact I live 3.5 hours away. The fact is I did plan a trip in may a year or two back and had a similar experience. I can't just pop in and out of the park at will to see if the crowds are tolerable.

For those in the last category, all I'm saying is that the value for money spent has finally went past what I feel is worthwhile. You're welcome to spend your entire paycheck at the park. I don't care. As one person here put it "Cedar Point is teaching younger guests that they have to spend at least $200 in the park to have a good time." That's absolutely true. I love roller coasters, but $200 /person for "normal" wait times that exceed an hour is far beyond what I'm willing to pay.

What I'm most interested in is those in the second category, who defended Fast Lane because they don't feel it's really reducing ride times.

Let's use Steel Vengeance as an example, which had a 3 hour wait when I was at the park.

Let's also use Shane's numbers of 58.3% FL / 41.6% Reg.

According to Wikipedia Steel Vengeance has a capacity of 1,200 riders per hour. To make this simple we'll assume the ride's operating at capacity.

That puts roughly 1,500 people in the regular line.

The FL line has a 60 minute wait. So roughly 700 people.

Now, let's put all of these people in one line and use the ride at full capacity. It's a total of 2,200 people. That's just under 2 hours.

So, what this shows us is that Fast Lane increases the line for Steel Vengeance by AT LEAST one hour. Here's the thing, all of the people in line at FL might not go to the regular line because the "opportunity cost" (woo! econ term!) of riding is higher. So it's highly unlikely that all 700 people would come over to the single line.

Just to clean up a loose end. Across the three hour regular line wait 2,100 fast lane riders go through, which is what extends the wait time. It's not like you're waiting for those 700 people to go through and then you're done. FL continues to delay the regular line even after those who are already waiting at the point you enter get through.

The fact is, to access the "normal" wait time of 60 - 90 minutes for most rides Fast Lane is now non-optional. I don't feel that Cedar Point's new "economy class" (formerly regular admission) is a good value for the money. I am not willing to pay a premium, so moving forward I will spend my entertainment dollars in other ways. It's America. I'm allowed to do that. I'm just disappointed by this, because I truly do love the rides. :\

Was there a question in there somewhere?

Your examples are nowhere near typical days at the park.
I’m Sorry you had a bad day experience.

Bob Iger was right when he said fewer people paying more for parks was probably good for business, and that means some people reach a point where the value proposition doesn't work anymore. There's some risk with that, because you might alienate people at an impressionable age, but if your product is great, that minimizes the risk.

But this idea that the park is "teaching" anything is wholly absurd to me. My kid goes to WDW because, as far as he knows, because we live near it. Heck, the same logic explains why we go to Cedar Point infrequently. And if he gets older and he learns that working hard to earn more gets him more, I'm ok with that lesson.

I love when people say they won't attend park X (in this case CP) because they have a skip the line upsell option... The implication being that they'll now attend park Y instead. Bad news... Park Y and pretty much all other parks offer it too! Singling out CP is obtuse in the extreme. The examples of these huge waits even more so. You can't please everyone, but this is really bad. (My six flags membership for next year includes 2 skip the lines per day! I don't even need a flash pass lol) I live 4.5 hours away in Western New York and visit 7-9 total days per season. We've done FLP 1 day each year in the last 5 and never had any issue on the other days, so this is not conjecture on my part. I avoid late August Saturdays and fall Saturdays, thats it. If you go on those days you can still have a great time but they are the busiest days of the year. That leaves like 90% of the operating calendar. You don't have to be some local to appreciate that. (Nothing wrong with local regulars, it can be the backbone of the park's fanbase)

Whoa whoa WHOA... Those weren’t my numbers. That was all zoug68’s story about how he got hosed out of riding on the train that was rightfully his.

Jeff said:

And if he gets older and he learns that working hard to earn more gets him more, I'm ok with that lesson.

Absolutely, those are good old fashioned values. That's how my parents tried to raise me and if an amusement park can teach anything, that would be a valuable lesson. No matter how much some people don't like it, the world still works in a way that the more you put into something the more you will get out of something. Hard work, education and dedication still count!

jadams said:

As one person here put it "Cedar Point is teaching younger guests that they have to spend at least $200 in the park to have a good time." That's absolutely true. I love roller coasters, but $200 /person for "normal" wait times that exceed an hour is far beyond what I'm willing to pay.

The recurring theme I see with this category of complaint is the almost exclusive focus on coaster riding as the metric by which to determine a "good time" at the park. If CP put all their focus into making coaster waits as low as possible for everyone (installing several more high-capacity coasters, investing heavily into staffing rides to eke out the absolute maximum capacity, etc. - all at the expense of other improvements), the park would be a dismal failure.

What we have instead is a park that has become far more well-rounded in the last half-decade or so. Improved entertainment, improved food, awesome special events, improved themes/immersion, vastly improved water park, incredible resort renovations, the renewed beach, pre-K pass, and so on.

We had a 5-night, 6-day visit in mid-June where we stayed in a suite at Breakers. Looking only at that trip (and yes, I track everything on a spreadsheet), and including everything (resort stay, season passes, food & drink, a couple FLP passes, souvenir bottle, FunPix, even gas for crying out loud), we spent about $110/person/day. And this was our "big" vacation.

Granted, we have two kids who can visit for free, but even if we add 2 more passes to the mix, our total comes to $140/person/day. And again, this includes a suite at Breakers. If we had opted to stay at, say, Kalahari, we could have pushed that price down to less than $100/person/day. The daily cost goes down further if you amortize the pass cost over our two-day visit in August.

We had a monumentally-awesome time, and the only "sacrifices" we made were a couple of pre-packed meals in the hotel room. So I just do not for one second buy the narrative of "you must spend $200/day to have a good time". If that's your perspective, you're simply doing it wrong.

James Parker jr said:

I love when people say they won't attend park X (in this case CP) because they have a skip the line upsell option... The implication being that they'll now attend park Y instead. Bad news... Park Y and pretty much all other parks offer it too! Singling out CP is obtuse in the extreme. The examples of these huge waits even more so. You can't please everyone, but this is really bad. (My six flags membership for next year includes 2 skip the lines per day! I don't even need a flash pass lol) I live 4.5 hours away in Western New York and visit 7-9 total days per season. We've done FLP 1 day each year in the last 5 and never had any issue on the other days, so this is not conjecture on my part. I avoid late August Saturdays and fall Saturdays, thats it. If you go on those days you can still have a great time but they are the busiest days of the year. That leaves like 90% of the operating calendar. You don't have to be some local to appreciate that. (Nothing wrong with local regulars, it can be the backbone of the park's fanbase)

Not all skip-the-line systems are created equal. I've heard some people specifically criticize CF's implementation because they consider it very in-your-face paid line skipping, sometimes made even more "in-your-face" depending on the method (for example, the practice on TTD this year of basically reserving the front station for FL+.)

Six Flags Flash Pass is a "virtual queue" system as opposed to the wristband system at CF parks, and could be considered slightly more subtle. (Although Six Flags' current strategy involves multiple tiers of Flash Pass, which is confusing - you can pay less to wait most of the time of the standby line but outside the queue kind of like how an ADA pass works at CP, or pay more to wait only 10% of the standby line in a similar way. Also, some SF parks limit rides on star attractions to the top tiers, just like FL+ vs. FL, and some SF parks even limit how many times a day you can ride star attractions - SFMM does this if I recall.) And some major parks like Hershey have very limited programs.

I've never used any system besides FL+ (and operating rides with FL), and even then I've only used FL+ with pass renewals, so I can't comment on how SF's system compares from a guest point of view.

Yes, but most Six Flags rides don’t have merge points - they just hold the gates (making everyone wait even longer for their already horrible operations) and someone literally comes in without warning from the exit side and takes your seat. How much more in your face can it be?

Fastlane is a way to give people a better experience for a price. I bought it at KI, and used it at CP for free with a pass renewal, I freaking loved every second. It’s here to stay.

If lines are too long buy fastlane, or don’t. No matter to me. But don’t be surprised that everyone else in the area wants to ride rides too so it’s busy.

I used the Six Flags system at Magic Mountain several years ago. They had 3 levels implemented with a fob. First level allowed you to virtually "wait" in line for the same amount of time as the current standby line. So an hour standby line would allow you to ride in an hour but you didn't need to stand in line (you could ride something else during that time, get something to eat, hang out, etc.). Second option it was 50% of the standby line. Third option was 10% of standby line. You selected whatever ride you wanted to ride next on the fob and it would give you a ride time based on the applicable percentage. We had the 10% option which pretty much meant if you entered the next ride into the fob when you got off the last ride, you could ride the next ride as soon as you were able to walk to it.

The system was more subtle in a sense though not necessarily on all rides. But you still were walking past people in the standby line. Standby line guests still watched as others pass them by knowing that the Flashpass guests either had not waited as long as they did or were able to do something else in the park rather than standing in line. And with a 10% pass, the 3 hour standby line for SV becomes 18 mins rather than the 60 minutes noted above for FL.

One other perk the top Flashpass allowed you to re-ride certain rides without leaving your seat. The pass also included a wristband which you showed to ride ops when the ride returned to the station and you stayed in your seat for another lap. Was a nice perk. Though not well understood or appreciated by the standby line guests. Several were close to calling the cops on us at one point. I don't see that referenced on their site anymore so maybe that perk is no longer offered.

There are different ways to implement virtual queuing. There will be pluses and minuses of each. What bothers some people about one system won't be noticed by other people. Different rides will be impacted differently at different times of the day and different days. First time I went to Kings Island after FL was implemented, I kept general counts of people passing us in FL lines. With 45-90 minute standby waits, there were typically 2-3 trains worth of FL guests. Sometimes a train or two more; sometimes fewer. So less than 10 minutes was being added to wait times. And as noted above, there were a few people who were power riding but most were not. Haven't really paid much attention to it since.

Another important thing to note about the Flash Pass is that some of the most popular/lowest capacity rides are restricted to one-time-use, regardless of the tier purchased. For example, SF Over Georgia has three: Dare Devil Dive, Batman, and Twisted Cyclone. This eliminates serial Flash Pass users for these rides, and the virtual wait times for the Flash Pass (even with the 90% reduction for Platinum) mean that serial Flash Pass use for rides without the one-time rule is going to be somewhat slower compared to Fast Lane. Also, while I know SF parks may vary, when I used it at SFOG earlier this year there was no longer any sort of Flash Pass re-ride available, and only one ride (Batman) used the exit entry system from what I recall. (Note that it's a one-time-only Flash Pass ride, so this inconvenience is mitigated.) The Flash Pass has some serious issues with implementation compared to Fast Lane because of its use of electronic devices, but overall I think the Flash Pass is much more fair to those not using it. With that in mind, I ultimately think that FreeWay (the free handstamp time-based system used by CP in the early 2000s) and Disney's original Fastpass were the most fair ways of allowing wait time reduction, as they gave everyone in the park the same chance at getting a shorter wait time, as long as they got there early enough.