Platinum Pass at other parks

Another consideration if you have young kids and plan on continuing with a PP. We bought at CP but processed in at KI mainly for the reason Jeff said. However, we spend the majority of our time at CP. Last year the attendant at CP said the kids should get new pictures (the pics are about four years old). We went to season pass-holder center at CP and they said we had to have it done at KI.

Not a huge deal for us but could be if you lived far away!

It has been my experience that no matter what you read on the website or who you talk to, there are no guarantees until that moment of truth when they scan your pass!

Last year opening day of King's Island at the parking gate my Platinum Pass (a Cedar Point one and a pass that had been renewed for so many years that I can't remember) was not in the system. Rather than hold up the line of cars and really wanting to get in line for Banshee I payed to park knowing that things would get even worse trying to get into the park with my invalid pass, let alone getting early entry!

The line for the season pass office snaked about a half mile into the parking lot, so I found the oldest looking employee near that gate and told them of my plight. They went above and beyond to help me out and I eventually had a voucher to get in at the regular opening time and they recommended stopping at the season pass office on the way out.

On the way out I was able to get my parking refunded and three employees did their best to help with my pass. On one of the workflow screens my picture did come up (even wearing the same shirt, well it was my lucky coaster shirt!) but no other info was available. Querying on my address brought up my kids passes but not mine. They told me to email CedarPoint, which I did and never heard anything back. Later in the season the pass worked at CedarPoint and then worked at KI.

I work in IT and I know that connecting different systems together can be a challenge, but these parks have been affiliated for quite some time now!

I'm hoping for the best this season, but would be nervous if I was headed down to ride Fury 325!

I get the impression that Gate Central (the ticketing system) has grown in an organic way with unclear design goals. In the Paramount days of it, I suspect that pass sharing among parks was a lot more rare, and in my limited experience it didn't even work without a guest service visit on every trip. After the acquisition, it was a lot more likely... Cedar Point, Geauga Lake and Kings Island in particular I'm sure saw a ton of overlap.

My understanding is that there's some kind of synchronization that happens in off-hours across all parks, which seems clumsy. The way I would have done it is to have a centralized repository of passholders across the company, but locally store the passes sold at that park. When you scan, hit the local, if it's not there, hit the centralized store, and then cache that record in the local store as well until the pass expires. Sure, do photo updates or replacements in a nightly push.

My buddy and I took a trip to Kings Dominion, Dorney (and Knoebels) at the end of August last year. He renewed his PP online before we went, luckily, I didn't. He had a heck of a time at both parks; his pass wouldn't scan. He had to go to the customer service office each of the four days before we went in. They couldn't figure out what was wrong, but were very nice and gave him vouchers to get in. Anyway, when he used it later in the week at Kings Island and CP he had no problems.

If it is indeed the case that Gate Central relies on a nightly data synch (that seems quite problematic), I wonder how outdated that method is. The software goes back to a time when Internet speeds (okay, it's probably a dedicated line back to the central data center) were a lot lower than they are today. How much data is really updated on any given day and would they be better off doing a live synch to all local (in-park) databases rather than a nightly one? In other words, if I process a pass at Cedar Point, automatically send that data to all parks.

It would be so much simpler to have a single, chain-wide database but that brings up its own issues. What happens when your link to the data center goes down? Do you reject all passholders? That's bad for business. I suppose you could have guest services call up corporate and check each pass but that would be a nightmare. Then again, how often and how long would the link be down?

Of course, maybe Jeff's idea is the simplest and best. Keep a local record of all passes purchased at that park and add in all passes from other parks when they are first used.

That was kind of my point... you have to design for being disconnected. Speaking from experience, it's possible for a location to go "offline" like that. That's why I like a hybrid approach for lookups, and a periodic refresh for stuff coming downstream. The downstream gets you eventual consistency, and it's a lot easier to monitor and react to periodic failure than lots of individual real-time failures.

Redundancy for an internet connection isn't really a hard thing to come by, so a chain wide database in this day and age isn't really that scary or risky. And if there was absolutely no way to connect to CP from KI or any other park, they could always default to allow passes without validating first. No one would necessarily know on the day of if that were the case to try and fool the system. And on passes they're really relying on them coming into the park to spend money on food, games, etc.

It's risky enough. Trust me... I kinda know something about theme park ticketing systems. ;)

I like the idea that Jeff presented. I'm not normally a person to suggest old, outdated ways, but I must say I thought the picture printed on the pass could alleviate the issue with losing contact with the central database. Sure, the pass could be invalid, and the added cost of printing the pass, but...

1) Not very many people would know there is an outage (as someone previously mentioned)

-AND-

2) At least you would know that this person had purchased a pass in the past at one point in time and that it is their personal pass and not their friend's pass. Without database access, you are pretty much limited to allowing access to anyone with a card in their hands and no way to validate without using the "honor system".

I guess it boils down to the good ole benefit outweighing the added costs.

You're talking about fringe cases though when some obscene percentage of people will be found in the local database. Not using photos or biometrics (the right way) is silly. Storing that data is essentially free, associated with a pass that costs 10 cents to make. Having a photo on the pass itself easily costs a dollar or more plus all of the equipment to print them. Not even Disney wastes time with that.

And they'll spend a billion dollars like its a drop in their bucket. :-)

I've never had a problem with my platinum pass anywhere. I reckon if it scans at the parking booth it'll get me into the park. I've used it at Cedar Point, Kings Island, Carowinds, Michigan's Adventure, Kings Dominion, and Valleyfair without a hitch.

I have a question similar to the first question of this thread. I'm going to get a platinum pass and go to KD this coming weekend. I figured out that if I buy from Canada's Wonderland, through the exchange rate of the currency, I save myself around $35 bucks. Both parks are saying that I can redeem it without any issues, but that my pass benefits will be limited to Dominion.

And what's your question? You never asked one. Others have said that they purchased a pass at one park and processed at another.

Since this is a thread about platinum pass at other parks,I'm pulling out Thursday morning for N.C. Staying at a friends house in Salisbury(about 45 minutes north of Carowinds) and use my pass for Fridays' Preview Night,avoid opening day,and then do Carowinds on Sunday for all their rides.

Have you already processed or will you be doing it at Carowinds?

topthrilldragster4lyf said:

And what's your question? You never asked one.

If I process it somewhere else, do I really only get that park's benefits?

Nope... Platinum Passes get Platinum Perks. A Platinum Pass is a Platinum Pass is a Platinum Pass. You get Platinum Perks at every park in the chain. So you'll get the discounts, early entry, etc. that each park offers. That is, short of where you actually process the pass and have your photograph taken, though that seems to be a fixable issue anyway.

Very frustrated using Platinum Passes at Carowinds this weekend. Went down from Cleveland and 3 of our 5 Cedar Point Platinum passes didn't work. We had to leave the line and visit a jam packed guest services. They said it was a corporate issue and stamped our hands. I told them I also purchased a season meal plan and they said no problem. They were very nice about it, but still frustrating. I renewed these back in November of 2014, called a couple weeks ago to verify, and still problems. But the trip was well worth it. Looking forward to May 9th at CP

All the issues stated just makes more more nervous for KI opening day. Hopefully my CP PP doesn't give me any issues, but i guess i won't know until i get to the entrance and swipe.

CP PP!

Hehehe!!!