Platinum Pass Perks

Has anyone looked at the websites for some of the other Cedar Fair parks to see what they offer? I find it kind of interesting that some of the other parks offer some really good perks that Cedar Point does not. For instance:

Canada's Wonderland offers a sneak preview night for passholders before the park opens to the general public and 15% off food throughout the park with a few exceptions. Kings Dominion offers Bring-A-Friend discounds every day for $25 off the price of regular admission.

I'm just wondering why, Cedar Point, the crown jewel of Cedar Fair doesn't do these things. While they do offer a lot for passholder's as it is, it would seem to me that the more they offer to their passholder's the better their business will do, especially for a company concerned with the "hard economic times"

You know, I've also wondered why they don't offer more deals to friends of platinum pass holders. Because a pass holder pays nothing in parking or admission, and probably doesn't buy as much food, you would think that there would be an incentive for the pass holder to bring others, who at least would be paying something in gate price. I would think that a lone pass holder (or a group of them) is the last thing the park likes to see, but due to the fact that there really aren't these types of deals, and because pass holders can't bring others to early admission or ERT nights, I would assume it happens all the time.

I'm really the only person I know with a pass, and I despise being there by myself, so obviously I'm bringing in revenue whenever I show up with someone. But I would imagine that I would go more often, and thus bring more non-pass holders to the park, if they offered, say, $30 tickets to one friend per pass holder, per visit. And with more cash in their pockets, these people might be willing to buy more overpriced crap, huh?

I'm guessing that CP doesn't offer an exclusive preview night (which would be awesome and make me buy a season pass every year for that perk alone) because of its location. It'd make more sense for parks with large metro areas to pool in guests easily. With CP's inconvenient location for most, the event probably wouldn't be overly successful if it wasn't an all-day type thing. I think this is the reason why CP's Friday Halloweekends generally have lower attendance, while King's Island's Friday Fright Fests are packed.

Why there isn't an all-season friend discount though is a good question. I don't like the concept of King's Island's $10 friend days, as I would never want to take my friend to the park when it was packed as a result of the discount. But, if you could get $20 friend tickets (limit 1 per day & 5 per season) any day of the season with a season pass, it'd seem like a great perk to me. That'd be money CP would get from me that they wouldn't otherwise, as my friends don't like CP enough to pay $40-45. Plus, they're getting extra bodies in the park that'll likely buy overpriced food & drinks.

The BEST PERK out there is King's Dominion 10% Beagle Bucks. When I was down there checking out I305 I purchased $600 to spend at the other Cedar Fair properties. They also have the VIP parking lot that NOBODY uses, but is awesome, steps away form the front gate. Dorney has the all you can eat buffet for $9.99, and on rid enights they have $1 hot dogs and sodas. making staying late easy to entertain the kids while the adults ride.

Despite the fact that the sneak preview night isn't all day, I still think it would draw a lot of people. I have about an hour drive to the park but I'd be there in a heartbeat if they did it. Actually, I've always thought it would be awesome if they did do some sort of passholder only day.

While I realize that a lot of passholders may not spend much money in the park, I know my boyfriend and I do everytime we're there and I think a lot of other passholder's would if there were better incentives for them to spend money in the park. Part of my reason for bringing that up is because I've seen numerous passholders comment to this on the site especially when it comes to food prices vs. quality. I used my pass at least 20 times last season and spent probably at least $50 bucks in the park on various things each time. So that's an easy $1000 bucks they made off of me, not even counting the amount of money that my boyfriend also spent, in additon to the price of our passes. So, if they were able to get passholder's to spend more, it would seem to me that they would profit quite a bit. I mean $1000+ from me vs. maybe $100 dollars from one of my friends who visits the park once.

I actually wasn't aware of the Beagle bucks but that sounds awesome. I was hoping to make a trip to Kings Dominion sometime this season so I'll have to check in to that

My understanding is that many of the pass perks at the former Paramount parks are left over from the Paramount days. Paramount always had some crazy good deals for their pass holders. Hence the reason it seems there are "better" deals at those parks than at CP and the other legacy parks.