Season Pass Add-On's / Thoughts

bholcomb said:
"Our scanners are down" is not acceptable IMO. If you've been denied a discount because of that, it's ridiculous.

I've lost track of the number of times I've been told that this season. At both parks. It's insanely frustrating.

At one point I asked for a manager. The girl working ripped my head off and said "I AM THE MANAGER!" and then turned to wait on another customer.

I love roller coasters and I don't want to be perceived as a complainer... I didn't say anything else, but it's really frustrating.

Its gotten to the point where when it happens, I just say "ok, thank you anyway" and walk off without buying anything. Complaining won't make a difference.

Cedar Point Food Blog said:

Gatekeeper2013 said:
I always thought it would be cool if you could load cash on your pass so you didn't need a wallet in the park and develop some type of rewards system where if you spend x amount with the pass then you earn a free game, fries, etc.

They registered a trademark for a FastPay system last year, so it could be in the works. Seeing as all the issues they still have with the scanner system working, it may be a while.

FYI, I stumbled upon this by accident this morning, but Dorney Park already implements the Fast Pay system.

https://www.dorneypark.com/plan-a-visit/fast-pay

So it might be coming to CP at some point in the future.

I would say service like that demands a complaint to someone higher. What good is a perk if you can't even use it? Being treat that way is also unacceptable IMO.

I believe they can manually type your number in. Although not at CP, they have done that at Progressive Field when my loaded ticket couldn't scan at the food stand. This most likely is a feature of CP's POS system also.

In any case, the best place to complain about how this manager treated you is at the Food Service office, next to the employee cafeteria.

Mystical Matthew said:

bholcomb said:
"Our scanners are down" is not acceptable IMO. If you've been denied a discount because of that, it's ridiculous.

I've lost track of the number of times I've been told that this season. At both parks. It's insanely frustrating.

I've encountered numerous issues with my all season dining plan. I've been to guest services at least 4 times to correct the issue yet it happens again and again. For some reason my all-season plan falls off my pass or my wife's pass. CP has no explanation. The frustrating part is when it happens the policy at the park is for the cashier to call a manager over who then has to call somebody at IT to have my account verified and corrected. I had to wait over 10 minutes one time at Coasters and another time for over 10 minutes at Corral. It happened recently at Midway Market and I told the manager I wasn't willing to wait. She let me in right away but wasn't very pleasant with me.

I can understand if there was a problem early in the season but by June and July issues with the account verifying at the register is ridiculous. I've spoken with Guest Services about what could be the problem. One theory was maybe the pass isn't being scanned correctly at the entrance. Somebody told me your meals for the day load to your account when you enter the park. Guest services said that isn't the case.

I've emailed the park about the problem and never got a phone call or email back. The people at guest services apologize when it happens but the park really needs to fix the problems with the registers.

^ same problem with my wifes and my platinum pass dining plan. Both of my kids dining plan work fine all the time. They even gave me new passes thinking it was a barcode issue...nope, still have issues.

It maybe something with how your record is entered into the database and how the system handles it. We had an issue at work where some people were not able to use one of our services after login. Turned out that their last name had an apostrophe and the back end code didn't process it properly, which caused the entire session to fail. Just a thought on why you may be having problems, perhaps something similar is happening.

I'm not sure what the problem is. It's weird because often the card has worked correctly earlier the same day. Example. Lunch at Dragon Inn at 1pm. Works great. Try and get dinner at Coasters around 6pm and it won't work. Plus, after going in person to guest services 4 times there is absolutely no reason it should still be causing issue and to be fair it had worked great for a few weeks until it didn't work at Midway Market a few weeks ago. The card had actually worked great at Soak City the day before it didn't work at Midway Market. I'd think if the problem was with my account it would never work. The fact that the problem is intermittent is puzzling.

I haven't been back to guest services since that occasion but I plan on stopping back in person the next time I'm in the front of the park. My problem is the method of resolving the issue by calling on the phone and verifying the account before getting my food is ridiculous. Cedar Fair is a billion dollar company. My card doesn't scan. Log my PP number and let somebody in IT know or forward it to whatever office corrects issues like that, but give me my food. Don't make the customer stand around for 10 or 15 minutes. I'm not going to try and get a meal that isn't paid for. If I'm trying to scam a free meal. Each time I'm standing in the line waiting for my approval I feel like the park is calling me a thief. It's a bad customer experience and certainly doesn't meet the "best day ever" goal they want to achieve for customers this year.

I would like to see a discount at the RV park. We camp there quite a lot. And even live in Sandusky.

To those having problems with season pass discounts - go and get a new pass printed.

I was using my 2012 pass and had issues getting the discount. I then noticed that the brand spanking new pass I just bought for my three-year old worked fine. I went and asked for a new pass and haven't had problems since. I also wasn't charged since I had the old pass that was somehow defective.

Yes, they'll gladly swap your pass out with no fee if you're having issues. However, it doesn't sound like that works for everyone.

Did not work for the two passes we are having issues with. They sometimes work, but more often they don't.

Does the barcode actually not scan or does the system just not recognize it?

I will say that I was at Pink's once when one of the POS's was down. The cashier assigned to it was writing down all transactions and would just jot down your pass number. They took your word for it, which would have killed the line otherwise. I'm happy.

Yes it scans at the register, it just doesn't show that i have the meal plan on two of our passes most of the time.

My wife and I both already have new passes. GS swapped them for new ones on the second visit to their office.

The cards scan ok but for some reason the meal plan doesn't appear as authorized in the system. The register gives them various alerts and errors that require call for manager or IT.

It's definitely a database problem if some sort.

I just don't understand how the meal plan can work fine at one location but then 5 hours later not work.

This doesn't seem like it'd be a very complex database. You're scanning a pass number which should easily be associated with a yes/no boolean on meal pass and then writes the use to another database/table. I just don't know how it could be overly complex.

Pete said:
In any case, the best place to complain about how this manager treated you is at the Food Service office, next to the employee cafeteria.

This is good to know, since I have had several food service people be totally nasty to me over things this season.

I don't remember having issues like this when there seemed to be more international employees, but this year, there seem to be less of them, and an accompanying increase in bad attitudes with the food service employees.

bholcomb said:
This doesn't seem like it'd be a very complex database. You're scanning a pass number which should easily be associated with a yes/no boolean on meal pass and then writes the use to another database/table. I just don't know how it could be overly complex.

That's not likely the scenario. It's probably a foreign key to an entitlement database, especially if they're using Micros' iCare system.