Survey this morning - All Season Drink Bottles

Got a survey today gauging my interest in getting rid of the refillable bottles and moving to disposable cups for all season drink purchases. YES PLEASE.

I'd support phasing it in as an option.
But the souvenir cups are a great way to bring your own 'favorite beverage' into the park with you.

Parks with bag checks often will make people dump the contents of souvenir cups when entering the park. After all, if it is the all season bottle, it is no loss if all you had is a carbonated high fructose corn syrup solution -- just walk ten yards to the refill station.

Hopefully we will hear the announcement soon: "Cedar Fair is proud to announce for 2017, 'All Season Ride and Refresh.'"

Going to have to hire extra sweeps and sanitation workers to keep up with the extra garbage!

You're probably right, the amount of people that will use and toss as many 'free' paper cups will substantially add to the trash.
I'm sure the park is taking into account the costs of each cup, disposal and employee costs associated with this potential change. It's arguable that this may cost more than the current program.

I'll buy this if the price is right. If the price comes out to about the cost of 1 drink per visit over 10 visits, so around $50, I'll get it.

I like being able to latch the cups to my bag/backpack. But cleaning them is a massive pain in the rear. I can't use the dishwasher, they inevitably sit for a day before getting washed. Issues abound.

But I'd rather have higher-quality cups I keep than trashing paper cups all the time.

What I think this is really about is keeping people from hording years of cups, then using them in the Freestyle machines-even if they are out of date as many of the staff don't stop them. Or from people pouring drinks into older cups to stock and entire family with drinks from one "unlimited" cup.

I'd tie the cups to a 5 minute cool-down for refills. Then again you could do that now with the plastic cups.

Please, please, please, get rid of the refillable cups and tie the drink program to season passes like the meal plan. Double the price if you need to, just get rid of the awful leash that is the souvenir cup.

I don't see any perfect solution here but the current system is not great.

A. Keep the plastic cups, install more lockers and charge $10/day for a roaming code. Maybe even eliminate the bins to increase dispatch times.

B. Like Pete said. Paper cups but charge a lot more for the SP, also to make up for lost locker rental revenue. I just don't like all the environmental waste with this option.

I sweat a lot and drink a lot of water so I have been using a couple of collapsable water bottles this year that have a carabiner hole but they are rather small and can't put ice in them. Nalgene makes some wide mouth ones but the only one I can find with a carabiner hole is 96oz and that is overkill. Not sure how well using the lid strap would work on the smaller ones.

I believe they have already started selling the souviner cups for 2017 so nothing is likely to change this year

No reason they can't keep the cups at the present price point and charge whatever up charge for a premium product that ties the drink plan to a season pass.

Yes Pete! That's the ideal solution.

My $.02 is that they should implement something like an All Day Dining Plus plan. Something where you could receive a drink with your meal redemption. I would put a 45 minute time limit on the drink portion to reduce potential abuses that NWLB mentioned. The 45 minute time would allow for the redemption of a drink in between meals, useful if you are thirsty between meals but don't necessarily want more food. It would reduce waste and costs from the cups because it is slightly limiting people from getting a drink whenever they feel the urge. If someone wants another drink before the 45 minutes, they would simply be asked to pay for it, perhaps at a discount though I don't think a discount is really necessary.

I also feel that the souvenir cups should be retained as they make a good, somewhat functional souvenir to many. By keeping them, you are keeping that retail option open while not forcing those who only want unlimited drinks to be burdened by the cup.

Currently, the all day Ride and Refresh program has a fifteen minute wait between fill-ups. I would not be surprised if an all day program is as long as an hour between fill-ups. I just hope they allow more often fill-ups of water in something other than Kinzel Cups™, especially on hot days.

That's when you ask for the water to either be in a 20 oz cup, or 5 separate small cups.

Cargo Shorts said:

A. Keep the plastic cups, install more lockers and charge $10/day for a roaming code. Maybe even eliminate the bins to increase dispatch times.

Not trying to be the minority here, but I like the Plastic souvenir cups. The only thing I don't like is paying $2.00 for every ride location that has lockers. I like your idea buddy. I have an idea, say you buy a locker at Rougarou, but want to go across the park and ride rides there. Why not transfer your code with that $10 roaming fee to another area of the park that you mentioned?

Also being that I am taking Environmental Science this semester, I like the souvenir cups even more because they don't require companies to cut down more trees. Our forests are dieing because so many places or households don't recycle.

Just about all trash companies recycle their trash these days. So I don't think there's any environmental harm to throwing paper cups away.

Shawn, that's is exactly what I meant by a roaming code, the code roams. $10/day gets you a locker anywhere in the park. When you are done with a locker just "check out" of it like they ask you to do currently when you are finished with one for the day. Zoombezi Bay in Columbus even has a Season Pass locker rental for something like $60.

Thabto, I admit I don't keep up with all aspects of waste management so if there is little to no impact of paper cups I am all for them. Keep in mind it is not just about landfills but also the energy and byproducts of recycling. I read an article once that argued disposable diapers were actually more environmentally friendly than cloth due to the energy and waste water from washing them.

Shawn wouldn't the plastic cups be more damaging to the environment because they are plastic which is petroleum based and requires a ton of energy to produce? Plastic is also non-biodegradable. The paper comparatively is from a somewhat renewable source and breaks down after a few years in a landfill. It would be an interesting thesis to write a paper on.

On topic, I too like your roaming locker idea.

The souvenir cups are actually made out of a plastic which is comprised of 30% plant-based material, called PlantBottle. It was developed by Coca-Cola themselves--here's a link that explains everything about this plastic: PlantBottle. Not sure about how much more sustainable this plastic makes the souvenir cups as opposed to 100% petroleum-based (especially since they're reused repeatedly, as opposed to regular drink bottles), but at least they're doing something to reduce the environmental impact.

While I'm writing, I may as well throw my hat into the ring; since the Ride and Refresh wristband system has already been around for a few years, I personally found the reversion to the souvenir cups when this program was introduced to be a bizarre move, and looking back on this season, the cynic in me sees it as being a way to motivate locker rentals, and the optimist in me sees it as possibly being an issue with implementation of an all-season drink wristband system. In a perfect world, I think that the Ride and Refresh program would have been the logical upgrade to the souvenir cup of the past, with both a one-day Ride and Refresh wristband and an all-season drink card available for purchase at the food stands; the card would be separate from your season pass (since the current souvenir system doesn't require a season pass to purchase the orange "free refills" cup), and all you'd have to do when you come to the park is go to a food stand and have it scanned to receive your one-day Ride and Refresh wristband for that day. Of course, I'm not sure if the costs to the park would be higher or lower with the wristband/card system as opposed to the souvenir cup system, but what I do know is that in the grand scheme of things, pop has one of, if not the, highest profit margin within the restaurant industry, and this new system would probably have to be more expensive in order to enable the park to keep their profit margins high, depending on if the park's costs in wristbands/cards/disposable cups is greater than the park's costs in reusable souvenir cups. Just my $.02 though.

An all season Ride and Refresh would definitely be tied to a season pass. The all day Ride and Refresh was tied to a single person via the wristband, and the idea was people would not share souvenir cups. Anyway, anyone who can take advantage of an all season plan already has a season pass, so why make them carry around two items?

Speaking of carrying around items; Would it not be nice if Cedar Fair rolled out FastPay at all their parks and tied season pass information into the reusable FastPay bands? (Yes, I know this idea is kinda a ripoff of Disney's MagicBand system, but why not?)

Remember when calculating environmental impact, do not forget to calculate shipping emissions. The same size truck can ship many times the number of paper cups as it can souvenir cups