Winter Chill Out 2018

Wolfbobs- My comment was not directed solely at this event. I’m not going to WCO but I never intended to go. So, I’m not in the least upset that I don’t have a ticket. My comment was directed at those who feel the Park is doing them some kind of favor by taking their money. That’s backwards. That was my point.

As far as this event, the money doesn't go to the park, it goes to A Kid Again....probably 95% of the staff working that day aren't getting paid at all....they volunteer.

In this aspect, they are doing attendees a favor by allowing them to visit the park, have a meal on the house, giving them some sort of freebie as well as letting them in on info before it's released to the public.

The park is a business, they make money. They hold special events, etc, Coaster Mania, etc. but they don't have to. Even though they make money on some of the events, they don't even have to hold them in the first place. If there's a market for it, for the enthusiasts to attend, they'll hold it...but they don't have to. I for one am grateful that they offer special events, even if they cost $...as a pass holder, once my pass is paid off, unless I buy something in park, they make no money off of me. The way I look at it is that if I buy a souvenir, attend a special event, etc. I'm helping pay for the next ride, improvement or whatever.

Yeah, the park didn't mishandle WCO, it's just in high demand from enthusiasts.

On another note, however, I've never liked the attitude of "don't disagree or think they should do anything differently or else they'll take away events!"

Yeah.. not sure how the park "owes" anything. There's nothing forcing them to have an event at all. They're going out of their way to open the gates to die-hard fans for a day in the offseason, and cater to them with food, tours, and a Q&A. And it's going to a good cause.

And if the enthusiasts truly had any actual "power," I imagine the park's operating hours would be significantly more extensive...

coast said: I’m not going to WCO but I never intended to go. So, I’m not in the least upset that I don’t have a ticket.

Ok, so you're "upset" that people are complicit with a sold out charity event at a park that is currently closed? Even IF the park increased the capacity and THOSE sold out, what the hell would the point be?! There will still be people who don't get tickets.

I see your point about power of the consumer but in the context of this event and this community, those rules hold absolutely no weight. We are outnumbered by non enthusiasts but a huge margin. We don't hold this mystical power that you think we do. In terms of scale, we don't spend the kind of money non enthusiast families spend. If the park thinks that a few vocal enthusiasts, sour about a sold out charity event, will have some kind of impact on their bottom line....then I don't know what world they live in.

But what's truly telling is the notion that people would only really donate to A Kid Again in exchange for a winter walk through of the park.

Some enthusiasts: "Add more tickets so we can go to the park and you can give more money to the charity!"

Park: "We set a specific number for a reason and apologize if you didn't get a ticket. You can still donate to a great charity......there's nothing stopping you."

Enthusiasts: "Well......I mean.....I'm a bit........OH is that my phone? Sorry, I gotta take this."

My friend and I were all set to go. We even have a room booked for that Saturday night in Port Clinton. Well long story short, I didn’t know that the tickets went on sale at midnight so I just tried to buy the 2 that I needed when I was on my first break at work on Wednesday. So, we are planning on keeping our hotel for that night and just going to Kalahari instead.

What I'm curious about is the makeup of the attendees this year with the tickets going on sale at midnight. In years past I've seen a good amount of families attending. I wonder if it will skew more towards enthusiasts this year who stayed up late/woke up to buy tickets and less families. If that is the case then I think it is a missed opportunity to connect with a broader audience about what is going on. However, they sold out so it is a success for A Kid Again.

coast said:

The customer always has the power.

I bet your customer powers won't get you a ticket to WCO.

The ONLY legitimate gripe people MIGHT have is that the server crashed at midnight and then there was apparently a code (WCO2018 or something) you had to use that most people didn’t seem to know about. The lesson here, be ready for CoasterMania! tickets as soon as they go on sale.

^^ Yes, there was a glitch, but it was only a few minutes. (10 at the most) Tony Clark acknowledged the issue and posted "I’m aware. Looking into it. Please hold." so I figured it would only be a couple of minutes. I was able to get in, order tickets, log into PayPal, check out and have a confirmation that was sent at 12:14am, so it was not a long delay at all.

As soon as it was up and running, Tonys post was..."GO NOW! Sorry about that delay." So, there were updates as to what was happening.

As far as questioning the makeup of attendees, I imagine it will be the same as every year in the past. Pointer-People that are just happy/grateful to be spending a few hours at the Point. It is always something to look forward to during the long grey winter days of February, Ohio winters can be so dreary!

Stacy, I bet you are wrong about the make up of the attendees, it will probably be mostly coaster enthusiasts foaming at the mouth to get a close-up of Steel Vengeance. One of my friends, who always takes his family, was going to buy tickets sometime during the day. Last year he still had a choice of times, this year of course he was shut out. He is probably pretty typical of the pointer-people Stacy mentioned. I bet only coaster enthusiasts would pound on an e-commerce site in the early morning hours for Chillout tickets.

I'll most likely be on the ski slopes that day and will read about the announcements sometime that night. Gotta take advantage of the weather, winters are just too short around here. 🎿

Pete said:

it will probably be mostly coaster enthusiasts foaming at the mouth to get a close-up of Steel Vengeance.

Hahahaha! Someone should really animate little cartoons of things discussed on this site, especially from the Dreams thread. I totally would if I was artistic enough!

Stacys- Interesting. From reading comments online, it sounded like it was a good 45 minutes or more. And was the promo code widely known? I didn’t try to get tickets, so I’m only going by what I’ve read.

I was fortunate enough to have a neighbor who still has a passion for CP to stay up and buy tickets for us otherwise I would have missed out. He also was miffed about the initial complications but that went away once he got our tickets. I'll be sure to bring foam for my mouth for WCO.

I am honestly surprised none have popped up on eBay yet.

I got tickets for WCO2018, I thought it was totally mishandled. I waited up until midnight to get tickets, couldn't get them due to the fact that there was an issue, had to wait an extra half hour to get the tickets and confirmation.

You say big deal, it is a big deal, if you say the tickets are going on sale at 12:00 midnight, then they should with no problems. I contemplated on waiting or going to sleep because I had to get up at 4:30 A.M. for a meeting the following morning.

Luckily, I waited and got the tickets but not until after 12:30.

It is something that should have been put to rest at 12:00 midnight like they said but didn't. This was totally mismanaged by Tony Clark and he needs to be called out on it.

Yes he resolved the situation, but how many people decided the heck with this, I will get them in the morning.

A lot of people!

Since you have absolutely no idea what the problem is with the processing there’s no way to need to call out Tony or the park.

It very well could have been the payment processing company, the hosting company, a power outage or other issues.
It coukd have been totally out of their control.

But feel free to “call out” people for something that may have been out of their control while they are putting on a fundraiser event at the full cost to the company.

Seems like certain people are missing the Chill Out in WCO.

How exactly was it mishandled?

He tweeted he was aware that an issue had occurred and that he'd look into it..Not even 20 minutes later, he tweeted that the issue had been fixed and apologized. What was he supposed to do? Postpone the sale until the morning? Yeah and then people would be ticked off because they waited up to purchase the tickets when they were originally supposed to go on sale.

Was it because of the time? Well they let folks know when tickets would go on sale well enough in advance to prepare for it. Poor planning on their part isn't an emergency in the park's world.

As XS NightClub said...we don't know what the issue was....it likely was an issue with Accesso....since well you know, it wouldn't sell the tickets....Tony nor the park can magically make it without failing...Accesso is a 3rd party company...they deal with all of the transactions...they place the options for what people can buy at said parks on the store. There likely was a failure on Accesso's end...we shouldn't need to call Tony out for something that likely wasn't his fault.

I've seen a lot of posts here and other places that people think that CP owes it to them to add more tickets because they couldn't purchase them because of the time, the issue or they sold out before they could get to the website. No where does it say *Disclaimer: If you can't purchase tickets at 12 am on Monday night, you will be able to purchase tickets later and they'll be available. Disclaimer: If there is an issue with the website/store, please blame Tony Clark, he'll add additional tickets to sell because you were inconvenienced for 20 minutes. Disclaimer: In the event tickets sell out before you try to purchase, contact everyone you possibly can talk to and tell them how horrible it is that you couldn't purchase tickets...Tony Clark will add more tickets to the event because of this.*

I had to get up early for work the next morning but I dealt with it. I had an extra cup of coffee and smiled because I knew I had my ticket purchased before I went to bed.

There’s weird logic in thinking that a lot of people missed out because they said the heck with it and couldn’t hang for 15 minutes, or however long. Clearly, since the event is sold out, a lot of people didn’t miss out. Right?

The issue was most likely a simple miscommunication between a couple of people. The buy tickets button was trying to use promo code chillout, while the person who set up the event with Acesso used WCO2018. That was the extent of the issue.

Once I saw what was happening, I started guessing other promo codes to find the winner. WCO2018 was probably my 15-20th guess