Cedar Fair and Six Flags merger to complete July 1, mostly Cedar Fair executives to lead new company

I could refute those one at a time, but I think that you're missing the point. Even the "benefit oriented consumer" that buys all of that stuff feels good about the experience. I'm not saying that they get it right every time (I've got anecdotes too), but even on a 90-minute Epcot F&W lunch, people are kind to me, they're eager to be quick and the food is above average. Even on the way out, the parking lot people tell me to have a good day.

If I have a good experience, doing anything, the money I doesn't matter. There's privilege there, I get it, but I felt this way when I was relatively poor as well.

eightdotthree:

Last summer I found the Holiday World staff to be disinterested and at times hostile to guests. Maybe they are putting their best foot forward during Hollywood Nights but I certainly didn’t have the experience being described in this thread.

That seemed to be a common complaint post-covid. From what I gather, a lot of the problems were staffing related. We were planning a visit in 2022 but after reviews during that time, frankly it sounded like a completely different place. We scrapped those plans.

We couldn't make it last summer, but if recent reviews are any indication it sounds like they've hit their stride again. I'll find out first hand later this week!

Had a great time there last month, staff was their usual excellent selves.

Jeff:

I could refute those one at a time, but I think that you're missing the point. Even the "benefit oriented consumer" that buys all of that stuff feels good about the experience.

I think you are misunderstanding that I'm not harping on Disney. They do a better job with customer service. The examples provided are to refute the claim that Disney doesn't engage in cheap gimmicks. They do, with a smile. For the record I have paid for all of those things and certainly didn't feel good about it.

Are you claiming that people feel good about paying for parking, park hopping, line skipping, et. al. at Disney but not other places? Customer service doesn't move the need that much.

I'm sure Jeff's wife didn't feel too good about the parking a couple months ago.

I'm still pretty annoyed by that. That car was paid-off, and I could only put down about 55% toward a new one. APR's suck right now.

Mulfinator:

Are you claiming that people feel good about paying for parking, park hopping, line skipping, et. al. at Disney but not other places?

No, paying for things is never better than free. What I'm saying is that they're simply not thinking about it, because the net experience exceeds their expectations. When you have an experience with intense positive feelings, you're not thinking about the money spent to get there. If I'm at a great show, and I paid a lot for the tickets, I'm not heading into the encore thinking about the ticket cost. A Disney or Universal visit, odds are I pay for the parking on the day, but the tickets (and possible upgraded experiences) I already paid for. I get in and I get a high-five from Doc Brown and later encounter singing Potter frogs. I enter deeply themed areas with attractions that are a lot like magic, and I didn't even mind walking through the themed queues. I get great food inspired by nations around the world before catching a rock show with my favorite 90's band. There's an attendant in every restroom. What did it cost? I don't care, I have all the feels.

To compare and contrast, if I go to an amusement park, drop a twenty at the tolls, get into the park, wait 30 minutes for expensive crappy food, spend a lot of time in attraction queues, only to encounter glacially moving crews loading one train, encounter dirty restrooms, note the presence a lot of, uh, obnoxious people hanging out with a cheap pass... that all adds up. Now I'm thinking about the parking, the tickets, the $20 hot dog, etc., and I'm trying to reconcile it against a crappy experience.

So essentially flood you with enough dopamine to flood out the negatives. That's a fair point. Six Flags does feel like one big advertisement for drink bottles, season pass upgrades, and Takis.

To that point I would suggest that Genie+ was such a misfire with the general public because of that effect. If you bought it, you were spending a significant amount of money in the morning before you even got in the park. If you didn't buy it you were reminded of it in every ride queue with the perceivably slower lines. Either way, bringing money into the guests heads.

The massive abuse of the Disability Access Pass (DAS) making Lightning Lane (LL) lines unmanageable and making standby live up to its name soured people on G+. They are finally fixing that, things appear to be improving (LL are far shorter, meaning more standby and shorter waits for all.) It’ll be interesting to compare things this fall. When Universal cracked down on their Disability Pass abuse, Express lines significantly shortened (I always have hotel express.)

The DAS changes have been... not great for people who actually need it. The people making the initial determinations for eligibility just aren't qualified to do so, so they need to get the "tier 2" doctor involved much of the time.

But yeah, bring on the dopamine. I know people like to say that it's not the same with amusement parks, but I disagree. Buying a CP season pass wasn't cheap for me when I first became an adult, but I never thought about the price of stuff, including an annual closing weekend stay on property. It's because lines always moved quickly, the park was relatively clean (that Magnum restroom though) and stuff was generally operating, open to close. You knew that you just had to be in line at 11:59 for that last ride.

A special place in hell for anyone who lies to get a disability pass. The problem was so widespread that Len Testla (the guy behind touring plans/Unofficial Guide) calculated that 70% of the LL returns for HM pre DAS changes was DAS guests (he had employees stand outside the line all day and count how many guests went into LL total and the people who entered after getting a blue flash (DAS guests,)) and inside sources told him his count was likely low.* I don’t know how Disney cuts the low life’s and somehow avoids inconveniencing the people who deserve it. I hate how rude some people can be.

*He personally posted this on WDWMagic

I’ve always wondered what would be the effect if Disney dropped Fast Passes and Genie+ altogether?

Would customer satisfaction go up or down if everyone was on an ‘ even plane’ in regular standby lines again??

Lines would move faster.

A thought about the disability pass, they allow a seemingly large number of people to use it for one disabled person. I traveled to UOR and someone in our party did have legitimate issues standing in long queues, so they were approved for the pass. The interesting part is they allow whoever to jump in line with them, in this case a party of four of us, maybe there is room for reductions in this area?

I miss old CP now that Jeff mentions it, I recall the queue DJ’s for MF, along with a 40 minute wait with two of the three large sections full. The environment felt so different as well, people interacted. I recall opening year for Mav, and bouncing beach balls up in the air with everyone else in the queue house prior to the stairs. My last trip was in 19, and it was good, but it felt like the personality was gone, along with the ops running around in the stations getting trains out. It’s just not the same, and it may never be. It isn’t like I can’t find joy in other places though, we still have plenty of parks that get it right.

I've said elsewhere that my most enjoyable visits to Disney were during the Covid periods when they disbanded Genie+. Lines were sometimes "long"...but they kept moving. I think one of the worse impacts of Fastpass, et al, is that some lines just don't move, at all, for long stretches of time. As I approach my mid-50s it takes a real toll on my knees and back (and I'm a runner in relatively good shape).

Frozen is the WORST offender (at Epcot), by far. Had the queues been built with this in mind, perhaps it would be mitigated. Being indoors in that confined queue room is just awful.

The_Orient_of_Express:

I’ve always wondered what would be the effect if Disney dropped Fast Passes and Genie+ altogether?

This is like asking what the effect on a very busy road would be if you removed an equally busy on-ramp that continuously merged traffic into it.

For the parks I don't think this is a genie...

...that will ever be put back in its bottle.

But that said, the customer satisfaction question is an interesting one. Since I'm not particularly all-knowing about Disney's current system (haven't been since 2019) let me use Cedar Point as an analogy. Let's pretend Six Flags Sandusky got rid of FastLane for a month.

1) You have the people for whom money is no issue whatsoever so tossing it at FastLane, etc. is a non-issue. This group would likely be pissed.

2) You have folks who see value in investing in things like all-season Fast Lane at Cedar Point. Not necessarily wealthy, but they choose to make C.P. their vacation, so it's worth it. Probably also none-too happy.

3) You have folks who splurge every once in awhile when they visit the park. For these folks it's a big deal to get it (maybe for a special day or occasion), but normally they don't want to drop an extra $600 plus for a family of four. I would bet most of these people would be happy.

4) You have folks who can afford the season pass, but just can't make FastLane work financially. These people would rejoice.

5) Then you have people who could afford it, but just choose not to purchase it because they don't like setups like FastLane. These people would also rejoice.

I'm sure there are other groups, but this is just off the top of my head.

And that's not thinking about Disney, which is a different animal.

I hope Cedar Fair can teach Six Flags some operational stuff.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ro...ow_not_to/

Iroc is having a seizure watching that.

wahoo skipper:

I've said elsewhere that my most enjoyable visits to Disney were during the Covid periods when they disbanded Genie+

Having the standby lines move more consistently is a nice thing, but the parks were also just less busy then.

There's a way to make the parks less busy now, but I guarantee you most people won't like it...

OhioStater:

I'm sure there are other groups, but this is just off the top of my head.

Right! Like the ones who live out of their cars and wear the same smelly clothes every day and can't afford a shower or deoderant, but manage to afford all season FastLane so they can power ride Steel Vengeance all summer. These are the ones I really don't see why the park caters to at all.

I'd love to see something along the lines of a Vacationer's Fastlane that affords you one trip through the Fastlane queue on each ride. Target the product at the people coming from distance who make one or two trips a summer and want to experience everything during their visit.

I agree the genie will never be put back into the bottle with pay to cut systems and I don't really have a problem with paying extra for an upgraded experience. However, the system seems to always be super oversold at Cedar Point in comparison to KI, KD, Carowinds, and possibly the other Cedar Fair Parks as well. I think its aggravated by the fact that the top rides that Fastlane users want to power ride at CP also have poor capacity compared to some of the second tier of rides. This isn't the case so much at Kings Island as the top rides are all B&M's with monster capacity when run properly. I used to be pretty content to spend a lot of time riding thoese tier two rides because some of them (Magnum, Raptor, Gatekeeper, Gemini, etc) are still pretty great. But I do seem to go to the park or flip to the webcams and find Magnum, Raptor, or Gatekeeper running two trains instead of three a heck of a lot more often than I used to and that, in combination with the "well, if you don't like standing in line, buy a Fastlane" attitude from the park and the smelly power riders really makes me not feel so great about investing in the four hour drive and hotel stay that it takes me to visit the park to use my pass and meal plan. Maybe I just won't get them next season. That's kind of where I'm at right now with Cedar Point.

Also, fun story. I know a guy who was supposed to go to work at the park this summer. But he goes to onboard and they supposedly don't have housing for him. He is older so I'm not sure if it's that they don't have ANY housing or they just don't have any old guy housing, but somthing fishy is going on with the housing/hiring there. Maybe they don't want to be fully staffed. I hope the corporate overlords don't think that staffing CP is going to happen to any acceptabe level without having sufficient housing. There isn't enough population close enough for that to happen.

Cedar Point To Introduce Pig Pen Lane In 2025

Didn’t Cedar Point announce a season or two ago that they would not be providing housing to employees over a certain age? (I forget what the number was but even 30 seems old to a college student…) Maybe your acquaintance haphazardly fell into that category.