Kennywood To Offer Season Passes Starting This Fall!?

It's only mentioned in passing in this article, but it's about time.

Solid info or misreporting? (kpjb, I'm looking in your direction :) )

Why does that sound familiar? I was thinking they said that last year when the park was bought. Am I remembering that wrong?

I hope they're expensive. That's not a park that would do well as a babysitting park, so the price has to be attainable, but not so inexpensive that it leads to tons of unsupervised kids hanging out there all summer.

I was going to say the same thing, Jeff. The thought of a large crowd of unsupervised, rowdy teens is very unappealing.

Speaking of kennywood, look what ride they just put up for sale.

http://www.italintl.com/detail_page.php?record_id=1280

Not a big suprise, as everytime I have been there it was not running.

This kind seems like deja vu. I think we had a discussion on this about two years ago.

Solid info. They were planned for the 09 season, then put on the backburner with the sale of the parks. Not sure of a price point, but I'd assume about 2.5x a day's admission.

Thanks, kpjb. I thought I remembered that.

That would be $88.00. IMHO that is way too inexpensive.

I think it's too low. I wouldn't price a season pass under a hundred bucks.

crazy horse said:
Speaking of kennywood, look what ride they just put up for sale.

http://www.italintl.com/detail_page.php?record_id=1280

Not a big suprise, as everytime I have been there it was not running.

I wouldn't be surprised if these started disappearing from other parks.

Jeff, nor would I. However (and this is NOT anything official, just a thought) you can get tickets to the park for $23 at grocery stores, and I don't know if people will see any value in a pass that costs more than 4 individual trips.

IMO, for the first season I'd do a presale for $99, judge the reaction, and once spring time comes jack it up to $129 give or take $10-20 depending on demand. Add a Sandcastle or Idlewild combo for another $50 on top.

In related news, anyone notice that JetBlue is doing a $599 all-you-can-fly promotion? You can go anywhere, and as often as you want from Labor Day till October 8th. Thought that was a pretty cool idea. (It'd be cooler if JetBlue went somewhere besides just NYC and BOS from Pgh.)

They are practically giving away Sandcastle season passes at the moment. My wife and I currently use the Sandcastle season pass as our Kennywood season pass as it gets us into Kennywood for the night rider admission for $10. We go in, eat some fries, ride a few rides and go home.

We will probably buy a season pass the first year because it's new and exciting, but I can't see us spending over $100 a year. If it included Sandcastle admission forget about it!

An addendum to what I mentioned before, they absolutely can't be used for Fright Nights. That'd be an overcrowded disaster.

While that makes perfect sense and is totally understandable - I suspect it's going to cause a lot of bitching.

I love the following quote from the article, "Regional parks like Kennywood generally fare better during a recession than destination parks such as Disney World or Six Flags."

Did I miss something, when did Six Flags become a destination park? Furthermore, when can you use Disney World and Six Flags in the same sentence!

FYI, passes are available in limited quantities at $89.99. First come, first served.

Seems out of the "day care" range which is a good thing.

Really? See, to me this is where Wildwood has the idea in pricing season passes. THAT discourages daycare. 90 bucks....at a park that has been historically resistant to SPs. With the location of the park on the bus lines, I see no reason on Earth for them to do this. Unless attendance was lagging? I guess they think that the people buying them are making only one or two visits a year now (which would get more money out of those people than they're getting now).

OK, here's one line of reasoning: Offer them in *really* limited quantities, and really study their usage over this season before deciding what to do for next season. Any idea how many they're selling?

Someone at KPConnection went to a Q&A with Andy Quinn and then posted this afterword:

Kennywood WILL offer season passes for the upcoming season, butonly a limited number, Mr. Quinn believes the number to be around10,000. Once they're sold, that's it. This will be a test year to seehow season passes effect crowds and to see how people use season passes.

Also,

Kennywood's average annual attendance is 1.3 million guests.

So 10,000 seems like a pretty small amount to be selling in the context of 1.3 million total visits. (Although Fright Nights may be included in that 1.3 million, and the season passes do not extend for that)