Kings Island Fast Lane

Didn't Carowinds try that during Scarowinds last year? I seem to remember them talking about it at the CoasterStock event.

Those days are already here. If you buy your cedar point ticket in advance for either a Wednesday or Sunday it's 11 dollars cheaper.

Kalahari's waterpark is cheaper M-Thurs than it is on Friday-Sunday, too.

CoasterDemon said:

67440Dodge said:

Lord Gonchar said:

Umm.. I think that's only guaranteed on a Gay Day at a park.... :)

Speak for yourself. I'm not that kinda boy ;)

It's much more fun after the park me thinks!!

Jeff said:

ApolloAndy said:
I've wondered for years why parks don't charge significantly more on a Saturday then they do on a Tuesday.

Mark my words, it's coming. Maybe before the end of the year. You heard me say it.

Movie theaters have been doing this for years. Tickets earlier in the day are cheaper than the afternoon/evening hours.

And now with movie theaters, they have different levels of movie watching experiences. You can pay a regular admission and watch a movie in 2D. Pay a surcharge and watch it in 3D. Pay a surcharge on top of the 3D surcharge so you can see it in 3D-Imax (or other large screen format).

Still the same movie, you're just paying for the perk of watching it in 3D or large screen/sound

The movie theater example doesn't create a situation in which the people who see an early matinee and/or 2-D movie are bumped out by those who want to see an evening and/or 3-D film. The more expensive ticket does not hurt the experience of the less expensive experience. So movies have nothing to do with the argument.

Same for a lot of other experiences.

Others have no choice but to charge more for a better experience. Take concerts, or sporting events, for example. People need to sit in separate seats. Not all seats are equal. Charging more for better seats is a good way to decide who gets those seats.

Now lets talk about pay-to-cut on amusement rides. There is no reason to charge more to let people cut in line, except that people are impatient and want to cut in line. Because people want to break the no line jumping rule, money can be made by allowing the behavior.

So most other examples, like seats on a plane, or charging more at a different time of the day or week for a service, have nothing to do with pay-to-cut. Many other instance of "paying more to get more" are in use because it is necessary. Many of those instances do not take away from other paying customers.

Paying more for 3-D or IMAX costs more because it costs more to provide that experience. Not so much with pay-to-cut.

Hey, Coasterbuzz Club members get faster/better access (due to the lack of ads) to this site because they pay $25 a year. Is that unfair? Is that immoral?

It's the same basic experience once they get here, but they don't have to deal with the ads. That's probably the best analogy yet.

Nope. Respectfully, Josh, it doesn't ad additional advertisements to those who are not paying the $25. It does nothing to hinder or slow down those who are using Jeff's free website experience. No one is cutting in front of anyone else.

The only reason I have a problem with pay-to-cut is because it makes the lines longer fr everyone else.

That reminds me, I need to renew my CoasterBuzz membership, just because I like CoasterBuzz. I have yet to show up at a CoasterBuzz event. I need to do that.

LostKause said:
It does nothing to hinder or slow down those who are using Jeff's free website experience. No one is cutting in front of anyone else.

How many times have you had an ad pop up that says "wait 15 seconds" then it allows you to click to continue? Those in Coasterbuzz Club don't have that, so they're getting there 15 seconds before you.

Thereby causing you to wait 15 seconds for that interstitial that Jeff has to put on the website to cover costs.

You don't want to pay for premium? Fine. You get basic.

You don't want to pay for Fast Lane? Fine. You get to wait in line.

It's not immoral.

It never was.

It's a luxury good that offers no entitlement what so ever.

You are not entitled to ride once you enter the park. You are simply given permission to wait in line in hopes that you get on before the ride or park closes.

LostKause said:
Many of those instances do not take away from other paying customers.

But many actually do.

I still don't understand why you are bringing up that by paying admission, one should not expect to be able to get on any rides. That's why most people pay to get into a park in the first place. I don't understand what it has to do with this discussion. If what you say is true, no one would visit amusement parks.

And since we are going through crazy examples that have nothing to do with waiting in line, I can order a small or large pizza. If I chose to buy a small, that doesn't mean that I will have 10% of my pizza missing to go to the person who ordered a large. The person who ordered a large get's his own large pizza. He doesn't have to take away from my pizza.

If pizzas are lines in a pay-to-cut situation... If I buy a small line pizza, and someone buys a large line pizza, we are both going to get a small pizza, except that my pizza will have 10% taken away from it, so that the park can give it to the people who buy the large.

There is no such thing as a large pizza when it comes to lines. This is because time moves at the same speed for all of us. Everyone gets the same small size, but the people who pay for the large pizza upgrade get a portion of the other guys pizza to make his pizza bigger.

I'm not against buying a large pizza instead of a small pizza. I'm against the park taking a portion of everyone's small pizza and giving it to the people who ordered the large pizza to make their original small pizza a large. lol

There is nothing wrong or immoral about Fast Lane. Its a business making a business judgment about how to run the business. Some people won't like it. Thats life. But if all they do is go to coaster sites, facebook pages, etc. and complain but keep going to the park as normal, the park won't care.

If you look around, you will find blogs, message boards, etc. with folks complaining about a whole host of perceived evils of one business/industry or another. You can't please everyone so you do the best you can, move on and adjust as appropriate.

If folks really don't like Fast Lane (or any other action taken by any given business), they should stop patronizing that business (and let the company know they have done that and why). Maybe the business will reverse course. It wouldn't be the first time. And if not, find other places to spend your money that operate in ways you like. And you can always open up your own amusement park (or other busines) and make whatever rules you like.

View it as a price increase. Kings Island increased their admission prices 10 days ago. If you want to get the same number of rides in any given day, you need to pay $50 more. Once you do that, you have the choice of just making up the missed rides (and sitting in the shade, getting something to eat/drink or just strolling around the park) or power riding and getting more rides in during any given visit. No one likes price increases. But they happen all the time.

From what I saw, I don't think most folks will be too upset with the impact of Fast Pass. I could literally walk circles around most groups I saw and still keep up with them walking. If they were that concerned with missing a ride or two during a visit, they would just pick up the pace a little. :)

LostKause said:
I still don't understand why you are bringing up that by paying admission, one should not expect to be able to get on any rides. That's why most people pay to get into a park in the first place.

I'm actually with you on this to some degree. Most people ar e at the park to ride rides.

What most people aren't doing is trying to get as many rides as humanly possible into their day and they're certainly not keeping count.

And they're definitely not feeling ripped off because they got on 10 or 11 rides instead of 12.

And the people who still managed 12 aren't mad.

And those who got 15 or 16 instead of 12 aren't mad either.

I just don't understand who is getting pissed in a real-world situation beyond a couple of us overthinkers. :)

It is interesting how they wrote about this in the Kings Dominion article. "we wanted find out if people would be accepting of such a program". Sounds like Cedar Fair is having the same debate we are. More, they are willing to conduct a real world experiment. And early results are positive. If it stays that way they might look at expanding the program to other parks, or they may not

valleyfair has a season pass add on that adds Ripcord to your pass, they have for years, that program hasn't made it to Kings Island. It's not a one size fits all chain.

Kings island is a great test site: they already had the VQ infastructure from the old gold pass program, they have a large attendance, a good mix of season pass and day tickets, and is in a conservative city. If it works here...

Travis-what Gonch said. You're focusing on extreme worst case scenarios. You keep acting as if the average person or family goes with the intent to ride everything when in reality that isn't the case. Most people are happy after riding and doing X amount of attractions.

My point is that just because the park offers 30 attractions doesn't mean you're going to get to experience all 30 attractions. There are a ton of variables that can keep you from riding any one of them, therefore you aren't guaranteed a ride on any of them, so in the end most people are going to be happy with what they did ride, and fastlane or any other system isn't really affecting people's experiences or expectations as much as you want to believe.

Some people go to Cedar Point on a really busy day, only get to ride 3-5 things, and still go home happy. It happens.

There is no reason to charge more to let people cut in line, except that people are impatient and want to cut in line. Because people want to break the no line jumping rule, money can be made by allowing the behavior.

Economics 101. You passed! :) Now let's go make some money...

I'll tell you who's getting pissed - the people who are about to get on the train and have 3 groups of people take their row. It doesn't matter that the line was only 10 minutes and is now 15, they're still pissed. I know that only the worst implementations of Fast Pass do that and it is a corner case, but it does piss off a handful of people.

Travis, I think (as has been said before) the issue is that you see the ride time as *yours.* 10 years ago, you could pay $50 and get 10 rides. Now you pay $50 and get 8 rides. Or pay $100 and get 20 rides. This scenario is basically exactly the same to you, the customer, as if the park just started charging everyone $60 for 10 rides.

You don't have a right to get 10 rides for $50 and the rides are not yours. They're the park's to sell in whatever fashion they see fit.

The only way this is a moral issue is you think you're buying 10 rides for for $50 and once you put your money down they say, "Nope. You only bought 8." If you know you're buying 8 for $50 and you put your money down, it's totally on you.

Although I understand that the price has increased, and people are not getting as many rides as they would if such a system were not in place, I still want to say that cutting in line is immoral, and the parks are allowing this behavior to anyone who wants to pay $50.

It's going to be a really big moral dilemma with me because I will pay the $50 extra. I just wish I wasn't faced with having to make such a decision.

Most of what everyone is saying here makes sense, but I still don't like it, because all of my life, cutting in line was wrong (immoral), and now all of a sudden, it is only wrong unless you pay the park more.

...

About how CoasterBuzz ads are just like cutting in line for a fee...

I can't remember the last time a CoasterBuzz ad told me to look at this ad for however many seconds. I mostly ignore the flashy little ads that dot the page. They are not messing up my CoasterBuzz experience at all. When people cut in front of me on a coaster, that messes up my coaster riding experience.

And when I pay for CoasterBuzz membership, it's not to get rid of the ads. It's because I love CoasteBuzz. The only feature that I used when I had membership was the secret members only section. I didn't even go to any of the events (I have to do that some day though).

The parks used to look out for paying customers by taking a stand against line cutting. Now that they have figured out that there is a profit to be made from it, they are embracing it.

It's terrible that they would want to put their valued customers, or "guests" as they call them, in such a position. No one treats a real guest like this.

I am really happy for them that they can make more money by offering this to people. Making money is great. I am very disappointed that this is an avenue that they choose to make money though.