Looks like CF is selling passes on the cheap.

Anyone care to explain this one? Canada's Wonderland is offering season passes for $59.95 each (when you buy 4)

For a park that is adding a new hyper coaster and gets well over 3 million guests a year, why are they going the Six Flags route?

Click here.

This type of season pass deal is not new to to any of the former Paramount parks. At Kings Dominion, they have had this "family pack" deal where if you bought 4 or more park passes they were discounted $10-$15 less than buying individual passes. I don't think this offer was dependent on what the attraction is going to be or the attendance numbers. It was a way to market to families on a tight budget by giving them an incentive to buy them.

Dont forget too, this is a CW only pass too. Platinum Passes are actually more expensive there.

Also if you bought the CW pass in the fall at the advertised "lowest price ever" of $74.99, contact them and they'll refund you the difference. Even if you didn't buy 4.

Also I think this is a big misstep on CF's part. I don't remember Six Flags ever dropping their pass price after previously offering at the advertised "lowest price ever"!

The idea of the low season pass price is to train and encourage the public to by them as early as possible. Money in the bank early on. Now the public is being trained that if you wait a bit, it might go down even lower so no sense of urgency to grab that season pass early to get the deal.

^

Exactly my thought. IIRC, they have had similar offers before, but not normally this late into the winter. Normally such offers were in the fall and before the Christmas push...

Who really cares? There making money, Not you and the canadian dollar right now is higher value than the american.

Chuck, So actually there making about 65 dollars a pass american

It was mentioned somewhere that CF realized that cutting the promotional pricing from the Paramount Parks to bring them in line with the rest of the CF parks was a mistake. So it's not much of a surprise to see the Paramount parks doing pricing like this.

Paramount had a great thing going with their 4 for 229 or whatever it was. It got the whole family in and they usually ate at the park and did other things like Locker rentals.

CF isn't as smart as they think they are but they are wising up.

Chuck

"Chuck, So actually there making about 65 dollars a pass american"

Actually, the Canadian Dollar and the US Dollar are almost identical in value ($1.00 Canadian - $1.00005 US).

So, a $59.95 Canadian pass is $59.98 in US dollars.

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Charles Nungester said:
Who really cares? There making money, Not you and the canadian dollar right now is higher value than the american.

Chuck, So actually there making about 65 dollars a pass american

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That wasn't my point. I really don't care, I just thought this was odd since people make a stink about SF cheaping their passes.

This is a park that has alot of assets and pulls in the most attendance for a seasonal park. I compare this to SFGAm and SFGAdv which people say their passes are way to cheap for what they have to offer.

And it's actually the opposite with regards to the value of the dollar. The Canadian dollar is worth more then the U.S. dollar. Hence why you or I would have to pay $65.00 for the pass in U.S. dollars.

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CP Chris said:
It was mentioned somewhere that CF realized that cutting the promotional pricing from the Paramount Parks to bring them in line with the rest of the CF parks was a mistake.

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This is exactly what we were talking about in the podcast (forthcoming). This kind of program did wonders for them all across the chain, and Cedar Fair took a hard hit when they eliminated it. Face it, when you provide a program like this that your customers are used to, and Paramount ran it for several years, then take it away, there will be retaliation.

The great irony is that if you're going to sell blocks of passes at a reduced rate, I can't imagine any better group than a family, that will hopefully visit together and spend money together.

And that really is the difference between this and what SF does - the quantity stipulation.

I'd rather not see passes go this cheaply, but I do think it's something Paramount did that those markets will take some time to be weaned from - so if it has to be done, at least it's with the catch that you gotta buy 4 of them.

^Actually, SFGAm has been offering family packs of passes for as long as I can remember.

They also shave off like 10 bucks on each pass if you buy 4.

Yeah, you have a point.

Just checked SFGAm - Passes are $79.99 each and if you buy 4 or more they drop to $74.99. ($5 savings per pass)

At Wonderland - Passes are $79.95 and if you buy 4 or more they drop to $59.95 each. ($20 savings per pass)

I suppose the biggest difference is that the SF pass is good chainwide while the CW pass is only good at CW. How cheap would a park-specific SF pass be?

The CF chain-wide passes are still in the $140-$150 range with no quanitity price breaks. (which is still probably too low itself :) )

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Cropsey said:
Also I think this is a big misstep on CF's part. I don't remember Six Flags ever dropping their pass price after previously offering at the advertised "lowest price ever"!

The idea of the low season pass price is to train and encourage the public to by them as early as possible. Money in the bank early on. Now the public is being trained that if you wait a bit, it might go down even lower so no sense of urgency to grab that season pass early to get the deal.

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Isn't that exactly what SF did a few weeks ago? They were advertising GADV's $79.99 price as the lowest price of the season and then they had the 1 day sale where it was $59.99, a lot of people got annoyed over that.

O.K. This is where I have a problem with this. CF had to go with the flow with Paramount, blah, blah, blah.

However, CF was doing the same thing with season passes before they decided to purchase GL and then the Paramount parks.

Before all those purchases, they were selling season passes and allowing access to any of their parks. Why now are they exempt and allowed to do the mulit-pass pricing along with just purchasing one park season pass pricing?

So, if you own a certain amount of parks, it's o.k. to have a menu of how you sell your season passes?

My answer: NO

They only did this recently because they had CP and GL within a close distance.

You're totally missing the point. They're going back to this pack pricing because it's what those markets were accustomed to. Taking it away from those markets had a measurable and negative impact on attendance.

Trust me, KI's attendance was way down last year. HH is the only thing that saved it.

Paramount never lost money doing this and about every year installed ten million in the park.

They aren't giving nothing away. Expeically getting the whole family in more than once and getting meals and souvineer purchaces that wouldn't happen by selling like SF does to teens only.

Candian Wonderland was also a much more rounded park than most of the Paramount parks, Theres tons to do in every catagory from Flatrides, to coasters to kiddy rides, Quite simply other than Hershey, THE BEST SEASONAL PARK on the continent.

Chuck

To say nothing of their buffet--which includes actual QUALITY food (pierogies, ribs, huge peel-and-eat shrimp) for the fair-to-meh Midway Market price.

I don't know if it's the best seasonal park on the continent. Best CF park? Oh yes. Hell yes!

-'Playa