Platinum Flash Pass - New For 2010

Lord Gonchar said:
^^ Ha! So this trumps the VIP if the only thing you're concerned about is sheer number of rides.

And yet there is still something that trumps the Platinum Bot. Not sure what it is called but we got it at Magic Mountain this past November. Only because of someone who knew someone we were able to get this wristband that allowed us access to any ride via the exit with any amount of multiple rides in any seat without waiting. We did not take advantage of the multiple rides but we certainly did take advantage of no waiting via the exit. It was a very nice treat considering I thought we would simply be given a Flash Pass.

I dont think a lot of you understand that these 100(or 600) people using the platinum pass are essentially 100(or 600) people less in the regular stand by line.

So basically instead of having these people in front of you waiting(without and virtual system), they pay a price to be able to roam the park instead of standing in line with you(the non flash pass holder) and enter thru the exit line. At the end it is the same amount of people being given rides

Thats true but the virtual line folks can be "waiting" in more than one line at the same time (if there are hour long waits for 4 rides and the virtual line folks can ride in 10 mins, they can effectively be in all 4 lines at the same time riding each ride once or even twice with re-rides in that hour). So you are multiplying the effectively number of folks who are waiting in lines while keeping the physical number of folks in the park/lines the same. Feeling of the park in terms of the number of folks you see is the same but how crowded the park appears based on wait times is increased. Not sure the increase is significant for most people though based on the limited number of passes. I don't have a problem with the system.

I know this topic is a little old, but here is something related. For Six Flags over Georgia's new coaster:

Platinum Flash Passes will have access to book rides on the new Dare Devil Dive Coaster. Gold Flash Passes and Regular Flash Passes will not have the ability to book rides on teh[sic] new Dare Devil Dive Coaster.[/sic]

Link

Has any other park ever done anything like this before?

I saw that a while back. Magic Mountain does this with X2, I believe. I guess that means that if I do finally get down to SFoG, I will need to spend a lot more money on the upgraded flashpass, or else wait in a ridiculous line for the new ride.

My opinion is that busy parks like this should not install low capacity rides. It's already apparent that they expect it to be a problem, judging from this policy. I'll never understand why parks do this to their customers.

^ At Six Flags Over Georgia you can pay $15 in addition to your regular flash pass PER RIDE on the Dare Devil Dive. I laughed out loud when I learned that paying $15 for a single ride was an option. The line for the ride stayed at a solid 1 hour 45 minutes all day so I was quite glad that some rain cleared out the place at the end of the day, the ride was a ton of fun and the restraints are the best I've ever encountered.

As far as DDD goes, I don't see this as a money grab as much as I see it as a way to keep the line tolerable.

An hour and 45 minutes is a really short wait for a new coaster at any park, in my opinion.

I think the whole Flashpass idea kinda lessens the need for the season pass. A season pass with parking for SF Chi GA is 74.99 and then $70 for the parking pass. That's almost CF platinum. Now, here comes Flash pass Platinum. All the rides that you can get in one day. For $85 for the 1st person. That might be all I need in one year to head to the park and get the FP Plat. This is prolly what I would do I don't want to spend weekend at the parks waiting for rides.

I like CF's passes better because they give you a little ERT time at the beginning of the day and then you can do whatever.,. I can leave at this point. I'm done this a couple time already and play to do it some more. It seems to work fine. Charging $85 for a FPP is like buying the whole season pass for 1 day only. Just me feeling about it.

Pat -- CaptainAx.

Of course, the SF parks want season passholders to shell out the extra cash for a Flashpass every once in a while.

I like the ERT instead of flashpass idea better too. It's less intrusive to everyone else during the daily operations.

And to save me from myself, that's all I have to say about that. :)

LostKause said:

I like the ERT instead of flashpass idea better too. It's less intrusive to everyone else during the daily operations.

I'm not going to attempt Gonch's "wayback machine" idea...but I will say that I posted about 4-5 years ago that I totally disagreed with Busch's re-rides for Platinum passholders, and instead would have preferred an hour or so of ERT once or twice a month. The disruptions to operations caused by unpredictable re-riding (and that messing up guests trying to ride as a larger group) were just too much...I wouldn't re-ride during busier times just because of the delays it caused to ops. Then, also having to explain to guests waiting that a passholder chose to "ride again"...made the employees fairly unhappy. They weren't always above showing it... ;)

I like what Great Adventure does, they have 2 Friday nights a year one in May and one in September where the park is only open for passholders (the one in May usually has some school groups left that were there during the day but the lines are still short). It gives you a chance to get a lot of rides in with little to no waiting. The whole park is open except 1 or 2 kiddie areas and Flashpass isn't sold.

The only problem I really have with Platinum Flashpass is the few times I have seen it used at coasters where a certain row is blocked off for Flashpass, they still let Platinum Flashpass users sit wherever they want. I remember last year they were only running 1 train on Scream Machine and instead of sitting in car 6, they let the Platinum Flashpass users sit in the front row and by riding twice in a row, the front row line basically didn't move for almost 10 minutes. Even today, they made an announcement at Runaway Mine Train how if you get a Platinum Flashpass, you sit wherever you want.

I love days like today where people drop all that extra coin for Flash Pass, and their line is almost as long as the one for the regular folks. Longest line I stood in was Green Lantern, and that was only 35 minutes or so. Shortest line was Nitro/Dark Knight/Batman which were walk on and re-ride.

Even Superman was unbelievably short. Not a walk on because they take so long to load, but walk on to the platform and 2 trains you were on.

67440Dodge said:
I love days like today where people drop all that extra coin for Flash Pass, and their line is almost as long as the one for the regular folks. Longest line I stood in was Green Lantern, and that was only 35 minutes or so. Shortest line was Nitro/Dark Knight/Batman which were walk on and re-ride.

Even Superman was unbelievably short. Not a walk on because they take so long to load, but walk on to the platform and 2 trains you were on.

What day was this?

It was yesterday Mike. I think because it's so close to schools getting out here that there weren't many school trips happening.

If I remember correctly, Six Flags used to advertise their Gold Flash Pass as reducing the wait time by 75% of the actual wait. But since the addition of the Platinum Pass, it now only reads:

With a Gold The Flash Pass, you enjoy a significant reduction in wait time allowing you to ride more rides with less wait.

Does anyone know what the new reduction is? I'm going to SFGAdv on Labor Day and am preparing for the worst.

I bet there isn't an exact number. I imagine that they discovered that it fluctuated up and down to a certain degree, and that the claim of 75% was not entirely correct, so they changed the wording.

My wild guess is somewhere between a 50% and 90% reduction. lol

I remember last year with a posted 90 minute wait on El Toro, our time would be ready about 4 minutes after we reserved it. I don't remember it being longer than that at any other ride, they were all pretty instantaneous.

Basically, if you weren't standing at the ride entrance when you reserved it, there's no way it won't be ready by the time you get there. We'd re-reserve a ride just before boarding, and by the time the ride was over, we were good to go again. It was fairly absurd.

Thanks for the info.