Six Flags doing away with coupon books

I used a decent amount of these, and thought they were nice perks.

We got the great fry deal several times, the hot dog cart with my 2 year old son, the cheese on a stick, and the discount off merchandise.

I even bought several on ride phots with the $2 discount ... so I could take it to Wal Mart and make copies of course!

Not only are there food deals, but over the last two years, I've gotten sweet discounts on bring a friend days as well as regular operating days for friends buying tickets.

[IMG]SF parks will have biometric entry systems for 2014. Here's a pic taken from todays construction tour at SFNE of the turn styles ripped out in the front entrance. Sky screamer has gone vertical and should be up in a couple of weeks.

Mark my words... whether it's obvious or not, they won't actually be used most of the time.

Meanwhile CF has updated their method for counting daily attendance:

Actually, that's probably not a fair joke to make anymore. But a few years ago it would've been hi-lar-i-ous.

Ugh. SFoT did a couple of dry runs of the biometric system last fall and lines to get into the park were horrendous. Like 45 minutes or so. Of my 3 family members with a pass, all 3 of us were asked to scan 3 times each (about 15 seconds) and none of us ended up scanning correctly. I can't imagine what this will do in the middle of summer when the crowds are pouring in.

Sea World Orlando is really picky about their scanning (even worse than Busch - perhaps it's a more-precise matching algorithm?). A line of 20-25 people can easily run more than a minute per guest...

If it is going to take longer to enter the park, I hope they have more entrances open. With the change last year to Gold passes having early entry, they typically didn't open the gates until 10 minutes before opening for them and waited until opening for everyone else. Even with the Gold pass entrance, they only had 2 open at Great Adventure every time I was there for opening last year and sometimes didn't get into the park until regular opening time (not that early entry helped much since the rides didn't open any earlier). I can only imagine how long it will take the non Gold passholders to get in now.

Ironically, they say they'll get through faster. But I can tell you with a reasonable degree of certainty that, if they implemented it this way, they can mostly do the scanning as theater. I've heard that Disney may only actually attempt to match every fifth scan when they first open and lines are long.

My wife always has trouble with these scanners. Certain places were better than others and I thought maybe they had better scanners. But watching as they tried to get a valid scan, I noticed that they typically just gave up and over rode the system. So although the electronics weren't any better, the human part of the system was (at least more practical). If you pass the Total Recall sweat test, they let you through.

Waiting in line I almost feel like I should warn people in line behind us to pick another line. I know I typically wish I could. LOL

"Two... weeks..."

[IMG]Here's what the new passes will look like, which you still have to use to get into the parkinglot and you will need it to get into early entry for gold pass holders.