Six flags season pass parking change?

Lord Gonchar said:
It's the art of business, I guess.

GoBucks89 said:
More of an art than a science.

And that's the beauty of it to me.

If there were a 'right' answer everyone would just do that and this thread would be a lot shorter. :)

Lord Gonchar said:
Maybe someone needs to try free admission, but parking is $200 per car? ;)

LOL, I did have to have it explained to me at Idlewild why it was around $30 to park my car...but *then* I was OK with it. How come no one here told me how that worked beforehand? ;)

For the uninitiated, Idlewild charges you admission at entrance to the parking lot.

It was just reported on screamscape, that parking at six flags great america has been raised to $20 per car.

They also mention that six flags great adventure has also raised the price to park your car up to $17.

Those are the numbers we've been using throughout the course of this conversation.

$20 bucks is ridiculous!!!
I am going to SFOG in June and I hope that the price is still $15 if it is more then I will find a place to park my car and walk to the park! :)

Several hotels are within walking distance of sfog. A few even have free shuttles.

A quick look at the Six Flags website says SFOG parking is still $15.

Funny thing about SFOG parking is that when we'd visit (been years now) we would usually pay extra to park in the little non-park owned lot right near the entrance as you come in off of 20. So convenient to just swing in there.

Is that little parking area still there? And how much do they charge now that the park charges $15? I think parking was $10 back in the day and they charged $12 or something.

EDIT - I wrote this before I saw Gonch's reply, so take this post as if they did change the parking fee to $20.

---

Yeah. $20 is a bit steep. I might happily pay that for a prime parking spot, but not for a normal spot a quarter of a mile from the park entrance. It says to me, "We can't wait to take all of your money today. Prepare to empty out your entire wallet. Have a nice day... MWAA HA HA HA HA!"

But, if people want to please their spoiled children, or, like me, they really want to visit a park, they will pay it anyways. You'd think that they would want to lower prices to entice more people to visit, with the insane price of gas and all. That would be a nice marketing tactic right there. "Because of the high gas prices, we've lowered the price of parking this year!"

Think about this. Is the park going to put the high parking price out there on their website for all to see when they are deciding to go or not? How is that going to make people feel when they arrive at the park, possibly driving a great distance, only to be met with a $20 parking fee that is half of one admission ticket? What are they going to be charging for parking in a few years? $30? $40?

I like the idea of raising the gate price and offering a low parking price. There is no value in parking your car, and there is a great value in being able to enjoy all a park has to offer.

LostKause said:
I like the idea of raising the gate price and offering a low parking price. There is no value in parking your car, and there is a great value in being able to enjoy all a park has to offer.

First off, I agree. I've agreed with this logic from the start.

With that said, it's just semantics.

$50 ticket with free parking.
$30 ticket with $20 parking.
$40 ticket with $10 parking.
$15 ticket with $35 parking.
Free admission with $50 parking.

It's all $50 to go to the park no matter how you word it.

So yes, there's no reason not to create the veil of good will by calling it one thing (higher ticket price with free parking) but a rational thought process understands there is no difference (low ticket price and high parking cost).

SFGAm currently has an online deal for opening weekend: single-day admission for $19.81. That's right: cheaper than parking there! Normal online price is $37, so less than double the parking fee. (Of course I realize most cars will have more than one person in them, so divide the cost by the number of occupants, blah blah etc.)

I *think* the last time I went by car, the little lot was there and was actually exactly the same or possibly even marginally cheaper than the "real" parking lot.

birdhombre said:
SFGAm currently has an online deal for opening weekend: single-day admission for $19.81. That's right: cheaper than parking there! Normal online price is $37, so less than double the parking fee. (Of course I realize most cars will have more than one person in them, so divide the cost by the number of occupants, blah blah etc.)

I really can't believe they haven't even blinked when it comes to gate integrity since Burke. Stuff like that just floors me, although it does show what kind of margins they have on everything else.

maXairMike said:
I really can't believe they haven't even blinked when it comes to gate integrity since Burke. Stuff like that just floors me, although it does show what kind of margins they have on everything else.

In their defense it's an opening-weekend only promotion celebrating 30 years ($19.81 - *nudge nudge* get it?)

But that's still pretty hilarious that the ticket is less than parking. They're now officially closer to free admission and a $100 parking fee than not.

Woo! Our promotions at oT are for $19.61 admission. I am so going to take my extra 20c and get a square inch of parking.

Lord Gonchar said:
A quick look at the Six Flags website says SFOG parking is still $15.

Funny thing about SFOG parking is that when we'd visit (been years now) we would usually pay extra to park in the little non-park owned lot right near the entrance as you come in off of 20. So convenient to just swing in there.

Is that little parking area still there? And how much do they charge now that the park charges $15? I think parking was $10 back in the day and they charged $12 or something.

Yeah, that parking area is still there (at least it was when I visited this time last month) and they were charging $20.

I actually don't have a problem with the price of the parking. I do have a huge problem when it comes to their season pass parking model, and I think there are several issues with it...

(1) There are no substantial discounts available for the parking charge. In this day and age when you can find discounts just about everywhere for gate admission into the parks there's absolutely nothing available for the price of the parking (with the exception of the 5% Discover card discount). It's very rare these days when I will pay full price for anything simply because there are coupons, Groupons, and a lot of half-price deal sites floating around everywhere for lots of stuff I need. I'd be curious to see how much of an effect it would have if they offered a season pass discount for the parking even if they raised the price of the pass to compensate for the discount.

(2) I still haven't heard or seen a good reason that they eliminated the "buy it at one and it's good for all parks" season pass parking benefit. They're going to have access to the validity of your pass anyway since admission is valid across the board using the pass, so I can't imagine why they wouldn't carry that over with the season pass parking. They're all using the same computers that have access to the same information. I spoke with supervisors at two different Six Flags parks and neither could provide a logical explanation as to why that policy was discontinued this year. That brings me to this...

(3) The biggest issue for me in this is that they are not offering a season pass parking option across all parks at any price. When the news of Six Flags making the season pass parking option park-specific I was sure they would at least have the option to have an upgrade option to any park parking over the park-specific season parking fee. I think most people who travel a lot would have gladly ponied that money up for just that option alone. Six Flags seems to be pretty good at pricing things out at various price points (Flash Pass anyone?) so I fail to see how this could have been overlooked.

I live in Cincinnati. The closest Six Flags to me is five hours away, and yet I had 23 different visits to parks last year. The park I visited the most was actually Great Adventure (10 times), so even if I got season pass parking for that park I would have had to have shelled out (13 visits x $15/visits) $195 just to park at those locations alone. Add in the cost of the season parking option at Great Adventure ($50) and the season pass ($80) and you're looking at $325 total cost. Last year that same pass plus parking would have cost me $130 total. By way of comparison, a Platinum Pass to Cedar Fair parks (which includes parking at all parks) costs $165 and a Busch Platinum Pass (which includes not only general parking at all parks but preferred at many of them as well) starts at $150 per year (two-year minimum, purchased at BGW).

The "mistake" I made this year was buying my season pass at Magic Mountain. I was out there for two visits in January, so it made sense to buy the pass at that time instead of day tickets. I knew that I going to visit two days and two days only (the whole living in Cincinnati thing), so buying season pass parking helped me zero there. My next two visits were to Six Flags Over Georgia in March. I knew I was going to visit that park twice that weekend and probably again later this year when Dare Devil Dive opens. They told me that you can't upgrade to season pass parking when your pass is issued from another park.

The point to all this is that each incremental visit (considering admission and parking only) I make to any Six Flags park this year is going to cost me at least $15 each time I go, whereas any visit I make to any Busch park or Cedar Fair park is going to cost me $0. I'm already at the point where on a dollars spent basis all three passes have cost me about the same, but one set of parks is going to continue to cost me money each visit and some others won't. The value to me lies in the package. Six Flags package (or in my case, a lack of a package) is much less appealing this year than are the Cedar Fair and Busch offers.

It just feels as though Six Flags is throwing people who travel to different parks under the bus. Six Flags is NOT charging people who go to the same park over and over who buy season passes and season pass parking. They are charging the parking toll who everyone who ventures to a different park in the chain, even though your admission is covered. That gets me back to point #1. Why not at the very least as a gesture of goodwill allow people who have season passes from other parks to get a substantial discount on the parking? I just fail to see how offering season pass parking at one park precludes you from offering season pass parking valid for all parks without seeming like they're completely discounting the people who do like to go to more than one of their parks each season. This whole thing just has a very weird feel to it.

^ Well said.

Gary Dowdell said:
I do have a huge problem when it comes to their season pass parking model, and I think there are several issues with it...

I still think all of that is an issue to a very small subset of their customers. I'm not discounting a single thing you said, but I do think you're the exception. Not only the exception, but in terms of the millions and millions and millions of people that visit all of the Six Flags parks each year - practically an anomoly. A statistical error.

I'm not going to pretend to know why it changed. I'm not going to pretend I understand being pissed about it. I'm not even going to pretend I understand the idea that it's a bad choice or will hurt them in some way.

All I know is that it is what it is and while your arguments make sense to a degree, you need to understand just how atypical of a Six Flags visitor you are and that, yes, you got thrown under the bus at the expense of something (that mysterious 'why?' we've all been wondering about) more valuable to them.

But the one point Gary made that I thought REALLY spoke volumes about the misreading of the customer base is that this new policy completely fails to address the many many people who they really don't "fleece" appropriately. The local passholder with the parking pass who visits nearly every day during the summer at *only* their home park.

The new ad campaign: "One Flag Less Revenue"? :)

But are the folks who visit the same park every day more sensitive to paying more each trip than those who visit different parks throughout the year and/or less likely to go with a carload of people to share the cost of parking?

And Gary said he would gladly pony up an upcharge for an all parks season parking permit but I think the question is how much will the number of visits to the parks decrease because he has to pay for parking each time. Depending on how much you otherwise spend per visit, the parks may make more money overall charging you for parking every time.

I don't know if those numbers would hold true (for all passholders in those groups not just a few who I may know or who post here) but SF should have better info on whether it makes sense. And what happens next year will parking may give an indication that they got it wrong.

I just read on Screamscape that the parking fee was raised to $17 at SFGAdv, and $20 at SFGAm.