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Warning for Fright Lane Purchasers...


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A few friends and I visited Kings Island for Haunt this past Friday. The lines were not that bad for most of the haunts, but we decided to purchase Fright Lane to ensure we could get through all the haunts with some time to spare for night rides.

We all had a great night together, but 1 minor issue (and the way the park handled it) definitely ruined the strongly positive vibe we had all night.

When you purchase Fright Lane, you get a very nice collectible skeleton key on a lanyard with a punch card for all 11 haunted houses and 1 extra trip through a house of your choice. The problem is that the Fright Lane punch card can break off fairly easily from the lanyard after hours of fatigue on rides, etc.

We fortunately made it through 10 out of 11 of the houses together, but my friend's punch card broke off on Adventure Express. The last Fright Lane house we had to do together was Urgent Scare, so we went there and told the Fright Lane entrance host what had happened. The 3 of us that still had our cards showed that we all had the exact same ones punched together, and this was our last one. My friend that lost his card on Adventure Express showed the entrance host his metal skeleton key, his dated receipt from the Fright Lane purchase, and his matching credit card used to purchase it.

The entrance host said he couldn't allow him to enter, but he'd call his supervisor to discuss. They talked for a couple minutes over the phone, and then the supervisor said he was on his way. They had a 5-minute meeting to discuss what to do, and then they called a second supervisor over. After waiting a total of about 15 minutes, the 3 came over to us and said, "Sorry, but you must have your punch card to enter; there's nothing we can do here."

The original entrance host apologized and said that they have had other reports of the same exact issue.

Of course our extremely positive night suddenly turned to discussion of how poorly that situation was handled. If there is a known issue that's occurring and an honest group of adults that are clearly together with proof of purchase, it's silly to make such a big deal over a $3-4 value, especially when it's costing the park next to nothing. Again, the damage this did to our night and to future business at KI will far exceed the cost of making this situation right. I really feel that Kings Island needs to train / empower their employees to better handle these situations.

At this point, it was near the end of the night, and we decided to leave. On the way out, it was discovered that another friend's punch card was nearly broken through and hanging on by a thread. So, please be aware if you're buying Fright Lane, those punch cards can break off unexpectedly even if you're being careful. I'd recommend the park reinforce the lanyard attachment hole and change to a closed loop attachment instead of that clamp, which can open if bumped.

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On one hand, the op and the area supervisor appear to do their job by the letter of the book. No pass no entrance. On the other hand, they should have either escorted your group to have it taken care of or bring someone who can.

But whats to stop someone from from using their stamps, saying they lost it and re-entering with the rest of the crew at a later time.

Whats right isnt always fair, whats fair isnt always right.

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And what happens if the pass is lost before any house is visited? "sorry...but...."

Unfortunately, guest relations is going to give the same spiel.

Why not use the same wrist band concept as Fastlane except with the bar code scanner?...better yet why not combine the Fastlane an the Frightlane into one package with the bar coded wristband? The band is less likely to be lost.

No method is totally foolproof, except maybe cash at the door. (my preferred method).

It appears that the guy had proof that he purchased the ticket and they weren't trying to scam anyone, I don't see any harm here and agree that the park lost NO money and should have let them all through.

If there is such a rush to scam, the park should look at alternative methods.

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That's unfortunate. I'm glad you were able to do all the houses except the last one before you had an issue.

Sounds like the ride host did a great job. He wouldn't let someone enter without the card (which is his job), but recognized the situation as a unique case and called his supervisor. He then apologized again when the supervisors made the decision. I'm glad to see that, because too often ride hosts get a lot of blame for policies they have no control over.

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I agree that the entrance host was doing his job exactly as instructed, and he was a very nice guy. He clearly wanted to let us in, but he stated that he didn't want to lose his job for not following what he was instructed to do.

Another thing that everyone should know: The entrance host also claimed some were losing their skeleton keys and only had the punch card, but they couldn't let those guests enter either. You must have both your skeleton key and your punch card to enter Fright Lane. That's interesting to me, because I will admit that the skeleton key was a little heavy on the neck, and I was thinking of taking it off and putting it in my pocket. I could totally see others doing this, and then losing the key out of their pocket.

For the record, I created this thread for a few reasons:

1. I wanted to genuinely warn others purchasing Fright Lane that you must keep track of both the punch card and skeleton key to enter, and it's easy to lose one or the other, based on my observations and what the entrance host told me. I used Cedar Point's Fright Lane, and they used a closed loop connection on the card versus KI's metal clamp. With KI's, you can bump the spring-loaded clamp when closing a restraint or such, and then you lose your card. Then the clamp is attached to a slot very near the top of the card with no reinforcement. It will easily fatigue and break. I just picked mine up (by the card) in the car to look at it when making this thread, and the weight of the skeleton key broke my card off. So that's a 75% failure rate in our group of 4 after a night of fatigue on the card. That's a problem on the park, and they can easily correct it.

2. I was curious of others' opinions on how the park handled this.

3. I wanted to present my own opinion on how Kings Island handled this. Which is: While I don't feel the park technically cheated us, I think they made a very poor business decision. This was a tiny blip of a problem, and the way Kings Island handled it could seriously harm their future business. I want this park to succeed and would like to be proud and confident of the way they treat their guests and deal with problems. The way the problem was handled was not necessarily the fault of anyone we dealt with, but somewhere upper management is training their employees embarrassingly wrong with policies that are purely technical. This reminds me of the kid that grew past his junior pass threshold and the park wouldn't let him enter. Some issues will require the use of common sense, and it's a shame that KI doesn't seem to be getting it.

Also, it was too near the end of the night to visit Guest Services and come back; Urgent Scare would have been closed. However, I will be contacting Guest Services with this issue so that they are at least aware of what happened.

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I am very sorry to hear that! I had a similar situation happen to me about two weeks ago, but it wasn't near as bad. My friend and I went to get our passes renewed; he was upgrading his gold and I was downgrading mine from platinum to gold. We were the only two people getting our passes renewed at this time and their was about 10 workers in the room where they take your picture. Only one was helping us, and it still took about 15 minutes for this very simple exchange. I know 15 min isn't bad but it the fact that 9 female workers were standing in the corner just looking at us and not even trying to help.

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Meanwhile, a Six Flags Gold Pass Renewal, switching from Great Adventure to Six Flags New England, was handled swiftly at the ticket window then processed at the front gate in less than 20 seconds. And for essentially the same privileges as a $180 Cedar Fair Platinum Pass, I paid $49.99, tax included.

Somewhere one chain or the other is whacky.

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Even Hartland had a quick and painless season pass renewal system in place this year... Well, as long as you were able to physically go to the park, that is...

Why Cedar Fair has so much trouble with today's computer technology is beyond me...

Perhaps once I have the 5 years experience that they were looking for, I could help them out with their software.

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Even Hartland had a quick and painless season pass renewal system in place this year... Well, as long as you were able to physically go to the park, that is...

Why Cedar Fair has so much trouble with today's computer technology is beyond me...

Perhaps once I have the 5 years experience that they were looking for, I could help them out with their software.

Only problem I have with technology with Cedar Fair is the whole redirect to Accesso from mobile thing. I hate that. When they tweet links it goes to that on mobile. I don't think I stand alone when I say I check social media almost exclusively on mobile. The park has maintained that they're aware of the issue and are working on it. It'll be a good day when that's completed.
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