CedarPointer

I know people kept saying the Mack shuttle doodad wasn't the real Kingda Ka replacement, so I guess it must be this!

I just assume it'll be bad news (i.e. no fireworks) so they're holding off until they can try to lump it in with some form of good news.

I'm still confused why there was one (1) photo floating around when they did the botched International Street makeover that had the newer trash cans with the classic International Street paint job, and then it was just never discussed again.

So, it's not for charity or anything?

If that's true, which they're refusing to confirm or deny, maybe they should say that instead of "we can change whatever we want whenever we want, but here's $10 to go away".

I'm just hoping that the "immediate boarding" version either isn't available as an all-season product next year or is significantly more expensive. It is pretty funny, though, seeing the sour grapes about this change from the "well, it SAID subject to change when you bought it!" crowd.

One thing I'd like to point out, from an archived copy of their site from August: Is their excuse really going to be that they meant it was the lowest price of 2025 on 2026 passes? But at least the new CEO wants to "earn people's trust back".

I think the biggest problem is how they are seemingly incapable of figuring out what they're selling before they take people's money for it. It's becoming way too frequent that their finances don't go the way they want, so they either take away something people already purchased or give away the gate and ruin the park experience to make a quick buck. And then they wonder why people are increasingly choosing other local entertainment options.

My biggest issue is that preferred parking and the VIP lounge are already comically overcrowded thanks to the clearance sale on passes that ran for like 3 months, and now they've just given free access to a bunch of people who intentionally chose not to purchase the prestige pass. You already have the park defenders scolding people for having an issue with it, too, since they didn't upgrade everyone who bought during the clearance sale, just the people who bought it after that. Presumably, though, a good number of people purposely didn't buy a prestige pass since the big sale, since Six Flags felt the need to make a public announcement about it. They did something similar at Wonderland when they discontinued the regular season pass (after selling tons of them) and replaced it with the silver pass, and upgraded everyone who had purchased a regular season pass to a gold pass, and the people who paid extra for gold passes were basically told "tough luck, your fault for buying a gold pass and not a red pass". And then they wonder why people are hesitant to give Six Flags their money.

I'm sure everyone who shelled out for a prestige pass will be thrilled at their pass being devalued even more than it already was.

That's adorable! Do they plan on having someone watch you eat, or...?

I have to imagine converting to a more modern technology would be cheaper than replacing it, and I don't think the park can survive another high profile ride removal with no replacement. Using the more roomy trains that the Six Flags FoF clones have would be really nice too, but I assume that would require physical changes to the station platforms and maybe catwalks.

Rumor has it the ride overhauled itself yesterday.

Interesting that it apparently uses cameras to detect the flashlights.

I can never figure out how to find anything there, so I'm guessing other people are in the same boat.

They are seriously going to have to figure out how to handle Preferred Parking now that they oversold the prestige passes so badly. It was especially bad tonight since they plowed all of the snow into one lane of the road along the walkway to the park, so you had people circling around trying to go both directions in one lane.

Just discovered that your passes only show under your home park in the app, so if you're at another park, you have to switch back to your home park every time you want to scan it (or add it under the other park too, I guess). What an obvious miss.

There's probably some sort of limitation with the website where they can't post hours more than a year out. Magic Mountain also has their hours posted only to one year out from this week. They're definitely not trying to do "normal" operating days that late in November (especially with what a flop the "bonus" weekend was and how cold it's been this year), and it's not like they'd only do two weeks of Winterfest.

I wonder if they'll ever figure out how to make the screen go to full brightness when you open your pass like every other app that has scannable passes/tickets/etc does. It would have been nice if it was more of an upgrade than just "the newer style Cedar Fair app with all the other parks crammed into it".

I like how they didn't fix the issues this had when they rolled it out at Carowinds, like passes not coming over correctly and not showing the photo, people not being able to log in, etc.

No show times in the app, of course. But at least they had time to add yet another pop up ad begging people to buy a pass.

They finally released the food menu. https://www.sixflags.com/blog/kings-island-winterfest-food-guide Strange that it says that the Grain & Grill turkey ball meal also includes all of the other entrees and sides, as does Coney BBQ.

I think the issue that shapes a lot of the discourse about food at the parks is that the passholders who have the dining plan and go all the time know which places have good food. For example, I know that the chicken tenders at Festhaus are the Sysco Special, so I just don't get chicken tenders there and go to Chicken Shack instead. But Tammy Ticketholder who comes to the park once or twice a year isn't going to know that and is going to assume the food is similar quality everywhere since the prices are similar everywhere. And then when she's disappointed with her $17 meal and shares her experience, passholders scold her for not knowing better and drop the classic "I haven't had any problems this year" line. On a totally unrelated note, I wish they had the buffalo chicken flatbread and harvest flatbread at Street Pizza all the time. They definitely looked a little sloppy and could be messy to eat, but I would take those over the regular LaRosa's pizza any day.

They ruined Juke Box when they started premaking all the food. The setup certainly wasn't efficient before, but at least the food was edible. Now it's $20 for a school cafeteria quality burger with no toppings... and they wonder why people aren't spending money in the park. It was nice when they brought the patty melt back, but it's 50/50 whether it's good or whether the bread has the texture of a crouton and the patties are more like shoe leather. On the bright side, I feel like Enrique's has been more consistently good this year. The portions can vary quite a bit (although, with the exception of the protein, I was never told "no" when I asked for more of something), but the quality was more consistent than I remember in the past.

I'm really glad that Yuletide Follies is back.That was by far my favorite show last year, although I wish it was in a better venue where the curtains aren't blowing open during costume changes.