The 'Places to stay' section of visitkingsisland.com now links to to a private label booking engine instead of to each hotel's website. Unfortunately, restrictive cancellation terms (in addition to the hotel's cancellation policy) are only revealed after clicking "Terms & Conditions" at the end of the booking process.

 

As always, make sure to know what you're agreeing to before you click "I agree". Hopefully Cedar Fair gets this vendor to improve their policies and fee disclosures; people making an Ohio hotel reservation through an Ohio park's website probably don't want to go to binding arbitration in California.

Sigh.

Money, money, money.

Flash, too?

No Flash. At least, I was able to get to the payment screen without being asked to activate Flash. (I keep it disabled, and enable it temporarily only when I actually need it.)

And Im willing to bet Expedia or hotels.com smokes them in both price and better  "terms and conditions".

It's Flash-free and even works on mobile devices.

 

 

Money, money, money.

 

Cedar Fair's going to want some of that when driving business to a hotel. See Google, Expedia, TripAdvisor, et al. This is just a less-than-ideal way to do it.

 

 

 

And Im willing to bet Expedia or hotels.com smokes them in both price and better  "terms and conditions".

 

The base rates seem to be the same as the flexible rates offered on the hotels' own websites and travel aggregation sites. You just get to pay a 6% fee (undisclosed & lumped in with "taxes & fees") for the privilege of added cancellation restrictions & binding arbitration. Depending on when you cancel, it's possible to be stuck paying the vendor for a night that the hotel never bills for.

 

Sites like Expedia generally don't charge for booking hotels; they instead pocket the difference between a wholesale rate and the retail rate they charge. This vendor has to make a profit (with much lower volumes than a site like Expedia) and pay Cedar Fair.