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Gold & Platinum Pass Exclusive Preview Night 04/15/16 (5-10 p.m)


Melody
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Got all the rides I wanted/planned to do.  Very satisfied with ride ops.  Food service is still sorely lacking, but the server gave me enough food to feed a small army. 

 

Time to turn in, gotta be up in five hours for work.  Ya'll have a great opening day!

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Oh, yeah, my Dorney Park and Wildwater Kings Island Soak City Kingdom Platinum Pass scanned perfectly at the gate.

The lines at both Skylines were beyond silly. The LaRosa's in Rivertown had pizza meals sitting under the lights--and was locked tight as a drum. The Juke Box Diner, ditto.

A lot of opportunities to take in cash from guests--from games to restaurants, were closed.

The soccer place seemed to be doing a good business. I will likely go back tomorrow, but will probably Putz around at lunch. Including travel time, it'll likely be faster...and better. Part of a best day ever.

 

I like the line "A lot of opportunities to take in cash from guests" - I have a great couple stories to that:

 

My friend decided to add dining plan to pass.  Renewed at Kings Island but visited Carowinds a couple weeks back and had issues with pass, so they reissued pass there.  Kings Island couldn't add it as the platinum pass was "issued" at Carowinds so that now became the home park and was told by supervisors that dining plan has to be added at "home park".  I watched and they showed me the screen that clearly does not allow them to override or even get to a point to be able to add it.

 

While waiting in one of the longest nights of the night (Banshee Twist line), customer in front of me tried to purchase 6 season long drink cups.  Guess what, same situation.  Could not add drink plan to cup since his platinum pass had another park as his "home park".  That was a good 15 minute delay as supervisors kept trying and instead of moving guest over to another register or open another temporarily, the line stalled.  And a display of inefficiency, during such time the customer also purchased 2 Banshee Twist cones.  It was amusing watching the worker go up and down the register row holding two cones trying to figure out whose they were - they were not special order, probably could have gone to any register and had someone that was buying one.  Instead worker paced the register row for 5 minutes trying to find who they belonged to (and thus eliminating said worker from producing more cones).  Said customer was getting irate with register attendant over trying to buy 6 cups that they were not paying attention to the cone situation.

 

I imagine that the photo plan will suffer such fate of "home park" issues - especially since that is not a platinum offer yet.

 

I guess that they could re-issue a new pass with Kings Island on it to make it the "home park"?

 

I know of a few on this forum that will not be surprised by this, but it really is amazing that their system is that quirky that they cannot accept your money to add stuff to a platinum pass regardless of the "home park".

 

And I agree the food line speeds were horrible - and will only be worse on Saturday.  So many suggestions on this site that would improve efficiency and many I know have passed on concerns to park, yet no improvement.

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There were some issues last night with dining plans, especially on platinum passes including mine.

Went to Chicken Shack about 6:30pm and the system was able to pull me up when the pass was scanned. The system displayed a message stating that the dining plan was used already that night. It was not. A couple others in my group had the same issue over at Hank's. The manager at Chicken Shack gave me the food and told me to have a good day.

Went to Guest Relations on my way out of the park, the issue itself should be resolved and should be working as normal now.

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I too had issues with the dining plan. I had it last year on my dining plan with no trouble. Last night I went to use it at Chick-Fil-A and it wouldn't scan. A supervisor took my pass and asked my name and headed to the back and was gone for reveal minutes. The cashier was friendly and said that they've had issues with some of the Platinum passes. I stepped to the side dishes could help others while I waited.

The supervisor came back and said the dinning plan was on the pass but it needed to be processed. I had to go to Guest Relations as they had to do it in person and not remotely. No food for me. I then headed to Guest Relations.

There were several KI team members helping guests and they seemed very calm and not overwhelmed. The gentleman who helped me said that they've been having issues as some of the platinum passes were showing things as a single/one time use instead of season long. He fixed it, checked it himself, and then had his supervisor confirm that it was now good. He was very friendly, calm and polite. He said it was his first day and I wouldn't have known if he hadn't told me. I was able to use it later at La Rosa's with no issue.

So internally, yes this was a bit of annoying situation. I don't understand why something I had last year with no issues would have issues this year - especially as they were both purchased online and KI is my home park. However, externally there was no point in me getting upset or short with anyone. They clearly didn't choose their processing system and handled everything in a calm and professional manner. I also realize that some quirks or gaps in the system can't be discovered until it is being used by real people, not by team during training. That was our experience when we launched our new reservation system.

I just hope for their sake, they have lots more people in Guest Relations tomorrow to assist the guests when these issues happen again. As well as reevaluate their back of house processing system. Knowing a tiny bit of BOH systems, I'm surprised that it is this difficult. In theory, the company that built the system shouldn't have made it almost impossible to assist a Platinum pass guest from a different park. Or, was it set up that way so any additions to the pass have to be made at the home park so the home park gets that revenue? Regardless, Cedar Fair is losing a bit of potential revenue from guests that want to spend a chunk of change by adding something to their pass.

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We didn't have any Platinum Pass dining issues other then the guy getting confused on how to input a chili cheese sandwiches instead of coney! Otherwise, it was a blast. I missed last year's preview night because I was out of town but my daughter said last night was way more fun.

And we didn't see Banshee run a single train. Not a big deal because The Bat at night is pretty awesome.

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I had issues using a drink cup voucher from when I renewed my pass. A supervisor told me they forgot to load them into to registers and they took down all the registers for a quick update at some point last night I think that was around 7PM. I bet dining plans had a similar issue.

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Now I'm having the same issues with my drink plan as I'm having with my dining plan. Not to mention my pass showed "single use parking" not "season long parking" when I got to the park this morning.

It's only Opening Day and I'm confident everything will work itself out.

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I was dismayed that they didn't try to remove the human grease stains on Diamondback's seatbacks/restraints this year.

I noticed there were like 2 or 3 brand new looking seats on the trains and the test seat looks brand new. 

The first time I rode this weekend the seat I sat in had a brand new clam shell. 

The park may start replacing these, but they're not cheap. 

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I'm surprised nobody has came up with a solution to the grease stains. The only thing I can come up with is S&S. They made their foam easily replaceable and claim they are the only manufacturer to do that, they showed it at IAPPA a few years back I think. When I am at Cedar Point, the seats on Power Tower are spottless unlike another Drop Tower I know.....

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