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Meal Deals, and meal deals


Stoan

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I will go so far as to say that food service, quality and pricing all seemed better overall under D. Kinzel's tutelage.

Cedar Fair Food Service is sad these days.

And that's sad.

A best day ever is best spent IN the park spending money. Cedar Fair Food Service, if it can even be called that, makes that hard. Too hard.

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I think the only thing that would keep me from buying the Meal Plan at this point is if they keep increasing the cooldown timer.

 

I like being able to buy a meal right after work, then come back later and get a 2nd before the park closes. Granted it helps living less than 10 minutes away. I have no problem going to KI just to get a meal than leave.

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While it obviously isn't helping much, I don't think the blame for the lines can be placed exclusively on meal plans.

Last Friday, I started looking into getting food at around 3:00. Everywhere had long lines. I kept circling the park until about 8:00, mostly riding rides etc, but keeping my eyes open at the food stalls, periodically getting into a food line for about 5-10 minutes before giving up because it wasn't moving.

Anyway, what I noticed in that time was that ice cream had lines completely blocking the walkway. Cinnabon. Auntie Anne's. Sweet Spot (at least in the fudge/a la carte area). Everywhere you could get food and/or drink, regardless of meal plan acceptance, there was a long line.

So I started thinking about when I used to go to the park, before the last few years that I've had a pass or meal plan. What has changed, other than meal plans and souvenir bottles? Mobile food or drink carts. Remember the little plastic juice bottles shaped like fruit or characters sitting in ice on carts all over the park? Remember people walking around selling soft pretzels off poles? Bags of cotton candy you could buy off someone walking around, and you didn't need to wait behind people wanting to buy drinks? I guess that since people don't carry cash and/or because the park doesn't want their employees to handle cash w/out a register, these have been phased out. I think it is at least somewhat to blame for the lines.

There are some vending machines, which I guess serve a similar purpose, but the options are the same things you can get anywhere. Buying a $5 20-oz Coke doesn't have the allure of drinking sugar water out of a plastic vessel shaped like Scooby Doo. An overpriced movie theater package of M&Ms isn't as interesting as freshly made soft pretzels or cotton candy. It really focuses one on how much the mark-up is, and there are no "deals" to soften the blow, so hardly anyone uses them.

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Had a great dinner at Reds Grill tonight around 5pm. Kelsi was great, attentive, and we got hot food fast. I'm willing to bet we were in and out of there before the people got through the Chick-fil-a line! Filled out a comment card about our good experience.

The ice cream line by Banshee was insane and people wouldn't let us cut through to get to Banshee and The Bat. McDonald's has ice cream as good for $1!

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As many of you may have seen on KIC's Twitter, the Montgomery Inn BBQ sauce at the Chicken Shack has been replaced by a Heinz pump BBQ sauce.  This is in addition to eliminating the sweet chili sauce entirely.  

 

I guess dropping the quality where they think no one will notice to save a few nickels isn't as bad as raising prices by a few nickels in the hopes that no one would notice... right?

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Last year, the burger or two I had at KI was really good.

 

This year, the burgers look terrible.  You can see the extruded meat.  I don't like eating what still looks raw in textture.  It may be chain wide, as I saw this both at CP and KI this week.

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It's entirely possible Heinz wasn't aware of the Montgomery Inn sauce until recently. A couple of years ago they installed a couple of "healthy" vending machines at Newport on the Levee. Originally the choices included assorted drinks - natural soda, bottled water, etc. A year or so after the machines were installed, these drink options suddenly vanished and were replaced with a note on the machine saying that those drinks couldn't be sold due to the Levee's contract with Coke. This was despite the fact that there are no Coke machines on the main floors of the Levee - they're all in the garage (and one inside the main entrance off Third Street - one floor below the main floor). It doesn't always make sense, but if someone pays for exclusivity, they will typically do what they can to ensure there is no competition in that area.

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When Heinz mustard was introduced, many Heinz partners switched to it. Heinz recently rolled out a new line of barbecue sauces.

Huh, didn't know it was new. I actually had the Heinz BBQ sauce yesterday at IMS with my chicken tenders, along with their honey mustard. The chicken was surprisingly good, and the sauces were good enough.

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On Saturday, I ended up getting lunch at Planet Snoopy Grill for the simple reason there was absolutely no line. I got the bacon cheeseburger on a whim, and was pleasantly surprised to see the side for all their meals are tater tots. I don't know if this is new, if I just hadn't eaten from that location before, or if I did and forgot about the tots. It was all tasty. I'm going to have to try some of their other selections now.

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When Heinz mustard was introduced, many Heinz partners switched to it. Heinz recently rolled out a new line of barbecue sauces.

Huh, didn't know it was new. I actually had the Heinz BBQ sauce yesterday at IMS with my chicken tenders, along with their honey mustard. The chicken was surprisingly good, and the sauces were good enough.
I had the Heinz BBQ sauce on Friday at Potatoworks for the first time with my chicken in Rivertown. I felt the chicken has a very boring coating and the dipping sauce almost saved it, but it wasn't enough IMO. It's mediocre at best. It's nothing I'd run to the store to buy. If we could discuss the pizza, it's going downhill fast. Either I'm getting old and I'm losing my taste buds or park food is becoming more and more bland.

Sent from my SM-G935P using Tapatalk

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....besides the pizza...?

Two slices NOW are less than half the size of one 15 years ago...and then they want to con you into adding a dry, nasty, overpriced breadstick and a soda. No. Just no.

I can't finish what they dish out, either.

Yuck.

You need to come with me. I have been lucky (knock on wood) that the breadsticks this year have been hot from an oven. So they were just the right consistency of crisp outside and soft inside.

As for the pizza, it's the standard LaRosa's large cut for 8 slices. Now if that's smaller than what was served I can't say but can say that's the regular in store size. :/

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Heinz has an exclusive contract at the park. Exclusive means exclusive.

I presume the ribs still have Montgomery Inn sauce...

 

Well considering Montgomery Inn purchases over two million pounds of Heinz tomato paste every year (the tomato paste is the basis of the Montgomery Inn sauce) and is a top 5 customer of Heinz, I suspect the Montgomery Inn sauce is staying at KI.

 

In fact, Montgomery Inn wanted to be able to label their sauce as gluten-free and with no high-fructose corn syrup, they had enough pull with Heinz to reformulate their tomato paste.  That was not an easy task and took over 2 years to formulate it so that the sauce tasted the same.

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When Heinz mustard was introduced, many Heinz partners switched to it. Heinz recently rolled out a new line of barbecue sauces.

Huh, didn't know it was new. I actually had the Heinz BBQ sauce yesterday at IMS with my chicken tenders, along with their honey mustard. The chicken was surprisingly good, and the sauces were good enough.

Someone please help me; what in the world does IMS stand for?

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When Heinz mustard was introduced, many Heinz partners switched to it. Heinz recently rolled out a new line of barbecue sauces.

Huh, didn't know it was new. I actually had the Heinz BBQ sauce yesterday at IMS with my chicken tenders, along with their honey mustard. The chicken was surprisingly good, and the sauces were good enough.

Someone please help me; what in the world does IMS stand for?

Probably Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

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