I'd be a little more expensive I bet to compensate for their cup stock, despite not having to make souviner cups. .. that were connected to the all season drinks

If there were a half dozen or so more self serve drink stands around the park, this could easily be solved with collapsible sports bottles. I could even live without the soft drinks, but I really like my water with ice and drink far to much of it to rely solely on the self serve options or Kinzel cups.

I do have a plan to make cups much less desirable to filthy theives that I will reveal after I work out a few kinks. Stay tuned.

Edit: i have seen conflicting statements about the bar codes in the cups in the various threads this issue has been discussed in. Season is over, my KI orange cup code is BWH3R4FW. Are they all the same or unique?

The cup codes were all different, that's how my Boyfriend and I knew which cup was ours.

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So at a minimum they could tie your cup to your pass and deactivate the cup if you reported stolen if they chose to implement that feature in the software. Thus making hot cups much less desirable as 40%(?) of guests are passholders, I believe.

If you didn't have a pass why would you want to buy a all season cup Anyway. Even if you choose to visit only 2 times without a pass it still be cheaper to buy the regular cup with free refills for the day and $1 fills rest of season.

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I did NOT get the meal plan this time around. I made the mistake of doing so in 2014 and 2015. Did I save money? Yes. Was that savings worth the absolutely HORRIBLE service? Hell no. They apparently figured that since they already had my money, and the money of a large portion of their customers, that there was no need to put any effort whatsoever into decent customer service.

Next year, Kings Island will have to earn my food money, because I will be leaving the park to eat at nearby restaurants unless and until they prove that they can consistently provide good customer service even though they already have many people's money.

It thought you didn't get a pass this year....?

Granted, the food department had a lot of hurtles early in the season, they ultimately were able to smooth it over by June or so.  Ironically, I feel as though the food employees were the best department this year.  They had some systematic issues (directly associated with the maturation of the All Season Dinning Plan) but individual employees can't be held responsible for that.  The food employees used to be the butt of many jokes because of how rude and unprofessional they were.  This year, the kids seemed to always greet with a smile and work hard through their long days in those hot restaurants whilst dealing with hungry people.  Unfortunately they have handed off that baton of unprofessionalism over to the rides department this year who thought having the mic was play time.

Correct, I did not have a 2016 pass. I'm referring to my food service experiences in 2014 and 2015, when I did have a pass with the dining plan, and to the upcoming 2017 season, for which I have a pass without the dining plan.

 

All of my dining experiences at the park in 2016 (spanning three visits: both announcement days and the semi-official Haunt meetup) are at Reds Grille and two visits to dead locations: whatever the food stand over by the wave pools in Soak City, which I did in the early afternoon on a slow day before the masses started migrating from the dry side, and Festhaus LaRosa's for lunch on an 8pm closing day in August when the park was totally dead. So if food service has improved greatly in 2016, then I do not have the personal experiences to know that for myself. I can only base my decision on what I experienced in in 2015. I'm glad to hear that others are seeing improvement, but being naturally skeptical, I will wait until I can see it for myself next spring, probably on opening day.

Edit: i have seen conflicting statements about the bar codes in the cups in the various threads this issue has been discussed in. Season is over, my KI orange cup code is BWH3R4FW. Are they all the same or unique?

 

These are most definitely unique.  They will refuse a refill within 5 minutes of your last refill.  I found this out in a really annoying visit.  I went to the Refill station across from the burrito shack on a REALLY hot day.  They scan your cup, then you wait to use the self service mix-a-drink stations.  They were all out of ice.  I wanted ice so I left and went to the burrito shack (which was empty) to use their drink machine (which had ice).  They scanned my cup and told me I couldn't get a refill because I had just used the cup in the last 5 minutes.  GUH.  I begrudgingly complained, stood there for another 2 minutes, and then filled my cup with Ice.  GRRRR.

I haven't found anything this year on the Buy Now / Pay Later program on Season Passes. (Usually runs around Christmas, credit card information is put in securely and automatically taken out around April 1st). Does anyone know if this program will be running for this upcoming 2017 season?

Buy Now/Pay Later is a payment option this holiday season, although it's no longer advertised on the website.

 

To select it, add your pass(es) to your cart and choose "Buy Now, Pay Later" (instead of "Easy Pay") from the top of the payment option screen when you check out. You can also choose to pay in full immediately, if you prefer.

Anyone else get the survey about drink cups? Seems they are looking at making an option to add all season drinks to your season pass where they'd scan the card and you'd just get a disposable cup each time. Priced similarly to the current souvenir cups and with a minimum time between orders. Seems like a better option than the current model to me. 

^ I didn't get the survey but heard about it on pointbuzz.

From a consumer stand point refill interval is key.

From the park's point of view the souviner cups have to be dirt cheap in the quantities they order and then they have to deal with increased costs of the paper cups, increased labor costs for park cleanup and trash disposal on top of some level of lost locker revenue.

I think it would be worth it even at a premium over the souviner cups. Now my boys and I share one souviner cup, I would probably buy 2 or 3 of those passes so I could have my own cup of ice water.

Just a quick question. Is it possible to upgrade my KI Gold Pass to a Cedar Fair Platinum Pass?

Yes, you can do this at the park once season pass processing opens.

You will pay the difference between the current cost of a Platinum Pass and the price you paid for a Gold Pass.

Agh. Don tweeted Opening Day as April 15. Opening Day is just 100 days away! RT if April 15 can't come soon enough.
https://twitter.com/KingsIslandPR

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Saturday April 15, huh? A little surprised given it's Good Friday, but I guess that bodes well for the hopeful Renewed Passholder Preview Night on Friday.

In case you haven't renewed your platinum passes yet, If you renew through the CP site by midnight tonight CP will pick up the sales tax.   That actually puts the Platinum renewal cost on par with the fall sale price.  

If you are renewing the photos roll over and with the ability to add the pass to your phone app, there is less risk in having a different home park if you loose the card than in the past.  

2 hours ago, King Ding Dong said:

In case you haven't renewed your platinum passes yet, If you renew through the CP site by midnight tonight CP will pick up the sales tax.   That actually puts the Platinum renewal cost on par with the fall sale price.  

If you are renewing the photos roll over and with the ability to add the pass to your phone app, there is less risk in having a different home park if you loose the card than in the past.  

What is the significance of having a different home park?  Just the name in small print on the card?

2 minutes ago, ECSUSER said:

What is the significance of having a different home park?  Just the name in small print on the card?

No idea what has changed but in the past only your home park could replace your pass, add a dining plan, or process the renewal.  If you have the ability to renew a KI pass at CP then something has changed.

3 minutes ago, Kenban said:

No idea what has changed but in the past only your home park could replace your pass, add a dining plan, or process the renewal.  If you have the ability to renew a KI pass at CP then something has changed.

Our Platinum passes were very old CP issued cards.  I purchased FunPix from the CP website and redeemed this past weekend at KI.  Our cards were replaced with Platinum Passes that had the high density bar code on them.  They did say Kings Island on them in small print.  No biggie, just wondering if their was some other significance to having an official home park.

15 minutes ago, ECSUSER said:

What is the significance of having a different home park?  Just the name in small print on the card?

 

9 minutes ago, Kenban said:

No idea what has changed but in the past only your home park could replace your pass, add a dining plan, or process the renewal.  If you have the ability to renew a KI pass at CP then something has changed.

At least in the past you did need to go to your home park to replace a physical plastic card.   

My boys and my home park is KI but wife's is CP.   I was able to renew them all on the CP site.  Was going to do KI but with the tax promotion it saved about $60 even with the $10 more for CP FunPix. The receipt and voucher clearly stated to keep my old cards as they are now updated.  

Progress.

3 hours ago, King Ding Dong said:

 

At least in the past you did need to go to your home park to replace a physical plastic card.   

My boys and my home park is KI but wife's is CP.   I was able to renew them all on the CP site.  Was going to do KI but with the tax promotion it saved about $60 even with the $10 more for CP FunPix. The receipt and voucher clearly stated to keep my old cards as they are now updated.  

Progress.

As my friend found out (and discussed in another thread) - the voucher that clearly stated to keep your old cards as they are now updated is boilerplate email and voucher language on a renewal - depending on the situation, one may actually have to go to processing to get a new pass despite the language on the voucher.

4 hours ago, ECSUSER said:

Our Platinum passes were very old CP issued cards.  I purchased FunPix from the CP website and redeemed this past weekend at KI.  Our cards were replaced with Platinum Passes that had the high density bar code on them.  They did say Kings Island on them in small print.  No biggie, just wondering if their was some other significance to having an official home park.

I hope they did not mess your pass up like they did mine. KI replaced my pass for the funpics and the next day my pass did not work.

9 minutes ago, Jamesv7 said:

I hope they did not mess your pass up like they did mine. KI replaced my pass for the funpics and the next day my pass did not work.

Yikes! The FunPix attendant also replaced my pass on Sunday. Hopefully it works next time I go to the park. It worked fine when I added it to the Kings Island app just now, so hopefully that's a good sign.

23 minutes ago, Jamesv7 said:

I hope they did not mess your pass up like they did mine. KI replaced my pass for the funpics and the next day my pass did not work.

Well they replaced them on Friday and they worked just fine on Sat and Sun.  No issues with parking either.

When I worked in FunPix I was told not to replace passes if the person didn't wanna use the kiosks just incase it got messed up, it was an odd process.