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Postby CoasterRiderSC on September 7th, 2021, 11:01 am
Sven18 wrote:
CoasterRiderSC wrote:^ I'm kind of curious why only Season passholders got the nice discount and not the members.

Is it because they removed the benefit of ALL parks and the free friend days from 2022 Passholders?


There was no discount for members b/c SF doesn't want members to revert to season passes. SF has lost 600K members since 2019 & gained 700K pass holders. A lot of people that had or tried memberships reverted to passes. Now, by essentially completely taking away every benefit from passes they are trying to stop that. A Gold plus membership is now $6.99/mth or approximately $84/yr, if you wanted to downgrade from Gold Plus to a 2022 pass it's now $79.99. The $4 extra for membership comes with a bunch of benefits (many which were on the pre 2018 passes),including now access to all parks. It makes little sense to downgrade. Gold plus membership has essentially become the old Gold pass of pre 2018.



Since they want people to become/remain members why not a discount for members? Why would I pay $84 for a membership when I can pay $50 for Gold Season pass and get everything I need?
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Postby Sven18 on September 7th, 2021, 5:23 pm
CoasterRiderSC wrote:
Sven18 wrote:
CoasterRiderSC wrote:^ I'm kind of curious why only Season passholders got the nice discount and not the members.

Is it because they removed the benefit of ALL parks and the free friend days from 2022 Passholders?


There was no discount for members b/c SF doesn't want members to revert to season passes. SF has lost 600K members since 2019 & gained 700K pass holders. A lot of people that had or tried memberships reverted to passes. Now, by essentially completely taking away every benefit from passes they are trying to stop that. A Gold plus membership is now $6.99/mth or approximately $84/yr, if you wanted to downgrade from Gold Plus to a 2022 pass it's now $79.99. The $4 extra for membership comes with a bunch of benefits (many which were on the pre 2018 passes),including now access to all parks. It makes little sense to downgrade. Gold plus membership has essentially become the old Gold pass of pre 2018.



Since they want people to become/remain members why not a discount for members? Why would I pay $84 for a membership when I can pay $50 for Gold Season pass and get everything I need?



Already explained why would SF incentivize members via a discount to downgrade to a pass, when they are trying to curtail that?


The Gold Pass now is the equivalent of the basic pass long ago, not much to it. If that "gets everything you need", than you should be fine paying $80 for a new 2022 Gold Pass, instead of $84 for a membership. However, the extra benefits of G+ membership are worth the $4/yr
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on September 7th, 2021, 7:08 pm
^ Why would I pay $84 for lowest membership when the $50 pass meets my needs?? SO you're saying they want to increase membership and decrease passes. Well, with that super cheap pass price they aren't going to lure people like me into membership!
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Postby Sven18 on September 8th, 2021, 11:31 am
CoasterRiderSC wrote:^ Why would I pay $84 for lowest membership when the $50 pass meets my needs?? SO you're saying they want to increase membership and decrease passes. Well, with that super cheap pass price they aren't going to lure people like me into membership!


1)You do not seem to be getting the discount price was for only current passholders
2)They took essentially every benefit from passes, including access to any other park in the chain, discounts on merch, food, BFF, etc... The pass only gets you into the park & that's it.

The discount price is $50 for current passholders b/c they devalued it. The pass has become a good product for less people, which was the goal. The devalued pass will stop what they want, the reversion of members to passes b/c a member downgrading will be paying $80 for a pass(no discount), when they can pay $84 the lowest membership. Again the $4 is worth a membership over a completely devalued pass.

I will bet next year they will not even offer a discounted pass sale. The discount price for current passholders was probably to ease the fact that they are losing access to all parks & essentially every benefit they had before.

I also will bet a bunch of passholders didn't pay attention to the loss of access to all parks, they just clicked on the link in the email. Some will show up to their non-home park & be mad they will need to do an upgrade to a membership to get in.
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Postby Jodon on September 8th, 2021, 12:57 pm
Sven, you brought up something I hadn't considered until your previous post...is there a way to switch from a season pass to a membership mid-season where you do not lose the money you put towards the current season pass?

I.e. A 2022 season pass holder at SFGAm goes to SFSL and realizes they can't get in unless they buy a ticket or get a membership. Is there a way to put the money used to purchase a season pass towards a membership, or are those people out of luck?
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on September 8th, 2021, 1:44 pm
^ Sven, I understand your logic. What I'm saying is their discount for current passholders makes it harder to convert those passholders to Members in 2022, given that the pass provides everything most people need or want.
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Postby Sven18 on September 8th, 2021, 2:20 pm
CoasterRiderSC wrote:^ Sven, I understand your logic. What I'm saying is their discount for current passholders makes it harder to convert those passholders to Members in 2022, given that the pass provides everything most people need or want.


You do realize this pass isn't what it was before? It will not fit the needs of what most people want. There are no longer any discounts, BFF, access to every park, coupons, etc.... SF has been gradually taking benefits from passes & making them for members, in 2022 they went all out.

The new 2022 pass gets you in the door & that's it. People are not used to the pass having no benefits. I guarantee many people think this is the old pass they are used to & they are in for a rude awakening come 2022. Many will be upset they didn't read thru things & just saw the $50 deal, thinking it was the Gold Pass of years past.

The 2022 pass is for people that only go the GAm/waterpark, buy nothing in the park, don't every want to bring a friend, etc.. You say, the discount will make it harder to convert, some passholders will convert to members when they realize the pass has lost all its benefits they are used to.

However, the bigger concern for SF is not the conversion of passholders, it's in the fact members are reverting back. Stated it before, members down 600K & passes up 700K since 2019. The devaluation of the pass in 2022 is an attempt to curtail the members downgrading. $84 for G+ membership w/ benefits & they would have to pay $80 to downgrade to a pass w/ no benefits, Members don't get the discount $50 purposely to try to stop them from downgrading, if they were thinking of it. SF kept too many benefits on passes, so the downgrade made sense to many, it doesn't as much now.

If the plan works will be seen next year as they report member & passholder numbers in each quarterly report.
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Postby UnclePennybags on September 8th, 2021, 2:59 pm
Sven18 wrote:...The 2022 pass is for people that only go the GAm/waterpark, buy nothing in the park, don't every want to bring a friend, etc...

Sounds like me and everyone else I know that goes to the park.
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Postby UnclePennybags on September 8th, 2021, 3:26 pm
The latest changes in pricing have got me bummed. In 2019, to get 12 months of admission to the park with premium dining, here's what it cost:

$149 (Season Pass)
$215 (Gold Plus Member)
$206 (Platinum Member)
$231 (Diamond Member)
$286 (Diamond Elite Member)

And now?

$190 (Season Pass, $150 special pricing for current pass holders)
$216 (Gold Plus Member)
$213 (Platinum Member)
$244 (Diamond Member)
$299 (Diamond Elite Member)

Not much of a difference in pricing, but it's the Season Flash Pass that's got me bummed. In 2019, to get 12 months of admission to the park with premium dining and a Platinum Season Flash Pass, here's what it cost:

$378 (Season Pass)
$534 (Gold Plus Member)
$506 (Platinum Member)
$490 (Diamond Member)
$486 (Diamond Elite Member)

And now?

$689 (Season Pass, $549 special pricing for current pass holders)
$535 (Gold Plus Member)
$513 (Platinum Member)
$503 (Diamond Member)
$498 (Diamond Elite Member)

Pricing is similar for the memberships, but the season pass went from $378 to $689. That's about an 82% increase in two years, while the Diamond Elite membership only increased by roughly 2%.

As I wouldn't make use of any of the membership benefits, I haven't been looking at anything besides my initial cost when buying my season pass. This is the first year where a membership's cost is lower than a pass's cost (if you add in a Season Flash Pass). Disappointing.
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Postby Sven18 on September 8th, 2021, 3:51 pm
The point of the new 2022 passes is to make it not make sense on a cost to benefit basis for many people. The member structure is designed to get you to at least Platinum, as it's cheaper than G+ is you do dining.
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Postby UnclePennybags on September 8th, 2021, 5:04 pm
Sven18 wrote:The point of the new 2022 passes is to make it not make sense on a cost to benefit basis for many people. The member structure is designed to get you to at least Platinum, as it's cheaper than G+ is you do dining.

One more year of this and I just might make the move to membership myself.

I'm hoping that if enough people reject memberships, Six Flags will be motivated to rejigger the relative costs between the memberships and passes (including add-ons). And before you say it will never happen, I'd argue that the customers will ultimately decide what happens here. I have no doubt that the park will set its prices to ensure it'll make a profit, but they still have to sell the customers on the benefits of memberships over passes. Some people just don't like to mess around with monthly payments (like myself). Some people have use cases (like myself) where the passes are still cheaper than memberships. Who knows? I just might get my wish and the park will end up rejiggering the pass so that it requires monthly payments but costs more than memberships in all use cases.

I'm looking forward to next year to see how hard Six Flags pushes its current membership strategy. Ultimately, passes and memberships are sources of income for the park, so I'm unsure why a company would be wedded to just memberships. Why not continue to offer both at a comparable cost?
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Postby Sven18 on September 8th, 2021, 5:58 pm
1)They don't really have to sell current patrons on the membership over passes much when you have to get a G+ membership to get what you used to get w/a Gold Pass in 2018/19. In regards to new people the membership is already the better deal cost to benefits

2)SF is not concerned w/ people adverse to monthly payments, it's a small percentage & we are in a subscription society, Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN+, Peleton, & dozens of other major companies that are doing well based on offering a product on monthly subscription.

3)Passes & Memberships while both revenue sources the membership push started in 2018 for a good reason, SF had essentially no pricing power on passes after years of cheap passes. SF by 2017/2018 had reached a maximum of the number of cheap passes they could sell. They needed to generate growth & the way to do it was by getting more from each customer, as the pass sales had reached a plateau. SF couldn't just raise prices on passes by $20, $30, $60 so they pushed memberships where a G+ while $20 more was pretty equivalent to the old Gold Pass. The higher level memberships are essentially pre paying for discounts, that only balance out as a value if you buy add ons or things at the park. For instance, that's why a Platinum w/ the equivalent of premium dining is cheaper than G+ w/ premium dining, the platinum gets a bigger discount on dining & already comes w/ drinks for just being platinum.

4)Another benefit of memberships beyond higher pricing point is that you don't have to spend as much on marketing to get people to renew a pass every year with constant sales, memberships just keep going to you cancel. Also, since after the 1st year membership revenue is claimed monthly it smooths out each quarters financials more, Q3 will always be the most, but they get to collect a base line of money while many parks are closed or have limited schedules in Q4 & Q1. Pass revenue meanwhile is claimed based on operating days in quarter, hence Q1 when a park like SFGAm is closed SF can claim nothing from the passes. One of the reasons SF numbers during the pandemic looked better than others was they had some people still paying memberships while they were closed. Even when they opened the passes which were extended from 2020 to 2021 SF had to claim the revenue from that $65 Gold Pass over Q3 2020 thru Q4 2022(18 mths), in comparison a G+ member they got $6.99 for 18mths or $126. Then when apply the same concept to add ons you can see how the membership structure was highly beneficial during & coming out of Covid for SF.
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Postby sfgamnthemoon on September 8th, 2021, 6:32 pm
Does anyone know how to turn on the Six Flags Rewards program through the portal? It was promoted on the site but I do not see the option on the portal.
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on September 8th, 2021, 7:52 pm
UnclePennybags wrote:
Sven18 wrote:The point of the new 2022 passes is to make it not make sense on a cost to benefit basis for many people. The member structure is designed to get you to at least Platinum, as it's cheaper than G+ is you do dining.

One more year of this and I just might make the move to membership myself.

I'm hoping that if enough people reject memberships, Six Flags will be motivated to rejigger the relative costs between the memberships and passes (including add-ons). And before you say it will never happen, I'd argue that the customers will ultimately decide what happens here. I have no doubt that the park will set its prices to ensure it'll make a profit, but they still have to sell the customers on the benefits of memberships over passes. Some people just don't like to mess around with monthly payments (like myself). Some people have use cases (like myself) where the passes are still cheaper than memberships. Who knows? I just might get my wish and the park will end up rejiggering the pass so that it requires monthly payments but costs more than memberships in all use cases.

I'm looking forward to next year to see how hard Six Flags pushes its current membership strategy. Ultimately, passes and memberships are sources of income for the park, so I'm unsure why a company would be wedded to just memberships. Why not continue to offer both at a comparable cost?


Totally agree with all your points UnclePennyBags! I too hate monthly recurring bills, charges, subscriptions, etc. Also, Six Flags should listen to its customers. If they are saying they want season passes and Sven already stated that a whole bunch of people reverted from Memberships to passes, then Six Flags should keep its customers happy!

BTW one "benefit" of membership that's completely useless for me is the "premium" parking! I get to the park plenty early and can always find a close parking space!

I'd like to see the cost analysis for someone that visits another park only every 5 years or so. For that person, a season pass might definitely be the way to go! Why pay for something you don't need? As my dad always said "You don't need a Cadillac to go around the block!"
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Postby Sven18 on September 9th, 2021, 7:35 pm
People reverted to season passes from membership is bad for SF. Peple that want to $50 to go to every park are going to kill any chance of longterm revenue growth. That was why they started the members push. Already explained that they need to get more from each customer & they have eviscerated pricing power w/ passes over the last decade. One of the reason the reversion was easy was the peculiar pricing structure to benefits, They are trying to solve that to get another pass surge like they had when they first started the membership emphasis in 2018.

SF didn't make the changes in a vacuum. They surely looked at usage stats & found that a non insignificant number of passholders were going to multiple parks. Some of the biggest cross over parks are SFOT w/ SFFT, GAm w/ STL & the I-95 corridor parks...SFNE, GAdv, SFA. SF smartly is joining the rest of the industry in making people pay more for all park access.
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Postby Dan The Coaster Man on September 16th, 2021, 7:35 pm
Somewhat related... I'm going with either diamond or diamond elite. Where do I pick up the one time skip the line pass(es)? Any SFGAm specific restrictions (I'm thinking they only give out so many, or none at all, for Maxx Force)?
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Postby ribsinbacon on September 17th, 2021, 4:23 am
Dan The Coaster Man wrote:Somewhat related... I'm going with either diamond or diamond elite. Where do I pick up the one time skip the line pass(es)? Any SFGAm specific restrictions (I'm thinking they only give out so many, or none at all, for Maxx Force)?
You pick them up at the Flash Pass building- and they won’t give any skip the line passes for Maxx Force
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Postby Sven18 on October 9th, 2021, 1:18 pm
ribsinbacon wrote:
Dan The Coaster Man wrote:Somewhat related... I'm going with either diamond or diamond elite. Where do I pick up the one time skip the line pass(es)? Any SFGAm specific restrictions (I'm thinking they only give out so many, or none at all, for Maxx Force)?
You pick them up at the Flash Pass building- and they won’t give any skip the line passes for Maxx Force


Skip the line should be made digital so you don't have the massive lines at the Flash Pass Center. Have a skip the line pass available digitally on your phone after scanning in at the gate. They can still limit the number per ride & exclude rides.
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Postby anewman35 on October 14th, 2021, 12:37 pm
Not sure if this is news or not, but just took a Six Flags survey that strongly implies they're basically going to replace Season Passes with Season Memberships (name TBA, that was part of the survey) that have all the same features of a monthly membership (which they'd still have too). Seems good for people who don't want to lose benefits but also don't want to pay monthly.

So if they did this, it seems like everything would be just like it always was, just with the additional of a 'basic pass' level that had fewer features (but even that isn't totally new because didn't they sometimes sell tickets that basically served as basic passes too?)

Here's the 'test' webpage that was linked in the survey showing what the offers would be like... https://content.sixflags.com/membertest/versiona.html

Here's the survey if you want to take it yourself: https://click.email.sixflags.com/?qs=d5 ... dd4f853dab
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Postby Sven18 on October 16th, 2021, 4:32 pm
I got the survey Thursday.
1)I found in interesting, makes me think SF is getting some negative feedback on the pass changes & are looking at alternatives. The point of passes being only 1 park was to drive people into memberships & now they are possibly offering "membership passes". Some people just hate monthly payments & the cancellation aspect.

2) It's interesting SFGAm & all parks have lowered the price on season passes. Earlier they were offering the $49.99 prices to current holders & new ones were $79.99. Now they are offering new passes for $64.99

Makes me think pass sales are not meeting the metrics they want thus the lowered price, Normally the best price is Aug/Sept when first made available, that price may be matched later, but this time they are going under the initial price for 2022 passes. Earning conf call is on 10/27 so maybe they will give some "color" on the topic.
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Postby Carlo on October 18th, 2021, 7:33 am
I wonder if seasonal parks like sfgam, its harder to sell memberships as they are not open year around. My thinking is why do I have to pay a monthly fee for 4 months when I can't use it. Year around parks makes more sense.

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Postby anewman35 on October 18th, 2021, 9:08 am
Carlo wrote:I wonder if seasonal parks like sfgam, its harder to sell memberships as they are not open year around. My thinking is why do I have to pay a monthly fee for 4 months when I can't use it. Year around parks makes more sense.

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I'm sure you're right, and the way they've marketed it doesn't help, in my opinion. They push it as a monthly membership, so you feel like you're being forced to buy some months you can't possibly use. Maybe they'd be better off with the idea of 'your season membership is $79.99, but you have the option of splitting it up into 12 easy monthly payments' or something like that. It ends up being the same thing, but maybe it feels less like they're screwing you when the park is closed.
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on October 18th, 2021, 2:43 pm
Carlo wrote:I wonder if seasonal parks like sfgam, its harder to sell memberships as they are not open year around. My thinking is why do I have to pay a monthly fee for 4 months when I can't use it. Year around parks makes more sense.

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Excellent point, Carlo!!
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Postby Sven18 on November 4th, 2021, 6:05 pm
Posted few weeks ago about getting the survey about season passes with same levels & benefits as memberships. It appears those are rolling out. Fiesta Texas has them. Imagine the IT will update other parks soon.

https://www.sixflags.com/fiestatexas/st ... 0Ma3yc4-fI
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on November 5th, 2021, 2:11 pm
Perhaps they keep both the memberships and the new tiered passes: For some, shelling out 220 up front seems like a lot but if it's $18/month, that might seem less.


This is actually a clever tagline:

Prefer low monthly payments with hassle-free auto-renewal? See our Monthly Memberships


I actually like their idea of keeping the passes and making them tiered! To me, I like to pay up front and get it paid off.
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