Six Flags / Cedar Fair offering low cost nationwide 2025 pass

The situation is incredibly confusing right now, and I'm not sure Six Flags/Cedar Fair even know what's going on. Every individual park seems to be offering their own different pass and various upgrades even though they are all supposed to be operating under the same umbrella, and should have identical prices for their products. There have been rumors that the "All-Parks" upgrades that certain Cedar Fair parks have been selling are being pulled and/or rescinded, and some guests that jumped on the upgrade offer when it was first announced are being told that the details of that product appear to backpedal from the original descriptions that made it seem like a full, unrestricted, every-park-in-the-combined-chain pass.

I'm not sure what the best strategy is, and it's going to be even difficult in a market like SoCal where there are multiple parks in the new chain that overlap the same market. As with most of Six Flags' products, it doesn't really matter when you buy an AP/Season Pass, they will almost certainly release a new product a few weeks after you buy one that will seem like a better deal, so regret is almost inevitable when you buy one of their passes. Now with Cedar Fair merging in, you can expect to have that same potential with their pass products, which was never the case before - Cedar Fair was always good at when claiming something was the "best deal" of the year, that would actually be the best deal until the following year. I think if you see a pass product for the chain that makes sense for how you typically visit their parks and is being sold at a price that is affordable to you, you should buy it. Ultimately, you will have to accept the fact that there's a good likelihood that Six Flags will come out with a better offer at some point, because they never seem to know what their guests want or what they're willing to pay, and panic when sales dip.

/\ I agree the way they have rolled this out is incredibly confusing and quite frankly idiotic. The "Prestige Pass" at KBF (which includes SFMM starting next year) is $375 but SFMM it is $129+350 add on...so $479. I guess maybe the theory behind this is that SFMM's pass offers more perks and bring a friend tickets etc...who knows, all I know is that it defies the laws of common sense.

The other thing I know is that if I still lived in socal and didn't plan to travel across the country to visit many other SF/CF parks, there is no way in hell I would pay that much for an AP to KBF and SFMM. Quite frankly both those parks are terrible. I guess SFDK and and CGA are 6 hours away, but even those parks are fairly subpar as well and no ones going to want to go to those from socal. Maybe if you live in the mid/eastern side of the country where there are actual good parks it might be more tempting (I know I will get crap for this, but SFMM is the worst big park in the country in my opinion and at this point has been for decades, and KBF can best be described as "mid").

IMO they would have been better off holding off on the merging of passes until they had a more comprehensive plan to merge the company. As of now all the CF parks are on SF's website as SF parks, but nothing else indicates they have anything to do with SF (other than the confusing and overpriced AP add ons). Stop messing around and make your parks actually enjoyable to visit.

IDK the_man7, I don't think SFMM and KBF are the worst. Don't get me wrong, I've had some pretty awful experiences at SFMM, including a trip @20 years ago where we rode a total of 8 rides in a full day (open to close), and that included a second ride on Scream! because it was the only coaster with a reasonably short line (20 minutes). However, I've noticed some modest improvement in operations over our last couple of visits to the park. I've heard that KBF has really gone downhill recently, but our most recent visit was in 2019, and we enjoyed our day in the park where pretty much every major attraction was running (aside from Pony Express), and we were able to ride everything in a single day.

There are obviously massive issues with individual parks across the SF and CF chains, and the recent pass rollouts do not give me any confidence that the combined company has learned ANYTHING from the merge. It really seems like the new company has taken the worst from both chains, not the best from each chain, at least over the first 2 months of its existence. My hope is that individual parks are still operating independently because the top executives are still trying to sort out high level aspects of the new company. However, it establishes a really bad precedent and is worrisome that all of the concerns and criticisms of these 2 chains merging are coming to fruition.

So... While the newly merged company has created the nationwide pass, regardless of which company/home park you purchase your annual pass through, it will not be valid until January 4, 2025 for the "other companies" legacy parks. For example, if I buy an annual pass of at SFGA, the new pass is not valid in any of the legacy CF parks until January. Fine... not really the end of the world. But, now say you want to add on a nationwide Flash Pass. That Flash Pass costs $299 for all of the legacy SF parks, but is not valid at any of the CF parks. If you want to buy a nationwide Express Pass from a CF legacy park, it costs $999, and is not valid at any SF legacy park. For a company that is supposedly merged... there sure seems to be a lot of lingering fiefdoms that are still in existence.

I've been seeing a lot of confusion regarding the new passes for 2025, much of which I don't quite understand. It's pretty straightforward...beginning next season, all passes are only valid for the park you purchase them for by default. If you want to visit other parks, you must purchase the all park add-on, which gets admission and parking to all the parks in your chain immediately and admission and parking to all parks in the other chain beginning in January. All other add-ons are only valid for the park/chain you purchase them for (this is due to preexisting vendor agreements and probably will not be the case for more than a year or two). I personally just bought a Gold Pass from Knott's with the all park add-on, which will get me access to the entire combined chain next year for under $200.

As for the low price, I strongly suspect the current rates are an introductory price to get people invested in the new system, and I would be very surprised if they don't increase by a decent percentage in the not too distant future. This year has not been good for either chain, so they can't afford turning more people away, but once the situation is stabilized there's no reason to keep selling products for less than they were prior to the merger. While I don't think we're going to be seeing prices on par with the destination parks (people just won't pay those rates for Six Flags), I do think single park passes in the $125-200 range and a charge of $300-450 for a chainwide product are likely in the future.