Six Flags St Louis' Season Pass Dining Pass

[Paul Drabek]

Hey everyone;

There have been rumors about Six Flags offering a Season Dining Pass and from the email I received the other day they are now offering it on a limited basis at Six Flags St. Louis.

How do I know they are offering it on a limited basis? Well several of you received an email from SFStL earlier this week with the standard deals and info on the opening of the season. Of the people I spoke to my email was the only one that had anything about the Season Dining Pass. My guess is it's geared to families and with me being a father well that's why I think I got it.

Here's the general info on it:

This spring Six Flags St. Louis introduces a new Season Dining Pass that lets guests eat lunch and dinner at the park every time they visit -- for just one up-front payment of $59.99. Also available for just $9.99 more is an "extra value" package that includes the Six Flags Sports Bottle.

Designed with value in mind

"We designed the All-Season Dining Pass to be a great value for anyone who plans to visit at least at least four or five times this year," said Eugene Naughton, Six Flags Vice President of In-Park Service. "We spent a lot of time listening to our guests, and while most of our regular Season Pass Holders say they love our food, many are concerned about affordability. Some say they don't visit as often as they like because of food costs. So last summer we put together a task force to come up with a solution."

The result of the task force's efforts was the Season Dining Pass. The principle is simple: Buy one pass at the beginning of the season that lets you to eat both lunch and dinner every time you visit the park. Each meal comes with one of several entrees and includes a side order.

"This program is focused on a very important part of our customer base" said Naughton, "it’s a fantastic value for our pass holders because of the extensive restaurant choices that are included in the program."

Over a dozen entrees and restaurants to choose from

The program includes twelve different entrees at restaurants all over the park. Participating restaurants include Colonnades, 1904 Classic Hot Dogs, Primo's Pizzeria (all locations), Villian's Cafe, Mooseburger Lodge and Cowabunga Burger. Some of the entree options include bacon cheeseburgers, BBQ brisket sanwiches, chicken sandwiches, pizza and more.

"Our guests said they wanted a lot of meal options to choose from," said Naughton. "...so we may have gone a little overboard. Guests will have no problem finding the food they want in whichever part of the park they happen to be in."

The initial program concept included dessert, but it was eliminated at the request of many guests. "This was a little surprising to us at first," said Naughton, "but after we dug into it a bit we found that a lot of guests just don't eat dessert and prefer that we keep the package simple. Taking dessert out also allowed us to push the price down a bit more...so I think it worked out for everyone."

Testing in St. Louis, may go to other parks later

Six Flags is the first theme park to introduce an all-season dining pass. While many parks sell packages that let guests eat as much as they want all day for just one day, Six Flags is the first to offer a pass that let guests eat all season. "We're excited to see how our guests in St. Louis react. If everything goes well and if the guests like the program, we'll look at rolling it out to other parks as well."

The Season Dining Pass is available only on the Six Flags St. Louis website. The Season Dining Passes are not available for purchase at the park, and because the program is still in the test phase only a limited number will be sold. "It is important to us that everyone who buys the pass have a great experience," said Naughton. "We're being really conservative about how many of them we sell this year."

So Bond and I signed up for it because we're going to be at SFStL 8-12 times a year and if we don't have to worry about food well then it's one less thing to think about plus if we go 10 times and get lunch and supper the cost works out to about $3 a meal which isn't bad at all. We'll try it out tomorrow and Saturday and I'll let you know how it goes.

Have Fun

Paul

[Paul Drabek]

Ok...after two uses of our Six Flags Season Dining Pass here's my review.

Ok...first off season pass processing was a nightmare this year because the systems kept crashing and no one knew how to process a season pass with the dining option. Those folks had a steep learning curve but eventually we got our passes.

Vouchers...you have to use vouchers for now.

Season Dining Pass Vouchers

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When we received our season passes we were given vouchers for our days worth of food. You can get your vouchers at either Will Call or Guest Relations for now. We ran into Dave Roemer, the Park President who explained that probably by the time the park is open for daily operation they will have the system set up so that all you need to do is scan your pass at any of the participating locations instead of getting and using the vouchers.

Oh, before I go to far another tidbit from Dave is that initially they were going to only offer the Season Dining Pass for online sales but earlier in the week it was decided to have sales at the park and they have flyers all around the park promoting it so if you want to add it to your season pass you can. My guess is that they really want to go whole hog and try the idea out to the fullest and see if this really works.

Te participating Season Ding Pass locations at Six Flags St. Louis are:

• Colonades Grill
• 1904 Classic Hot Dogs
• Villians Cafe
• Mooseburger Lodge
• Cowabunga Burger
• All the Primos Pizza Locations

When you go into one of those locations on the menu board there is a little Season Dining Pass logo (like the one on your pass) next to the food items that are included in the plan. You get either one basket meal or one entree and one side.

On Friday we used our Season Dining Pass for lunch at Mooseburger Lodge. Items on the menu were a burger basket, chicken strips basket, grilled chicken Caesar salad and a few other items. I went for the salad which was huge and came in a fried tortilla bowl. Not being a basket I went for onion rings for my side because they sounded good. Bond went with the chicken strips meal which was also huge and came with fries.

Six Flags Season Dining Pass meal for lunch

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We didn't eat dinner at the park as we had other plans but we went back to the park today we used it for lunch. This time we went for Primos Pizza which the only option there was a slice of pizza and bread sticks or a salad. I was less than impressed with the pizza, but I'm one who grew up on the greatest pizza restaurants in Chicago and who makes his own home made deep dish pizza so I'm kind of picky. As we would never eat in the park in previous years I'm looking forward to trying out the other locations in the park.

My final verdict is that we really like it. The food, especially at Mooseburger was really good and that meal if we had normally purchased it would have cost probably $25 for Bond and I. Also Bond and I would NEVER buy food in the park because it has always been too expensive for what you get. We'd always pack a couple of meals to eat in the parking lot or hit Taco Bell on the way out of the park. Instead we spent $120 for two Season Dining Passes and our food is taken care of whenever we're there and since we're going to visit the park probably 10 times this season if you break it down the cost per meal is going to end up being $3 to $4 for each of us which is extremely fair. I know for Greg and CoasterJedi who also got the passes that cost per meal is going to be so low there's no way Six Flags will make a profit on them.

For Six Flags this is a great idea because it makes it more affordable and convenient when people visit, since their customers invested in this idea they are more likely to visit leading to more store/game/upcharge purchases and they just got something from me that they have never had before...food money.

They are just trying this out at Six Flags St. Louis and Six Flags Great America. It's $59.99 which isn't a bad price. Drinks are not included although it'd be nice if all the locations had cups for water as Mooseburger didn't have. Also it'd be nice if the Season Dining Pass worked chain wide. Heck I'd pay another $5- $10 for that option. I'm glad they're doing this and I'd expect it to go national in 2013.

Have Fun

Paul

I am really liking this program! Friday we went back to Mooseburger for dinner and had the bacon cheeseburgers and fries. They were quite good. They were like a sit down resturant quality burger. We wanted to go yesterday but our lawn mower broke down so we had to deal with that. We went again today and had dinner at Villian's Cafe. I miss the mexican food they used to have there. J had the bbq sandwhich but didn't like it too much. I had the bbq nachos and they were pretty good but I think I liked Mooseburger better. The only thing I didn't like was there was nobody at Will Call so we had to wait at the long line in guest relations to pick up our vouchers.