Hopefully the fact that the FL parks have reopened now means that customer service via phone will be improved now.
Busch Gardens Williamsburg Membership Program
- Thread starter Nicole
- Start date
Hopefully the fact that the FL parks have reopened now means that customer service via phone will be improved now.
Im pretty sure they were contractually obligated to grandfather passes due to EZ pay. One thing they did do was create a huge divide between members and passholders instead of just designating everyone who was grandfathered as being Silver, in terms of benefits. Btw, just as a fun fact, you can purchase a platinum pass at SeaWorld San Diego($213) and SeaWorld San Antonio($195.50) for significantly cheaper.
Not really because it was initially advertised that they were discontinuing the pass system.
@warfelg is right. When the membership program first launched the official BGW position was that grandfathered annual passes would not continue to be offered for very long. They were supposed to give people some time to switch over, but they were going to turn them off.
They were never obligated to keep any annual pass at any specific rate, beyond the first year.
They were never obligated to keep any annual pass at any specific rate, beyond the first year.
From an EZ pay pamphlet from SeaWorld San Antonio from 2015, "
What is your EZpay Price Lock Guarantee?
Our EZpay Price Lock Guarantee is a valuable
benefit, and another way of rewarding our
loyal Pass Members. As long as you keep your
payments current and do not cancel your
membership, then we’ll guarantee that your
current monthly rate will stay fixed—up to
60 months from the commencement of your
membership—even if EZpay Pass prices go up."
According to this, they had/have to wait at least 5 years for those passes with the Price-lock contract
They got rid of their price lock guarantee. I can't recall exactly when off of the top of my head.
You can see all of the official information from BGW at the time of the program launch. We were given an exclusive interview and worked directly with the park to prvide updates and answer questions, as it rolled out.
We were specifically told that the old passes were going away. It was not a question of whether, but of when.
bgwfans.com
You can see all of the official information from BGW at the time of the program launch. We were given an exclusive interview and worked directly with the park to prvide updates and answer questions, as it rolled out.
We were specifically told that the old passes were going away. It was not a question of whether, but of when.
The New Busch Gardens Williamsburg Membership Program – BGWFans
Dissecting and analyzing the park's brand new season pass replacement offering, the Busch Gardens Williamsburg membership program.
bgwfans.com
^this is from the Coasters and Craft Brews thread but thought further discussion would be appropriate here.They got rid of their price lock guarantee. I can't recall exactly when off of the top of my head.
You can see all of the official information from BGW at the time of the program launch. We were given an exclusive interview and worked directly with the park to prvide updates and answer questions, as it rolled out.
We were specifically told that the old passes were going away. It was not a question of whether, but of when.
The New Busch Gardens Williamsburg Membership Program – BGWFans
Dissecting and analyzing the park's brand new season pass replacement offering, the Busch Gardens Williamsburg membership program.
The price-lock was done away with in one of the years leading up to the whole membership change but anyone who bought their pass before that change and are still in good standing still gets/got to keep their price lock as defined in their original contract.
About the old passes going away part. Could they really force those old contracts to terminate specifically for people who bought their passes at Busch Gardens Williamsburg and not for other parks?(I am really am curious about this because i am assuming the contract was the same for all the parks and idk) I am assuming that the other parks were going to as hardcore on their transition to memberships and were going to terminate contracts altogether for their legacy passes and ultimately decided against it.
Another theory I have for the statement about cancelling old passes and not following through with it was that it was just a scare tactic they knew they wouldnt follow through with. This is something I would want to believe they wouldn't do but wouldn't be surprised after I saw them jack up membership prices a year after luring people in.
I would say it's this if they were consistent about enforcement of stuff like this. But basically BGW/SEAS has shown me that they have no spine when it comes to things like this. Basically they let themselves get bullied into keeping the passes after strongly expressing how they were going away.
Actually in some old contracts there was very specific language that prices couldn't change for a set amount of time.
I don't have many specifics that I can share but this is still the plan. They do intend to force legacy passholders to move fully to memberships. I don't know the exact reason but they had to hold off on shutting down the grandfathered passes.
Might have to plan a trip to SeaWorld San Antonio when and if that actually happens.(Of course, I am sure they wont do it anytime soon and would wait until the end of a calendar year in order to not screw up with dining plans and year round quick queue plans) I really dont understand why there is a 160ish dollar difference in the price of an platinum pass(one of which is currently cheaper than what my legacy pass currently is) for 2 parks that are a pretty similar distance away from the main parks in Orlando.
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Sorry thought it would be better to reply over here.
It definitely creates more headaches than it solves. First off we're expecting what's (in my estimation) an overloaded and old system to start tracking an even more complicated task of how much does everyone owe (the end date is an extremely easy thing to track. How do you know when to adjust pricing? Is it based on day? Week? Month? If you do an end of year expiration do you need a new pass/membership for January Christmastown visits? Or would it last past that? And then what about the people that purposely buy every Dec to take advantage of Black Friday sales? Are they going to have to hold two passes at once for multiple months/weeks?
There's a reason why parks moved away from a calendar year for passes to a 1 year at a time model. The price can stay flat all year long. It makes it easier to advertise the price and set up accounts. Additionally with what I saw suggested, most people pick EZ-Pay because they can't afford to pay the pass/membership fee in one chunk. The highest level is $27/month, so if I waited for April to get that membership with that plan of pay a down payment of what you missed, I would owe at least $112 on the first day. Personally the reason I pick the EZ-Pay is because I can't afford to do that. So I would drop my BGW pass and get the fun card for the summer season and just go to the best KD pass.
It's great to say "Oh BGW has too many pass/member holders"; but the issue is that's a majority of most parks these days. I think the bigger issue with BGW (as I pointed out and got carried over here) was the price lock (I literally have never heard of a park doing that before coming to BGW), allowing people to renew passes at old prices, and on top of that when they changed pass/membership they didn't force anyone to change over. So there's a good portion of pass/membership holders paying a good bit under market rate for the same service.
Whew, that turned into a bit of a rant this morning as I responded.
Some of it is based on what they previously charged for passes. It's also based on the local market and what the market is supporting. It can also be based on the number of benefits that they plan on offering for the members. If I recall correctly San Antonio offers very little as far as member benefits. In fact BGW has the most if my recollection is correct.
As far as getting your pass at another park, I think it's important to remember that you get none of the member benefits from BGW then. Traditionally they haven't been allowed to visit for member events and perks like 2 free food and wine vouchers and the rest won't be available to you. All you would get is a discount, admission and free parking. Personally to me the extra benefits are worth the price difference.
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I also wonder in some cases like that, would you regularly go to SWSA/SWSD without that discount? How much are you spending on that trip to save $150?
You can regularly find similar types of discounts and benefits in the Trenton area.
I would be getting slightly more benefits(an extra 10% discount) than what is currently offered to legacy AP's at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Also, idk about the monthly reward calendar benefits, but it would seem that San Antonio has better benefits for their pass members.
I guess I'm a little off topic but can't find an answer to this question. Okay, our passes are being continued until the park reopens. So hypothetically let's say it doesn't open this season. Now let's say I intended next season, 2021, to be my last. Health and other issues are catching up to me. How do I stop the payments without quitting the park all together? In other words; I decided that I don't want to continue after next (2021) season. If I call and say stop the payments I'm sure they are going to drop my membership all together. I won't be admitted for the 2021 season because they have stopped my membership even though they owe me 2021. Hope I'm making sense. It's confusing to me how I would be admitted next year even if they owe me next year without stopping payments and them interpreting it as me quitting.
The way to do that would be to wait to cancel until they’ve given you all of the free months you’re owed. Hopefully when we get out of this, they’ll tell us exactly when payments are set to pause and exactly how many payments will be skipped until we are expected to pay again.
That's some wishful thinking on clear communication, but yes: ideally, each person's membership will show "payments paused until X Date."
They can't even get my membership to reflect the right person, me the paying adult. They have it under my son and it appears to be beyond them to get it to the right person. Also, I have had my email correctly set to email me every since switching to membership...never get a single email from them. No spam, nadda.
This caused a gap in my EZPay when my credit card didn't update right a few years back. No word from them that payment bounced for two months, until I went into the park one day. The credit card on the member web portal access? Years old. Update it there? No difference. Also, I AM the owner and controller of family passes on the portal. My son has no mention in sight. So they have some totally different internal system than the web portal, it appears. So what is the point of the web access?
I'm convinced they can't properly execute any part of the business that they run. Customer service being the worse. I foresee the who-is--on-what-track after normal operations resume to be a complete disaster.
This caused a gap in my EZPay when my credit card didn't update right a few years back. No word from them that payment bounced for two months, until I went into the park one day. The credit card on the member web portal access? Years old. Update it there? No difference. Also, I AM the owner and controller of family passes on the portal. My son has no mention in sight. So they have some totally different internal system than the web portal, it appears. So what is the point of the web access?
I'm convinced they can't properly execute any part of the business that they run. Customer service being the worse. I foresee the who-is--on-what-track after normal operations resume to be a complete disaster.