Busch Gardens Williamsburg Membership Program

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One note on EZ Pay and benefits. Our son has a Sesame Place annual pass and when we were in Florida a weekend ago, all of his enhanced benefits were already loaded to his membership, and we used $30 of his $50 on face coverings.

I have the grandfathered BGW premier pass, which is on EZ Pay and obviously beyond the first 12 months. I checked the kiosk at both BGT and SWO, and no enhanced benefits were showing up for me.

Not sure if this has been an issue for others, but do I need to call before heading over to BGW this weekend? Or I am out of luck with the enhanced benefits until the park is fully reopened?

Side Note: There is a buy 3 get 1 free deal on face covering at the Florida parks, which equates to 25% off, but the pass discount doesn't apply to that promotion. If you are buying 4 face coverings, buy them individually to get your 30% off, which will save you a couple bucks.
 
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Eric said:
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.View attachment 20956
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Yes but those benefits listed outside of the parking, discount and admission wouldn't be given to you at BGW. That means no free quick queue, no free photoKey, or any of the other benefits they mention. Those are only valid at your home park. You also lose access to attending member events here because they are a home park benefit. To me the math just doesn't make sense.
 
I64 Trekker said:
One note on EZ Pay and benefits. Our son has a Sesame Place annual pass and when we were in Florida a weekend ago, all of his enhanced benefits were already loaded to his membership, and we used $30 of his $50 on face coverings.

I have the grandfathered BGW premier pass, which is on EZ Pay and obviously beyond the first 12 months. I checked the kiosk at both BGT and SWO, and no enhanced benefits were showing up for me.

Not sure if this has been an issue for others, but do I need to call before heading over to BGW this weekend? Or I am out of luck with the enhanced benefits until the park is fully reopened?

Side Note: There is a buy 3 get 1 free deal on face covering at the Florida parks, which equates to 25% off, but the pass discount doesn't apply to that promotion. If you are buying 4 face coverings, buy them individually to get your 30% off, which will save you a couple bucks.
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I think your difference is that BGW has not officially reopened while Sesame has already. Those benefits won't be loaded until BGW officially reopens, so I wouldn't expect to see them during this event.
 
BGWnut said:
Yes but those benefits listed outside of the parking, discount and admission wouldn't be given to you at BGW. That means no free quick queue, no free photoKey, or any of the other benefits they mention. Those are only valid at your home park. You also lose access to attending member events here because they are a home park benefit. To me the math just doesn't make sense.
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I am aware of that. However, I believe the 160 dollar savings each year for the pass(it would require a trip to San Antonio probably but the point of a platinum pass is to use it at other parks anyways) is worth not having the benefits for. If I (and presumably others who kept their old pass) am currently comfortable with not having the membership benefits with my legacy BGW AP, then why would i care that a San Antonio pass would not get me those benefits either?

The part about listing the San Antonio benefits was to address the part where you said you though BGW had the most home park benefits. San Antonio passmembers seem to het treated pretty well at their home park.
 
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Eric said:
I am aware of that. However, I believe the 160 dollar savings each year for the pass(it would require a trip to San Antonio probably but the point of a platinum pass is to use it at other parks anyways) is worth not having the benefits for. If I (and presumably others who kept their old pass) am currently comfortable with not having the membership benefits with my legacy BGW AP, then why would i care that a San Antonio pass would not get me those benefits either?

The part about listing the San Antonio benefits was to address the part where you said you though BGW had the most home park benefits. San Antonio passmembers seem to het treated pretty well at their home park.
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They are treated well. Those benefits you listed are pretty much the same as what you would receive at BGW as your home park. I won't argue with your if you are a legacy passholder that you would lose benefits that you already have, but personally there's a lot of benefits that you are losing out on by not being a member at BGW.
 
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Are the $50 Busch Bucks good now? I looked at the kiosk today just to see what it showed and it has a ton of free ticket options, some for WCUSA but no Bucks.
 
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Since their business model for this event seems to be heavily dependent on food and merchandise sales, it would make sense to suspend the Busch Bucks. We did see that we could get them in Florida, when we checked our benefits at a kiosk.
 
Makes sense....I was curious what was actually on there is why we checked. There was page after page of tickets and the level upgrade card. We didn’t use the Busch Bucks when we were in Florida since at the time we were saving them to use here. Guess that was our mistake losing out on a $150 bucks.
 
30 percent discounts do work for the event though! Makes the purchasing a pin for 10 bucks a little easier to swallow.
 
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WDWRLD said:
Makes sense....I was curious what was actually on there is why we checked. There was page after page of tickets and the level upgrade card. We didn’t use the Busch Bucks when we were in Florida since at the time we were saving them to use here. Guess that was our mistake losing out on a $150 bucks.
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We made the same calculation. We were also wary of sending the system haywire, since we really don’t know how well perks function outside of our home park.
 
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I believe that those added benefits won't show up at BGW until the park fully reopens. It's interesting that they give the opportunity at the other parks to redeem though.
 
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I did print out my added benifits card....not sure I will ever get to use any of them but none the less I have it.
 
WDWRLD said:
I did print out my added benifits card....not sure I will ever get to use any of them but none the less I have it.
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The $50 in Bonus Bucks was available on our son's Sesame Place place when we visited Orlando two weekends ago. The Bonus Bucks were NOT available on my grandfathered BGW premier pass.
 
I64 Trekker said:
The $50 in Bonus Bucks was available on our son's Sesame Place place when we visited Orlando two weekends ago. The Bonus Bucks were NOT available on my grandfathered BGW premier pass.
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Sesame had reopened at that point, so he should have seen those benefits. I'm not sure what benefits the grandfathered premier members are supposed to be receiving.
 
It appears that if I were to start a membership today, there would be no compensation for closure. I can't find anything about extensions on the BGW site anymore, even though I did only a week ago. I do find a link on this thread, but can't say if it applies to memberships after it was written: https://seaworldentertainment.com/blog/coronavirus/#SEASONPASS
I almost assumed it was still in effect and was considering starting a membership if reservation times became available. Now I'm thinking it's just too complicated. Or I've just combed the site so many times my eyes are crossing.
I was about to assume that the current event would only cost me going on and giving them money for the future (which they should appreciate), but it now looks very expensive -- if an open reservation even appears long enough for the transaction.
 
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One thing I have learned from SEAS is that their pass/membership programs company wide are a huge mess of benefits, pricing, and options. Cant' tell what exactly your getting, and you'll never know if you actually get what your supposed to.

I believe their business model is to create customer confusion. Besides that, their biggest issue is clearly their computer systems. From my experience, they are outdated and unable to handle all the changes appropriately.
 
VonDerrick said:
One thing I have learned from SEAS is that their pass/membership programs company wide are a huge mess of benefits, pricing, and options. Cant' tell what exactly your getting, and you'll never know if you actually get what your supposed to.

I believe their business model is to create customer confusion. Besides that, their biggest issue is clearly their computer systems. From my experience, they are outdated and unable to handle all the changes appropriately.
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It's exponentially more IT work to deal with a dozen different passes vice just a few (a'la Cedar Fair). Every single business change requires numerous permutations for every single pass type that simply adds up and leaves room for errors or problems in implementation.
 
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If the rest of the SEAS parks had switched to Williamsburg-parallel Memberships and legitimately deprecated APs chain-wide as was originally planned, this wouldn’t be such an issue. The original Membership program was a legitimately great plan but SEAS blundered it big time through the loss of interest in continuing the previously-planned aggressive rollout across the country.
 
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