News Significant Meal Plan & Fast Lane Updates for 2027
- Thread starter mtorange
- Start date
SweetBabyJames
Conservative Coaster Connoisseur
This might be a hot take, however I'm actually glad prices are increasing for these offerings. I always thought the meal plan and Fast Lane were way under priced for what you get. I have noticed the fast lane line on roller coasters in particular is getting very long to the point of being a 20-30 minute wait in itself (which is sometimes just as long as the general queue line). This is extremely annoying for general park patrons who do not have fast lane as one must essentially add the 20-30 minutes to the general line queue time to account for fast lane holders. It is also annoying for Fast Lane holders because there really isn't much of a benefit if so many people are using Fast Lane. I always thought the meal plan was a ridiculous steal and Six Flags could be making a LOT more money on that item per guest.
Last edited:
I do feel like the new dining plan is expensive, but it's still a meal every 2 hours for over a year, so if you go often enough it should be worth it.
Controversial opinion: fast lane should be expensive so less people buy it. All it does is slow down the regular line which kinda creates a weird paradox. Fast lane sucks. Only ever bought it once for KD haunt and I do use my single use that come with my season pass but that’s it.
Interesting, so there are now two dining plan options: unlimited ($349) or 30 meals ($129).
Both can still be a good deal depending on how you use it. By my rough estimates, assuming an average meal costs around $19 and factoring in a 10% season pass discount, you’d need to eat 8 meals at to break even on the $129 plan versus buying those meals. And you’d need to eat 43 meals to make the $349 plan the better deal than just buying your meals out of pocket after using up your 30 meals.
In other words, if you plan to eat:
Obviously as a consumer I’m not jazzed about having to pay more or be more thoughtful about redemptions, but the meal plans always felt like a cheat code and I knew there was basically no way they were profitable off of me. If Six Flags were some small company and not a giant corporation I almost would’ve felt bad. But I can’t be too mad because these economics seem a lot more sustainable, and they can still be a good deal if you get enough use out of the plans.
Both can still be a good deal depending on how you use it. By my rough estimates, assuming an average meal costs around $19 and factoring in a 10% season pass discount, you’d need to eat 8 meals at to break even on the $129 plan versus buying those meals. And you’d need to eat 43 meals to make the $349 plan the better deal than just buying your meals out of pocket after using up your 30 meals.
In other words, if you plan to eat:
- 7 or fewer meals: buy them out of pocket
- 8-42 meals: buy the $129 plan
- 43 or more meals: buy the $349 plan
Obviously as a consumer I’m not jazzed about having to pay more or be more thoughtful about redemptions, but the meal plans always felt like a cheat code and I knew there was basically no way they were profitable off of me. If Six Flags were some small company and not a giant corporation I almost would’ve felt bad. But I can’t be too mad because these economics seem a lot more sustainable, and they can still be a good deal if you get enough use out of the plans.
Now that there's a cap, I honestly hope they open meal plan redemptions up to more "poor value" redemption options in addition to full meals. With the meal plan, I basically never buy snacks at Six Flags parks. Under this new system, I'd happily trade away some of my meal credits for cheap options like ice cream, funnel cakes, pretzels, etc despite knowing they're poor uses of those credits. This is especially true during special events with food components—I would HAPPILY burn a meal on some special, limited special event snack that may retail for only $7 or whatever whereas currently, I'm massively disincentived from ever trying that item to begin with.
Feels like a win for guests because of the added flexibility and a potential win for the parks since it would cause frequent visitors to suboptimally burn through their dining credits—increasing the chance that frequent visitors would run out and/or simply avoid redeeming for higher-value options to begin with. During special events with interesting food, I could totally see myself managing to burn through four credits on low-value redemptions in a day if special event items were made to qualify instead of burning through two on two full, actual meals.
On another note, I am VERY interested to see how this impacts Six Flags membership holders with legacy, grandfathered meal plans. They took our snacks away without any compensation so the precedent is, unfortunately, there to just randomly up and change the rules. I assume they're going to port us over to the 30 meal capped plan? Feels like there will be some angry folks if they do?
For me personally, I'm very happy for this change. I'd probably need to work pretty hard to hit 30 meals in a year under the current structure—when I've run the numbers before I'm normally in the 10 to 12 camp of meals I'd likely purchase without the meal plan—and that was when Kings Dominion had WinterFest. Having the meal plan means I eat at the park more than I would otherwise, but there's a big delta from a dozen to 30. My hatred of the meal plans is well documented re: how they impact the parks so I'm thrilled to see both the price increases and redemption caps to protect against the few whales who should, objectively, be paying WAY more than they currently are.
Feels like a win for guests because of the added flexibility and a potential win for the parks since it would cause frequent visitors to suboptimally burn through their dining credits—increasing the chance that frequent visitors would run out and/or simply avoid redeeming for higher-value options to begin with. During special events with interesting food, I could totally see myself managing to burn through four credits on low-value redemptions in a day if special event items were made to qualify instead of burning through two on two full, actual meals.
On another note, I am VERY interested to see how this impacts Six Flags membership holders with legacy, grandfathered meal plans. They took our snacks away without any compensation so the precedent is, unfortunately, there to just randomly up and change the rules. I assume they're going to port us over to the 30 meal capped plan? Feels like there will be some angry folks if they do?
For me personally, I'm very happy for this change. I'd probably need to work pretty hard to hit 30 meals in a year under the current structure—when I've run the numbers before I'm normally in the 10 to 12 camp of meals I'd likely purchase without the meal plan—and that was when Kings Dominion had WinterFest. Having the meal plan means I eat at the park more than I would otherwise, but there's a big delta from a dozen to 30. My hatred of the meal plans is well documented re: how they impact the parks so I'm thrilled to see both the price increases and redemption caps to protect against the few whales who should, objectively, be paying WAY more than they currently are.
Last edited:
If you go by the daily meal plan price at $35(at least at Kings Dominion), it's around 10 visits to break even. Also, just by price you would break even around 21 meals for the $349 plan, which wouldn't be unreasonable to do in 10 visits.
AmyUD06
|--🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵-- | |----🩷💛🩵----| Credits: 373
Maybe I'm missing something, but what is the "Dramatic" change to all-season Fast Lane? It's exactly the same as it was offered for this season, except Cedar Point is now not included on non-Ohio-region Prestige Passes.
I believe the dramatic change part of the title is specifically for the meal plan.
I did the calculations on my Great Adventure schedule, and I would max out at about 15-17 visits in a season. My partner will probably go 8-9.
On most trips, we usually are there for about 4 and a half hours and eat once. With the 2 hour limit instead of 4 allowing if we go for a really long day even eating 3 times, the 30 and 20 meal plans are actually perfect for us.
Now give me an unlimited plan with no cooldown at all and drinks included for like $600 and I'd buy that immediately. LOL.
On most trips, we usually are there for about 4 and a half hours and eat once. With the 2 hour limit instead of 4 allowing if we go for a really long day even eating 3 times, the 30 and 20 meal plans are actually perfect for us.
Now give me an unlimited plan with no cooldown at all and drinks included for like $600 and I'd buy that immediately. LOL.
I wish there wasn't such a big difference between 30 meals at your home park and unlimited meals anywhere, and frankly I wish you could redeem the 30 meals anywhere, as it would make more sense in my case if you could.
Frankly I also wish that for $349 you got drinks and snacks included in that, at the least. And hell, it would probably be more cost effective for Six Flags to implement snacks as that hopefully would mean less people buying full meals.
Frankly I also wish that for $349 you got drinks and snacks included in that, at the least. And hell, it would probably be more cost effective for Six Flags to implement snacks as that hopefully would mean less people buying full meals.
Last edited:
Oh...
I wasn't tracking that these credit-limited plans are all single-park-locked even on passes with all-park access... That does NOT make sense to me at all and I will actually be royally annoyed if I'm forced over to a plan like that. It will actually cause me to cancel my meal plan all together since Six Flags won't allow me to base my grandfathered membership out of my home Six Flags park, KD. I will never break even on a meal plan limited solely to SFGAdv.
I am really struggling to imagine why they would limit usage to your home park like this. Don't they want to encourage cross-park visitation? The meal plan is a big driver of that value proposition for me.
I wasn't tracking that these credit-limited plans are all single-park-locked even on passes with all-park access... That does NOT make sense to me at all and I will actually be royally annoyed if I'm forced over to a plan like that. It will actually cause me to cancel my meal plan all together since Six Flags won't allow me to base my grandfathered membership out of my home Six Flags park, KD. I will never break even on a meal plan limited solely to SFGAdv.
I am really struggling to imagine why they would limit usage to your home park like this. Don't they want to encourage cross-park visitation? The meal plan is a big driver of that value proposition for me.
Last edited:
Same, and it's why I was thinking of getting a meal plan for next year, but with the new way they're set up it's hard to justify spending more on a meal plan than the pass itself. I believe it's probably so you can't buy your pass at a park where it's cheaper(such as Dorney) instead of buying it at your actual home park.
So far that information given looks like the unlimited plan is only good in the region, not at all parks and the plan with 20 to 30 limit is good at only one park.
The 20-30 limit still only works out to $5.60 to $6.00 a meal. So I don’t expect an increase in food quality based on that.
Even with the pricing increase the unlimited plan doesn’t make good business sense. Since a meal can be obtained every two hours people coming together could use one plan and take turns getting meals throughout the day…… it already happens with the unlimited one day, dining pass.
This most affects the people that were using the pass to the point they were only paying about $2 a meal. They would have to go to unlimited so their price more than doubled next year. I don’t think it really matters to the company if these people come back or not since they were probably losing money off of them.
The 20-30 limit still only works out to $5.60 to $6.00 a meal. So I don’t expect an increase in food quality based on that.
Even with the pricing increase the unlimited plan doesn’t make good business sense. Since a meal can be obtained every two hours people coming together could use one plan and take turns getting meals throughout the day…… it already happens with the unlimited one day, dining pass.
This most affects the people that were using the pass to the point they were only paying about $2 a meal. They would have to go to unlimited so their price more than doubled next year. I don’t think it really matters to the company if these people come back or not since they were probably losing money off of them.
I missed that part. But like, why do this? You jack up the price to almost 3x what it was, and limit it to the region? Wow.
It's limited to the region because we are looking at the Gold unlimited plan. I'm sure there is a prestige one as well that is not limited by region (I'd hope so anyway)
Plus why WOULDN'T they have phrased it like how they do with the current dining plan if it was meant for every park.