My £60 AP suggests otherwise! It's a stupid price.
Yup, it is a stupid price, but then Six Flags prices were even crazier. Season passes were cheaper than day tickets on the 2 visits I've made to Magic Mountain. I paid around £45-£50 for a season pass in 2013 and in 2016. They were literally throwing out free friend tickets on multiple dates throughout the season on top of that too.
It's a delicate balance raising ticket prices, especially when you've made the mistake like Merlin and Six Flags have in devaluing your product too much in the past with a one dimensional "just get 'em through the gate" approach. The ideal aim of a season/annual pass is ultimately to make people visit a couple more times a year than what they would buying individual ticket. Sure those people won't be buying another individual ticket, but the argument is that would they have visited again in the first place without spending that extra cash on the pass, especially at off peak times when you really need people through the turnstiles? Then the aim is to make up some of that lost individual ticket revenue by having guests spend more on park as they see themselves already having saved money from buying the pass.
Of course, that only works if you've got a decent on park offering in the first place, and for Six Flags that's where this "beautification" plan comes in. Ditch/reduce the existing dining plan, bring in better quality premium food outlets and encourage people to spend more. Put more effort into having the park be an enjoyable place to spend time, then guests won't just be turning up, riding rides and leaving.
It's all too easy to "flick a switch" and double/triple the price of annual passes - but when they've been such an essential source of income for parks for so many years it's impossible for that income stream to simply be choked off. It needs to be a softly softly approach, both at Merlin and Six Flags parks. Incrementally increase the prices up/reduce the benefits slightly yet up the offering to those guests to show that they're still getting value for money. In Merlin's case, perhaps they went too hard too fast, which is why we saw the sales and offers for passes in recent months. Get pass holders visiting, let them see different offerings throughout the season thanks to the new events, and make them realise the benefits of keeping the pass despite potential future price increases.
For Six Flags that's even more important, as I don't think it's beyond the realms of possibility that the
majority of their gate income is from season pass purchases. Remember, they only want attendance to drop by 10-15%, so it's a fine balance between achieving that and ending up with their guest figures crashing as people stop visiting en masse. This will be a multi year thing, not something where I see prices hiked up stupidly in one go. I also doubt it means pass prices going up to what we would see as high prices anyway, just a more realistic price or set of benefits compared to the existing setup.
