Here’s the problem using Disney and Universal parks in this conversation, those parks use what is called an annual pass. That means that you have one year of use at the parks from the date it is bought. So if you buy the pass in March, it’s good from that day in March to the same day in March the next year. So what Disney and Universal are doing is expanding that year the annual pass is good for by however many days the parks are closed. See that works great in this situation.
SDC (and now DW who announced the same procedures for their passes) are really painting themselves into a corner. They don’t have a membership program like Six Flags (where they just suspended dues until the park opens again and they gave everyone one free level upgrade on their membership) and they don’t do annual passes like at the big boys, so what do they do?
Well there’s several thought processes here. The clean and easy way to do it is how Cedar Fair (WOF, CP, KI, etc) is doing it with just giving 2021 “free” - in this system there are no questions. It is straight to the point. Then there’s the other way of doing it, which SDC, Dollywood (and Hersheypark I’ve just learned) are expanding the pass into 2021 (but not the entire season). On paper to accountants this sounds extremely logical, but instead of fixing what it was supposed to fix, it has now created more issues. How do we prorate? What if people don’t buy the rest of 2021? So many questions that were created that didn’t need to be.
I know that the park means well, it just appears (to me and many others) that they should have done better
First of all, my example of Disney and Universal was just to create a higher tier park, and distinguish them from other parks in their areas. I wasn't trying to use them as an example here, and my bad if it came off that way.
But yeah, as I believe I mentioned before, logistically for them it could create additional headaches. But, I am either going to buy the remainder of 2021 or I am not. If the prorated price is fair, I most likely will. I can't imagine that SDC would do this and then try to rip off current season pass holders by making the prorated price too high.
I guess if someone like you is more in tune with these types of things, then it could be an issue for you. But the people I've talked to about it so far are glad they're doing something.