The issue is that since they were not the first company in the state to make their decision on what to do, the standard (precedent) has already been set. Worlds of Fun is giving their season pass holders 2021 for “free”. Now that this has become very public, anything less than that seems like a slap in the face to the pass holders. SDC should have called and raised so that they would appear to be the park in the area that cares the most about their patrons. As is, they’re barely on par with Six Flags with how their handling this.
Perspective is everything in this industry
So one glove fits all? Does that mean that all higher-end parks (I'm calling SDC one of those, at least in comparison to WoF) need to do the same things as the lower-end ones? We don't have this problem in Missouri, but doesn't Disney and Universal do different things that the smaller parks in Florida and California?
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