Confused, angry at Six Flags America over Fright Fest new "power hours" night

Non-Disney Parks
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I think SF may have finally lost our business, despite being so close to our house.

I bought the season passes again this year and then found out that they cut all the Fridays out of Fright Fest, only leaving one, Oct 25. So this is when I was going to go b/c Fri was always a good time to go, less people but good timing for us. We’ve been just too busy to go earlier in the season.

Now I’m reading the fine print and it seems that this is a limited event where I’d have to pay extra to enter even though I have a season pass. It sounds good though—only $10 and you get the haunted houses, which are a lot more expensive otherwise. Except it seems to be sold out, I just can’t really tell from the website. To be clear, when I purchased my season passes there wasn’t much info at all on their website to explain what power hours was. I saw that it was open later than other days and figured that was the power hours.

So, to recap, my season pass that is supposed to be good for all Fright Fest is NOT good to get me in to this new "power hours " thing, b/c they intend to limit admission like Disney does in its nighttime special events.

But, this was not at all clear to me when I purchased my season passes. They did not release their calendar past summer at that point. So, I also didn’t know that they cut out the 2 extra days in Nov that they’d had before, to celebrate veterans. That is also a big loss for us b/c we liked to go then. We’re military and we’d get some free stuff, plus less people in the park.

So, our only other choice of day if we don’t go on that Friday to fright fest is the last day it’s open, when I’m sure it will be overrun. I know I should have read this more earlier but they just up and changed everything on us. Even at $60 / person / pass, when they’ve cut so much of what we had before, I just don’t see us returning. They cut the entire Christmas event a few years ago and that was a lot of when we went. If we don’t go to the Halloween thing as a family once then we don’t have our passes pay for themselves, b/c we didn’t go to the summer thing as much as expected.

Thank you for any feedback, I’d really like to know if anyone else has experience with this new SF event. “power hours.” I think in some of the other parks it may have had a different name. SF America is a very small park, it doesn’t have the “extreme” FF add on that some of the bigger ones do (based on trying to read about this stuff on Reddit).

I will do a chat with SF America tomorrow when they’re open for chat and see what they say. If the $10 thing is still available for the Friday I’ll do it. The weird thing is that the much more expensive hautned house passes are appearing as available to buy for that day, but then the power hours info says they aren’t accepted that day. Sigh.

Edited to add: I re-read everything and am now much less interested in the power hours Friday b/c they are only opening some rides and the haunted houses—so, the delightful scare zones won’t be there nor most of the shows. That is pretty much a hard pass for me, but I’ll still ask them about it, b/c I could see going by myself on the Fri and with the family on the Sun.

I will definitely tell the that this all needed to be spelled out earlier so that those purchasing a season pass can know what they’re getting. I really think it was squirrely of them to not announce that they cut all the regular Friday FF until summer was almost over. I’m aware of the merger with SF and Cedar Fair and figure that that may have added to the confusion etc.

Update: the SF website eventually allowed me to buy the $10 pass for power hours so I bought one for me to see the haunted houses since it was such a low price, and I’d like to see haunted houses alone one day and go with my family another day for the rest of it, since nobody except me cares about the haunted houses.

The website encouraged me to also purchase the Flash Pass to skip ride lines and all the other haunted house passes, and a VIP tour—all of which the power hours fine print said would NOT be offered at all on that day. I will be telling SF this in a chat tomorrow, and letting them know that they need to bring back regular Friday nights at least a little if they want to keep passholders.

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I admit even I was a bit confused after reading this! I found a reddit that explained “Power Hours”.

I’m a former SF employee and Season Pass holder. The idea that Fright Fest after 6pm is an upcharge is dumb. Plus, at only $10 per pass it’s not limiting anything - it’s almost an automatic buy. It’s just another classic SF money grab! :moneybag: :moneybag:

I know they licensed A LOT more IPs for the houses this year. Maybe they think that justifies an upcharge???

SF will always be my “home”, but it’s continuing to decline in quality due to bad management. I don’t know if the Cedar Fair deal will help - at least they’ve gotten rid of some of the awful SF Board of Directors!

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I’ve got nothing useful to say, but out of curiosity I stay on their mailing list and check their deals out every year - reading this year’s AP cost changes and the extreme slicing and dicing of various perks was pretty insane.

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Thanks all. What ended up happening is that the SF website eventually let me purchase the $10 haunted house pass for the Fri so I jumped at the opportunity b/c it had seemed sold out. I decided that I’d go on Fri by myself to the haunted houses and on Sun with my family, just hoping it doesn’t rain, b/c that shuts everything down. We usually plan for earlier but this year we had a lot of other stuff going on.

And, usually I buy a far more expensive cut the line pass to the houses, not sure how that will work with everyone just paying $10. It might be miserable, especially since there’s not much else to do during power hours. I don’t ride thrill rides.

Unfortunately for me, my small park has none of the upgrades they did for the bigger parks, so no Stranger Things etc—just basically the same old stuff rehashed again. I was very disappointed when they announced those pop culture tie ins and then they didn’t appear at my park.

What keeps me coming back is I really do enjoy their FF experience. There’s one haunted house out in the woods that is always really great, and they change it up every year. There’s another that used to be great but is sometimes good now, with twisted fairy tales in 3D, where you wear 3D glasses. They also have fewer haunted houses this year.

The SF website tried to get me to buy stuff that wasn’t available during the power hours like fast lane and a VIP tour. I did chat with SF to tell them that but they really didn’t seem to understand. I’m sure people will show up that night having bought this stuff and be disappointed. I’m also going to complain later about all the stuff they took away but I honestly don’t expect them to do anything about it. I think that buying individual tix for the day will probably be best for us going forward, b/c we just can’t guarantee we’ll use the passes enough.

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I totally agree they need to do much better at communicating! They shouldn’t sell a pass if they aren’t offering the same terms as the previous year, unless they clearly advertise as such.

This seems pretty cheap! Like the cost of one day to a normal regional theme park. So at least you have that going for you.

I don’t like haunted houses but I hope you enjoy your visit!

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I just now saw this thread, and I know this is too late.

We go to the original in Arlington, TX. We adore the SF Fright Fest and always go with our daughter’s Godfather who loves all things horror. This will sound corny, but it is a highlight for all of us.

Our problem was that up to right before the Fright Fest started they weren’t offering the skip-the-line version of the haunted houses passes. I even chatted with them online and they said it because they were standardizing the offering across all parks. I assume they were talking about the merger. Then we got there, and they were being offered. I assume because enough people complained. We bought them, and didn’t really need them. But, oh, well. The haunted houses were really awesome.

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@Kitty_Ellas_Mom
Are y’ll going to the HolidayFest? We also enjoy that.

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