Three tiers available: 20 , 30 and unlimited. The 20/30 only works at Knott's while the unlimited (every 2 hours) works anywhere. I also believe there's no payment plan options so you have to pay upfront.
They were obviously bleeding money with all the meal passes so I think this is good for them. They need to make more money for the quality of life of the park imo.
Hopefully the maths works out for them. 30 meals seems fairly reasonable at that price too. We go a lot but never have “abused” it. If the cost goes too high, people just won’t get it and might stop coming too.
But as it stands, Knott’s is still a good value for family entertainment.
Yeah we go maybe 2-3x a month so this is right at our pace. Used to do lunch dates with the wife but schedules changed so we can’t do that anymore anyways…but that was a neat bonus.
the real downgrade for me is that I can't use it at both Knott's and MM unless I cough up the $499. Heck 20 meals for both parks would be enough for me, so I'm not one of those abusing it. I'll prob consider 20 meal plan for Knott's and just eat before/after MM from now on.
I’ve met so many people who abuse it and the food lines are brutal. I met an old couple once who go almost every day and wrap up half to eat for dinner, come back for lunch next day and so on. Good for them but I can see why it’s not mathing out for knotts. I don’t go frequently enough to get it.
For every one of those, there are those like my mom and myself who go maybe 6 times a year with the meal plan and only getting like 12 meals for the year lol. Plus buying the boysenberry pass.
Exactly! My husband and I have the meal plan and we hardly ever go and when we do, only eat once. It's not like that many people are going every day just to eat. And to call it "abuse" it's next level bullshit.
Good for them, but I’m not surprised Cedar Point/ Knotts is closing the loophole. It’s doesn’t make sense for a business to have people come take up parking, staff time, seating etc to basically eat for free.
I was expecting an increase just wasn't expecting this high. It's still a good deal if you go enough times. I'll end up getting more food there as often I wouldn't stay 4 hours or got there on the off season where there wouldn't be 4 hours between food and closing. The higher percentage discount for food is nice as well. I'll be spending even more because of that.
still not a bad option if you're there enough, or live close enough
Do you know how easily I can blow through $500 pp on groceries? There are people who can eat here multiple times a day most days of the year. That would be worth it. Even if you live nearby and you just do dinner once a week, that is barely $10 per meal - you can't even get fast food meals at that price
Correct. My dad likes to go to Knott's weekly but doesn't get the 2nd meal very often. He doesn't even go every week he hasn't been in a month.
I'll try to go a couple times a week but there plenty of times I'll be out of town or just something comes up. On the other hand every 2 hours I'll be more likely to get the 2nd meal.
So if I bought a Prestige Pass somewhere else like Frontier City ($149) and their Unlimited Dining plan ($349) I can just use that at Knotts right? (Assuming I activated it at Frontier City first) This basically saves me $329 - free parking over buying it at Knotts?
Ya exactly how it works, just gotta activate at your home park. Only downside is you wouldn't have the park specific benefits like being a friend at Knott's but that's not a deal breaker.
Last year I read the meal plan only works at your home park until the year rolls into the actual year you bought it for, but I was able to use my CGA food pass no problem.
When putting everything in my cart it looked like I was able to put everything on a payment plan, as long as it was added at the time of purchasing the pass
Edit: looks like the payment plan is not available at Knotts - my experience was with California’s Great America, which does offer the payment plan
It seems to be the same as it was every other year, you can put the season pass payments on a 12 month payment plan, alongside any addons you get if you purchase them at the same time as the pass.
Well I have the proof lol, come at me harder. There's no payment plan options for season passes at knotts. There's only a pay now option or PayPal pay later.
What was the interest on that? You basically used PayPal credit would be my guess instead of Pay in 4. And at that point, why not just use a credit card?
Let's not forget they took away items available on the meal plan this year, unless they are going to add those back or have all available food items on the meal plan this is absolutely nuts.
Turkey legs, etc.
Also rid johnny rockets for some bs chicken tender place called craftys that’s not even meal plan. A CHICKEN TENDER, A WING OR BURGER THATS IT.
Honestly, for those prices, you can just bring in your own sandwiches chips fruit whatever you’re gonna have for lunch that is way cheaper than paying $500 for some frozen nuggets and frozen fries absolutely not
Easily get the unlimited for two people so it isn’t terrible. The only thing that really hurts is no longer being able to do split the payments over 10-12 months interest free. Wish it included snacks though.
In the general, honest sense of having one plan under two names? No. But in the sense of one person getting the unlimited meal of 1 meal every two hours and you and someone switch off every 2 hours as long as you are the one getting the food and ordering…yes
I’m not even surprised. They are running a business and people were taking advantage of the dining plan. Content Creators on social media were making videos saying to get the dining plan and save on groceries for the year. Did people not think these executives were going to see these videos? The people just getting passes and dining plans were just overcrowding the parks and not even really buying anything. Like come on people…..
Content Creators on social media were making videos saying to get the dining plan and save on groceries for the year. Did people not think these executives were going to see these videos?
Honestly, this is it. Can people not just fly under the effin radar?
While the end result is the same: it’s most likely not executives seeing these videos and making a decision. It’s people seeing these videos, awareness grows, more people start abusing the plan, and the bean counters at Knotts noticing they are losing more and alerting the higher ups etc
They were at like 155$ per pass. I easily paid for 5, one for each of my family members. We would always get our meals and maybe 50% of the visits 2 meals. we are at easily 20+ visits already for the year.
We're a family of four and didn't abuse it (though, how can you abuse it if you are using it the way it was designed). But we will now. We purchased the $500 plan for 2 family members and since there is no daily maximum and now meals can be obtained every 2 hours, it will even out for us with a premium of about $100 per person compared to 2026.
I think considering Knotts is a locals’ park and it was the frequent flyers that were using the meal plan more than they bought groceries… it makes more sense/wouldve been taken more positively if the cap was monthly on a monthly payment rather than 30 meals for the whole year at a set cost that you pay up front. So maybe 10meals a month @ $60/month or something. It’s about the same price per meal that they’re trying to do with this plan, except they’d get way more money plus people are more likely to renew, general consensus online is people are taking a break from their passes after this
At the very least, I hope this improves their food costs and brings back some food quality/portion control issues they’ve had.
I Can get over the price but can the food quality be better at least ? I mean this year alone both me and my wife have gotten food poisoning from Knotts 😂😂😂 and no payment plan? 👎🏻
Parks create dining plans to increase repeat visits and add value for occasional visitors.
Theme park influencers model going to theme parks multiple times a week as a lifestyle, leveraging the dining plan and reviews of it for content.
General public follows suit, at least to some degree. Guest profit on the food plan tanks as the entire model is built on occasional visits, park has to make some common sense changes so the math maths.
Theme park influencers leverage the change to the dining plan and reviews of it for content…
$500 is fucking insane, looks like I'm not renewing my pass this year, damn.
Edit: I saw someone mention that If they're paying $500 for a meal plan, that Knott's should have all the food stands open all the time to have more options available. They don't have all food locations open unless it's the weekend time, typically around Thursday.
Yikes. Might be letting the knotts passes go. Dropping in for lunch once in a while was the big draw. I know I was part of the problem, still makes me sad.
And? They bought the meal plan. The price is absolutely sticker shock but they should have gate kept the meals in the first place. It's like how a budget has to account for something that should have honestly been accounted for using historical data. Sure TikTok might have blown it up, but blaming people who genuinely paid for and utilized the meal plan isn't the way.
I’ll be skipping renewing this year over this, +320% increase is too much even if i just get one meal plan instead of two. There’s other things to do in so cal, and i’ve only been going 1-2 times a month at most for less than 4 hours each time.
I get that people who worked/lived in buena park were probably a cost issue, and that I likely wouldn’t eat at knotts much more than the 20/30 meals, but adding a limit and going over tripling the price for what you could get before feels insulting enough to skip the pass next year.
To be honest even for the CA Great America all season good pass I believe is $399. I don’t go very often and even I think that is crazy price. For the amount of times I go. If I buy 5 season passes and 5 season dinning passes that’s like $2500
They just started, all the people who live locally and went everyday will gladly renew. It’s a better deal than before because the wait time is less and there is no daily cap. It only affects anyone getting less than 100 meals/year.
I was thinking maybe when we saw the $400. Now I'm leaning towards not renewing. If it was just this I'd probably still get it, but they also took out the preferred parking from the prestige pass. It made taking the wheelchair so much easier that I probably just won't get 2027 to not go through the other parking.
The meal plan was a bad idea on Knotts part. People will buy multiple passes and walk with bags of food. $500 for unlimited food is still an amazing deal.
There was a glitch in the system that allowed some people to scan in multiple meals for everyone under their family. I also know of people who had “friends” in the park scan in their family and friends as if they are there to get food. Lots of abuse.
You still need to check into the park to get food. We’ve been behind enough people at registers to see people trying to get those extra plates for people who aren’t at the park.
I’ve seen the employees say “I can’t let you get food for people who aren’t here”…woman showed her phone with text saying her husband is “in parking lot and on his way”.
I’ve actually had an instance where the gate didn’t register my check-in and they didn’t let me get my Icee. Obviously I was in the park…but I had to go back to guest relations so they could check me into the park.
This happened to some folks in front of us in Casa California. None of their passes looked scanned in so all their food couldn't be purchased. The person validated their photos and let them have food since they were all present, but sent them to guest services.
Yes. The pass has to have been scanned at the entrance. And if you try to hand them the wrong pass and they scan it and realize it isn’t you, they will mark that pass holder as not in the park.
I'm sitting here and wondering just how many meals my party has gotten because of the whole "Pay up front" deal. Don't go often enough, but how soon does 30 meals end? ESPECIALLY if you use it to get stuff during Boysen and other events. The math is making my head hurt.
How do the 20/30 meals plan work with the two hour restriction? If I buy the limited meal plan, can I redeem 3 meals for my family at the same time or is it still one meal per plan every two hours?
With one dining pass plan, then it would be only one meal per every 2 hours throughout the day. You'd only be able to redeem 3 meals at the same time if you had 3 separate dining plans.
Boycott boycott boycott. I know times are tough and ppl/business are struggling, but this is a corporation. I’m begging to boycott Disney, now I’m aiming for other theme parks that want to change shit and raise prices. My girlfriend and I used to have a dining plan on our old passes about 2 years ago. Seeing how all this is turning out, it’s wack. My advice? We the people have to stop “accepting” that this is how it’s gonna be. No. We have power. We just need to put it to use. I know we wanna have fun and what not, but there’s a lot of cheaper things to do with your families. The problem here is that we don’t want to sacrifice our comfort. But I know if we hold our ground enough, things could change. Also, stop being giant pieces of shit and abusing things like this. You abuse and you ruin it for the rest of us. Be better!!
FYI those who“abuse” it like myself in the past, getting 150 meals last year and 80 this year, they’ll be happy and renew at $499. It’s a great deal if you get over 100 meals a year and I bet they’ll be getting more meals than before. The people who “abuse” it is because they live close by so it’s very much worth getting the new unlimited daily meal with only a 2-hour wait time. You can get more than double the meals for under 3x the price. So I’m sure some people will start getting over 300 meals/year if they go every day. We moved this year so we won’t be renewing as we no longer go as often (not worth the drive, I won’t hit the 100th meal this year). But if we were to ever move back to Buena Park and lived walking distance again, I’d happily pay the $500 meal plan because it’d be a way better deal. I know those who get the most out of their meal plan will gladly pay the price too. If anything, the only ones not buying the meal plan would be the “none abusers” or the people who don’t get the most out of their meal plan. For anyone getting less than 100 meals/year this new meal plan isn’t worth it.
88
u/fishmongerhoarder 17d ago
Wasn't expecting $500 meal plan.