How To Use Six Flags Points

Robert Niles

Is Six Flags' new Membership Rewards program a game-changer?

August sixteen, 2018, 11:03 AM · Six Flags yesterday announced the launch of a new Membership Rewards program for park visitors. Like an airline frequent flyer programme, Half-dozen Flags Membership Rewards will reward customers for visiting and spending in the parks with a diversity of perks, including costless park tickets, Flash Pass line-skip passes, and special in-park and VIP experiences.

The plan won't exist open to all Six Flags visitors — only to those who have the parks' membership passes. Memberships at Six Flags are like seasonal passes that automatically renew, in perpetuity. Remember gym memberships... merely where your "practise" is airtime. The Half dozen Flags Membership Rewards program is open to all Gold Plus, Platinum, Diamond, and Diamond Aristocracy membership owners over the age of 12 who live in the United States and opt in to the programme. (The last 3 are legal requirements for rewards programs.) While the program launches officially on January one, 2019, 6 Flags is opening a beta-like "early on access" period on Baronial 30, as it tests the plan.

The programme is points based, using the Six Flags app, with the following earning schedule:

3 points for checking into a ride,
6 points for checking into a show,
50 points for visiting a park,
25 points for each dollar you spend at participating in-park restaurants and shops.

Six Flags likewise says that it volition offer members points for other activities including taking surveys and signing upwards for newsletters. No word nevertheless on how many points volition exist needed to redeem rewards. I suspect that will be i of the big things tested and adapted during the early access menstruation, as Half-dozen Flags learns how quickly visitors will be accumulating points.

Information technology'south obvious from the schedule that the big points here are for spending coin in the park. A $20 repast would earn you 500 points, dwarfing the points you could earn just from visiting and checking in all over the place inside the park. So forget nearly the thought of truly "free" rewards. Like with most commercial loyalty programs, if you want the extra stuff, you will end upward at least indirectly paying for it.

So why is Six Flags getting into this business? For the same reasons that any hospitality business starts a loyalty program. Six Flags wants to drive its visitors toward buying memberships instead of daily tickets and annual passes. Memberships provide the company with income stability, protecting information technology from declining attendance due to bad weather and other external factors. Once you buy that membership, Six Flags has that money and volition keep getting it, going forward until you lot abolish.

Loyalty programs also provide companies like Vi Flags with an enormous amount of information nearly their customers. With a membership rewards program, Half-dozen Flags now can correlate invitee spending with specific visitation patterns. It will know when its highest-spending visitors come to the park and which rides and shows they frequent. That information is immensely valuable to the company in deciding which types of attractions to develop in the future, as it now will know for certain which ones drive the most spending elsewhere in the park.

Loyalty programs also help introduce customers to upsells that they might non have paid for in the by but decide they might like to pay for in the time to come, one time they've tried them via a rewards freebie.

From movies to online content and at present theme parks, many companies in the amusement business are trying to move from a price-per-service model to subscription-based ones. (Think nigh Moviepass, Netflix, and at present Half dozen Flags.) If this works for Six Flags, volition other bondage in the theme park concern follow with loyalty programs of their ain, just as the airlines did?