Six Flags ~ Not as expensive as you might think.

We love Six Flags. If you read this blog for any amount of time you will probably be able to figure that out. But we are definitely  not made out of money so how do we keep the costs down and the fun up.

The prices listed in this blog are current as of 12/03/15.

Our first year at Six Flags we had memberships. For about $87.70 a month for the 5 of us we could go to either Texas Six Flags and it included the dining pass which gave us lunch and dinner at Six Flags Fiesta Texas, but not anywhere else. It also included standard parking free. If you go enough to make it worth your while it was a good deal. Average cost was about $1052 a year.

Memberships have gotten better though. Now with the combo gold membership you can go to any regular Six Flags park (although most of the dedicated water parks are still not included, only the closest one to your home park is part of the deal) and you can now eat at any park by upgrading to the combo gold dinning pass. You also still get free parking with either gold memberships or gold passes. A little more expensive but probably still worth it (when I priced it out it would have come to about $100 a month for the five of us. So about $1200 a year.)

It is a good deal of you can't come up with the money for passes but plan to make a lot of trips to Six Flags (like we do). If you go the membership route you do have to stay a member for a year. You can quit any time after that with a months notice (if you give notice in June you will have to pay for July, but then you would be done.)

If you can afford to pay it all at once however passes are definitely the best deal. 5 combo gold passes with 5 combo gold season dining passes came to $867.48. That comes out to $173.50 per person. If we go 10 times that would be Six Flags with lunch, dinner and a snack for $17.30 a visit.

A ticket bought online is $49.99 

Average for cost for a meal at the park is $11 

Average cost of a snack is $5

So a ticket, two meals and a snack would be $77

Oops, almost forgot, this year's combo gold dining passes and memberships come with an all you can drink beverage cup for free. That's going to be worth at least another $15 bucks a visit.

That's $92 a day. If you go twice that's $184 bucks. You just can't do it all in one day anyway. I tried, it doesn't work.

The Six Flags website says the dining pass pays for itself after four visits, but if you consider that sports bottle it makes that money back even quicker. 

2016 season passes are good now and last till the end of next year. So basically we are already saving money every visit.

Go on weekdays when Hotels are less expensive and the lines are not as long. We usually find a great Hotel with two queen beds and a sofa and with a full complimentary breakfast for about $60 a night in Dallas or San Antonio. We usually start two nights.

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Gas is cheap right now. Less then $50 each way and we are 5 hours a way. Our average trip is less then $300 bucks.

Heck if I lived in Dallas or San Antonio it would be an even better deal. We'd go to Six Flags just to eat.

Fright Fest 2015 ~ Our first bad experience at Six Flags

Let me first off state that a bad time at Six Flags is still better then a good time almost anywhere else. We love Six Flags and we still had a great time for most of our trip.

Sooner or later I guess everyone will have a bad experience at a theme park. I expect the long lines and bad weather. Those are realities of life for a theme park junky, and one of the best reasons to have a season pass. Every now and then though a park makes decisions that adversely affect patrons and leave you scratching your head and wondering why.

We loved Fright Fest at Six Flags Fiesta Texas in 2014. The sights and shows were fantastic.  The final show off the night was so good we stayed an extra night just to see it again. My three year old absolutely loved it, and that is the root of the problem. This year we decided to go to Six Flags over Texas for Fright Fest, but checking the website I believe we would have had the same problem at any Six Flags park.

Fright Fest ~ Six Flags Fiesta Texas 2014

At the 2014 Fright Fest they had no scare zones and glostick necklaces that told their actors not to scare people even in the scare zone. For some reason Six Flags decided that in 2015 to get rid of both these ideas. Not only that they shut down all kiddy rides at 7pm. So my now 4yr old daughter has nothing to do and is getting scared and crying.

We drove 5 hours to get to Six Flags only to have to leave early each night. It seems that Six Flags decided to try and compete with local haunted houses over putting families and children first. The worst part to us is they were not allowing readmittance into the park. So no closing finales for us this year.

It was very disappointing but we did learn some things. Always have a backup plan. We didn't bring much cash to Dallas as we were using season passes so we were kind of stuck. Check the website carefully before deciding to make the drive. It did warn us, "scariest Fright Fest ever". It said nothing about safe zones this year. Lastly check around and see if you can find out all the details about an event before going.

It was still fun (during the day) and we still love Six Flags but I think they really messed up by taking the fun out of the park. If you were there let me know what you think too.

And if you were there and had the same problem we did make sure you let Six Flags know by contacting them here. They can't fix something if they don't know its broken.