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Would you eat all your meals at Six Flags?

Francisco 2.0

By Francisco 2.0
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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32406

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TL;DR.  Electrical engineer fresh out of college, and workplace is next door to Six Flags Magic Mountain.  In 2014, finds a promo for $150 a year for unlimited trips to park, free parking and free food.  Ends up eating every meal there and saves enough to pay off college loans, buy a home and get married.

https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/six-flags-dining-pass

 

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For years, millennials have endured an endless barrage of worthless budgeting apps, phony money diaries and toxic hustle porn. But in truth, there is only one realistic path for us to overcome our debilitating financial burdens. And Dylan, a 33-year-old electrical engineer in Santa Clarita, California, is the one who figured it out. “You can pay around $150 for unlimited, year-round access to Six Flags, which includes parking and two meals a day,” he tells me. “If you time it right, you could eat both lunch and dinner there every day.” 

 

 

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Maybe that sounds outlandish, but after just seven years of daily meals at the theme park, Dylan paid down his student loans, got married and bought a house. 

It all started on the first day of his internship in 2014, when Dylan noticed the rollicking coasters of Six Flags Magic Mountain from the windows of his new office. Fresh out of college and something of a coaster-fanatic already, Dylan was perusing the options for Six Flags’ annual pass when he stumbled upon what might be the deal of his lifetime — for a one-time fee of $150, he could eat two meals a day, every day at the park for an entire year. Since his office was just a five-minute drive away, it was a no-brainer. 

 

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“That entire first year, I don’t think I ever went to the grocery store,” he says. “I timed it so I was able to go there during my lunch break, go back to work, then stop back for dinner on my way home.” 

Where others saw glorified carnival food, Dylan saw the world’s thriftiest food court. “It was crazy — I was saving money, paying off student loans,” he explains. “One of my coworkers said she spent $1,500 a month on eating out, I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not going down that road!’” 

 

Spoiler

To be sure, the Six Flags diet isn’t for the faint of heart (or really, anyone’s heart). “The first year, the menu was kind of lame — all you could get was a burger and fries, or a pizza and breadsticks, or this pathetic sandwich and a refillable soda cup,” Dylan recalls. “It wasn’t healthy at all, which was rough.” 

As such, over the next six years, Dylan pulled back to his current frequency — three or four lunches a week at the theme park. “My wife moved in and I stopped doing dinners — and weekends, too, since she’s not as big into roller coasters as I am,” he tells me. But Dylan is still there often enough that he’s well-recognized. “It’s not quite at the level of Cheers, but all the park employees, they’ll say hi,” he says.

Thankfully, the menu has evolved beyond pizza, burgers and sandwiches. “They’ve got decent options now,” Dylan tells me. “Still a lot of bad food, I mean it’s theme-park food so you can’t expect too much from them. But you find the options that aren’t terrible — stuff like tri-tip sandwiches and vegan options like blackbean burgers and meatless meatball subs.” 

To say nothing of the seasonal specialties. Dylan’s first bite into a turkey hotdog called the “Thanksgiving Dog” felt nothing short of life-changing. “It was amazing,” he says. “It’s a turkey dog topped with cranberry sauce, stuffing and a slathering of mayonnaise, which I know sounds awful, but it was so good. I ended up eating way too many of them, and now I can’t even smell turkey dogs without gagging.”

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Eventually, the dining pass expanded to include a snack along with the two daily meals. “But that’s where it got dangerous,” Dylan warns. “Separate from the meal, you could get Dippin’ Dots, sundaes, churros, pretzels — all that type of stuff. That’s when I started adding weight.” 

 

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These days then, he says, “I stay away from the snacks and stick to healthier options — there’s a pretty decent carne asada salad, so I usually do that now. They also have a chipotle chicken salad that’s pretty good, too.”

The only problem is, the chipotle chicken salad is on the opposite side of the park, which means it doesn’t always fit into his Six Flags daily meal calculus. “From where I park my car, to the places at the back of the park, to then back to my car, it’s usually about 5,000 steps — and I’m hustlin’,” he explains. “I could go to Hurricane Harbor [the waterpark area], but it seems weird being the only guy dressed business casual while everyone else is walking around in swim trunks and bikinis.” 

That said, during the offseason, getting to any corner of the park is easy — he’ll even stop for a ride before going back to the office. But when the park is full or if he has a busy day at work, Dylan is forced to settle for something toward the front of the park, like the much-dreaded “chicken balls.” “I got so sick of those chicken balls,” he says. “I’d estimate I got them around 150 times, and at five per meal, that’s around 750 balls. I don’t know that I could ever eat them again.” 

Speaking of numbers, though he says he’s never kept an official tally of how many meals he’s eaten at Six Flags, Dylan ventures to guess it’s more than 2,000, making his overall price-per-meal around 50 cents. So chicken balls be damned, he sees no reason to stop taking advantage of the Six Flags dining pass loophole anytime soon. 

“We just bought a house here, so I’m not really going anywhere,” he says. “As long as they keep changing the menu, I’m happy.”

 

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Viking

Viking 301

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I worked food service at six flags for 3 seasons and back then they used Sysco (or something similiar). You could eat fairly decent meals (burgers, salads, etc) no problem. I loved that job as a teenager. Made out with a co-worker girlfriend on the spinnaker many a times.

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Your Mom

Your Mom 4830

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1 hour ago, BigDHornfan said:

worked at Six Flags in HS.  at the plantation fried chicken spot.  Came in one day and overnight a rat had gotten in a fryer.  Manager scooped it out and started cooking.

Quit the same day.   Fuck no I wouldn't eat any meal at Six Flags.

Said everyone who ever worked in any restaurant and saw similar shit happen in every single one of them.  Im convinced there’s not a restaurant in existence that hasn’t had some disgusting shit happen in the kitchen on the regular  

As for meals in a theme park, fuck that. I’d rather live paycheck to paycheck for a few years and eat ramen and pbj when I need to. I could see doing it for a year or so to help build a rainy day fund, but 6 years?!  

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956 Worldwide

956 Worldwide 34746

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On 10/26/2021 at 5:44 AM, CooterBrown said:

$150 for entry and two meals a day for a year sounds like a promo idea that gets someone fired. I can’t believe that was an actual offer.

There’s one of this guy and hundreds or thousands of people who impulse bought and used it once or twice. It wouldn’t have worked for this dude if he didn’t work five minutes from the park. I’ll bet, in fact, that with this article they’ll have a surge in passes and then 90 percent of the people who buy them will eat a couple of ass carnie meals and never go back. 

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texashorne

texashorne 1178

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Food can be major expense if you eat out/drink out.. Its the easiest way to cut 4 figures off your monthly nut; stop eating and drinking out and shop at the grocery store.. This guy just took it to the next level... and I think his biggest hassle was likely waiting in line and going through metal detectors every time he needed to eat. 

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pch

pch 1259

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Posted
On 10/25/2021 at 9:35 PM, ztejas said:

It isn't eating the food it's having to get in and out of a six flags every day. 

 

On 10/26/2021 at 5:45 AM, Landomatic said:

fixed for accuracy

Who wouldn't want to eat lunch and dinner every. . . . . . .single. . . . day surrounded by thousands of estrogen and testosterone charged teenagers from every small town brought by every church bus in California?  

And who knows, maybe he got a degree from ITT tech, bought a 640 square foot tiny house, and got married to a mail order bride at the justice of the peace office. Anyone who would do the Six Flags shit makes me think this scenario is not out of the question.

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Deej

Deej 76882

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1 hour ago, SydneyCarton said:

Having seen Ted Lasso, and the fact it's clear in the picture, I find it irritating some asshole captioned that as "Hold my beer" when he is clearly holding a fucking coffee. 

Season 1, episode 2. Ted decides to play soccer with the school girl, hands his coffee to Coach Beard, and actually says, ‘Here, hold my beer.”

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shadow_operative2.0

shadow_operative2.0 16013

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Sorry for partying. 

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Six Flags has done away with its unlimited dining pass after a series of videos appeared in the past few months on TikTok, showing people how to take advantage of the feature and obtain thousands of dollars worth of food.

Officials confirmed Thursday that the dining plan, which was an $80 add-on to the park’s season pass, had been ended as it was “highly unprofitable,” ripe for abuse, and was making the park experience worse for families who came to visit for the day.

The decision comes as TikTok personalities have bragged about eating every meal at Six Flags parks, saving them hundreds of dollars.

“The pass gives you two meals a day, one snack, and unlimited drinks, so that’s up to 400 meals and 200 snacks a year for $200,” a TikToker who goes by the alias “Six Flags Scoundrel” told Vice last year. “We're looking at less than 50 cents per meal, and that's not even if I go every day. That’s the cost of two packs of ramen noodles—but we're talking two square meals and another half meal basically. It's just insane. The calorie-to-cost ratio is just unheard of.”

The streamer says he paid a total of $174.88 for a season pass and the food plan and was trying to get $2,000 worth of food in his experiment.

As with most things that go viral on TikTok, others tried to do the same. And, ultimately, says Six FlagsCEO Selim Bassoul, it not only cost the company money, but resulted in clogged lines at food service locations, which upset other guests.

“They ruin the experience for somebody who came in on a single-day ticket with their family…who paid a lot of money to come…now they have 45 minutes to an hour to wait to get a meal while those other people are choking up the line for $80 for the whole season,” he told analysts on the company’s first-quarter earnings call Thursday.

While the dining plan is gone for now, Six Flags says it will likely reintroduce a revised one in the months to come.

“We will most probably rethink whether we introduce a dining plan, a season dining plan or not or an all-exclusive, but it's going to be completely changed from what people expect, because I want to avoid the choking points,” said Bassoul.

Six Flags also did away with its month-to-month membership plan and cut back on free tickets. Moving forward, the company hopes to attract fewer customers who spend more.

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Js1

Js1 85490

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On 5/15/2022 at 3:14 AM, shadow_operative2.0 said:

Sorry for partying. 

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Six Flags has done away with its unlimited dining pass after a series of videos appeared in the past few months on TikTok

Internet: CHECK OUT THIS AMAZING HACK

Company: Oh, thanks for bringing that to our attention

 

The TikTok generation has ruined everything. 

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