For those of us with season passes, we find the All-Season dining plan to be a spectacular value considering we can eat twice per day at all of the Cedar Fair parks with our Platinum passes. A guest previously wrote in and asked what the break even point on the All-Season dining plan was, and whether we thought it was worth the investment.
For our complete analysis of the All-Season dining plans, visit our post, Is All-Season Dining Worth the Cost?
Today Colleen writes in and asks, “What’s your opinion on value of the All-Day food pass? I have four adults and two five year olds to feed for two days.”
All-Day dining plans are currently $31.99 and allow a guest to eat every 90 minutes. Drinks are not included. There is also a Premium All-Day dining plan for $44.99 that includes an entrée + side or snack option + all-day drink.
Review the latest Cedar Point dining plans options for reference. For all other park dining plans, review our Cedar Fair park food guides.
After purchasing an All-Day dining plan, you take the voucher to any food stand in the park and they will give the guest a wristband for use throughout the day.
Depending on where you eat throughout the day, meals can vary in size from just enough to feed one person, to more than enough to share. We do not recommend getting an All-Day meal plan for every guest in your party, as eating every 90 minutes provides plenty of opportunities to share. The only stipulation is the guest with the wristband has to order the food.
For simplicity purposes, an entrée with side costs roughly $15-18.00 with a drink costing around another $5.00. Therefore, your break even point is approximately 3 meals with the All-Day dining plan. Given one can eat every 90 minutes, that provides a lot of opportunity to get value out of the dining plans.
Before we had All-Season dining plans, we would get the All-Day dining plans to share among 4 of us (Our kids were little and our fifth child was a baby at the time). Eating every 90 minutes provided plenty of opportunity to continually keep mouths fed, even if sometimes it was only a bite or two per person. We would let the kids eat the first meal (or two) and 90 minutes later the adults shared a meal. By the third 90 minutes, the kids may be hungry again.
Assuming you get your first meal around 11:00 am, that provides a second meal at 12:30, third at 2:00, fourth at 3:30, and you will be rolling out of the park with a fifth meal by 5:00…and you still have till closing to enjoy the plan.
Tip: Make sure to scan your wristband as soon as possible, and ask if you can scan it when you order your food at sit down restaurants instead of at the end of the meal when they bring your check. This starts the 90 minute clock for your next meal. If you wait to scan till the end of your sit down meal, you delay the 90 minute wait between meals.
Keep in mind, if packing a couple peanut butter and jelly or lunch meat sandwiches in a cooler along with snacks and drinks is more than adequate to keep you full throughout the day, go ahead and bring them along. However, you will have to leave the cooler in your vehicle (or at the picnic pavilions). Make sure to get your hand stamped so you can get back into the park. However, realize time is wasted in the process of walking back to the car, eating, then walking back in. Within that hour, you could have rode your favorite coaster.
For us and countless others, the dining plans have provided a great opportunity to keep guests in the park to eat the food and ride.
In Summary
Generally speaking, we think the All-Day and All-Season dining plans provide a great value for guests so long as you plan on utilizing them. The guest needs to determine how much food they typically would eat in a visit. If you can share meals and make do with the time constraints between servings, there provides plenty of opportunity to get value out of the system.
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Thank you! This was very helpful!!
Thank you very much for the information
Great information on the All-Day meal plan. Going to try it when visiting the park on Thursday…Thanks again
We tried the plan and for us, it was NOT worth it! The menu items for the plan range in price from just under $8 to just over $10. We arrived at the park around noon, having already eaten breakfast. We ate lunch about 1:30, dinner about 6:30 and forced ourselves to eat a late meal at 10:30. We paid $35 (with tax & fees) for the plan, but had we been paying cash, we would have paid $10, $7.89 & $7.59 for the food we got. Even if you tack on a couple of dollars for tax we would have spent under $30 for the same food. Plus we probably would not have even gotten the late meal as we usually don’t eat that late and I personally wasn’t really hungry. Plus, we didn’t like the fact that you had to select from certain places and items. For example, we went to watch a show around 1:00 with the thought in mind that we could eat will we watched. But the saloon, which did offer food, was not on the eating plan so we had to eat at the burrito place next door (burritos are good and large) and wait for the next show. If you are trying to eat more often because you are sharing the plan, then you are taking even more time out of your day to eat. I had gotten us each a plan because we wanted to eat at the same time, have the option of getting different menu items and didn’t want to have to worry if there was enough to share one meal! We found that we would have spent less if we had just bought our food as we went!!
Thanks for your information
I was planning on taking large church group about 30 kids so you think the plan is suitable for teens as far as the menu items or would it make since to pay as we go.
Really depends on how much they can eat and/or if any of them are willing to share. Eating every 90 minutes provides lots of opportunities to eat. You can review menu prices in each of our park food guides and then compare to the cost of the all-day dining plan.
Since you’re bringing a group, you may want to consider the Small Group meal packages.
I’d tend to say not worth it. The menu is extremely limited at most restaurants. Then you are at a restaurant like chicky and Pete’s that has 4 items included on the band, out of a 40 item menu, and they don’t take your drink band. So you pay $10 for 2 soft drinks that you could have gotten included 100 yards away.
I did the all day plan last year on my 1st visit and knew as I was going along all 3 days I wasn’t getting my money’s worth out of it. HOWEVER, in actuality I was plotting how to work it over THIS year upon return with a co-conspirator, er, I mean, best friend who has never even HEARD of Cedar Point much less the entire experience that awaits us. He DOES, however, like a good meal and we BOTH love really putting the screws to corporate America on deals like this, if only to give hope to all those who didn’t. LOL. I figure we can get a max of 8 meals each per day, with a park close of 2200h. That’s 48 meals across 3 days, max. Between the beef brisket, pulled pork, and more, the focus will be on high value proteins that can be kept in the Hotel Breakers dorm fridge and then aboard Amtrak to take back home to Arkansas. We’re bringing Tupperware. Wish us luck in our endeavours, fellow CP F&B Consumers!
Totally worth it. We ate 5 times. Definitely got our money’s worth. Back beat BBQ and Chickie and Pete’s had nice portion sizes. I’m wondering where else has nice portion sizes? Going back in a few weeks.
Typically Gristmill Wild Eats (formerly Frontier Foldovers) offers nice portion sizes, but we’ve yet to see them open.
Hi. What do you recommend for a mom and her 15 years old daughter with a platinum season pass for 3 days between the cedar point park and the water park visits? all day? All season? Pay on the spot? And what about the drinks also? Thank you.
I know this reply is 4 years after the question.. I just want to give my insight, incase anyone finds this post in the future.
Last year I had the All season Platinum Dining Pass (that came in handy during half day events – like Winterfest at Kings Island meal when we arrived and another before leaving). 🙂 — Plus we went to CP and KI multiple times during the year.
I stuck to venues that had larger meal portions to share.
We also had one Season Drink cup to share.
However, there were days my teenager was extra hungry. And I would buy her an all day premium dining pass. This way we could get snacks and share extra meals during the day.
I often got a soda no ice, and a vanilla ice cream as a snack to make a float 🙂 nice way to cool off on those hot summer nights.
So It depends on how hungry everyone is. But I found it beneficial to have both meal pass some days. Then I could get my own meal, and try something different.
We did this last year, the $31.99 all day dining pass. We liked it. BUT, struggled to find places in the park that were included in the plan. We had things like: corn dogs and fries, chicken fingers and fries and pizza. Were there other places that we weren’t told about that were included? I have looked online for a list of participating food locations but haven’t been able to find anything.
https://cpfoodblog.com/2019-cedar-point-dining-plan/ this seems really up to date!
I bought an all day dining at Hershey Park in Pennsylvania, USA before and it was actually good for 24 hours. SO we purchased about 3pm on our first day and could use it through 3 pm the following day, anyone have any experience trying to do this at Canada’s Wonderland?
What is the point of purchasing an all dsy meal plan only to spend more money after we eat? Is there a discount for usng he day meal plan wristband?
The All-Day dining plan allows guests to eat every 90 minutes. How much more were you looking to eat? While the dining plans do not include everything to eat in the park, there is a ton of options available. However, the dining plans (outside of the season) do not apply any additional discounts to other menu items.