Nice quaint theme park with good vibes that are co...

Nice quaint theme park with good vibes that are completely ruined by misleading advertising, anti-customer practices and greed.

My wife and I visited the park for the first time today after moving to Federal Way to check it out and see what it was all about. We bought our day passes and noted that the sign at the counter specifically said "Ask me how to upgrade your daily ticket to a season pass!" As we explored the park and decided how we wanted to spend our day we came to the conclusion that we would like to come back in the future and went to upgrade our tickets, as advertised. Unfortunately, due to the current sale we were informed that it was impossible to upgrade tickets since the current promotion was supposedly too good of a deal to combine with other offers.

This is absolutely absurd and something any young child can figure out within their first hour of playing Rollercoaster Tycoon on an old computer, it shouldn't be a surprise to an actual business that the net result for the customer is unacceptable with this setup (as an aside my nephews would love to compare RTC high scores since they're pretty sure they have you beat). At the end of the day, after visiting the park my wife and I were willing to pay $100+ to get season passes and to come back in the future for more visits, each of which generating more revenue for the park. At the time when we arrived at the park, this exact offer was on the table for us to purchase season passes for that $100, enjoy the park for the day and come back. To say that the nearly $60 we paid to get in is forfeit when the final outcome we desired was originally offered is absurd. You don't go to a dealer, test drive a $40,000 car and then get told that it is now $65,000 because you had the audacity to see if you liked it, the car is simply still $40,000 and McDonalds doesn't say "would you like to upgrade to a large for $0.50 more and then charge you full price for both the medium and large because you initially considered the medium. Upgrading a ticket isn't a promotion on the season pass, it's applying the redundant purchase towards an upsell, this isn't rocket science.

In addition to this there was no visible management and not a single of the front line team members seemed like they had any interest in creating a positive customer experience. It was simply "well we can't apply that discount to the season pass, too bad" and an implied "if you don't like it you can leave" -which we did. We had initially planned on buying dinner and maybe doing the skycoaster and then visiting the park multiple times again. Instead we rode a few more rides for free and left. I guess we've checked the Wild Waves box and won't be coming back because obviously they don't want our money. It's sad that such an old and well established park has zero business sense and doesn't realize that the actual park experience is the most powerful advertisement you have; to penalize guests and charge them for the privileged of biting off on that advertisement is simply flabbergasting and not something I've come across at any other park I've ever visited. It also appears that I was not alone in being caught off guard by this bizarre business "logic," as I was filling out a customer comment card another family came up to the admissions window and inquired about upgrading to a season pass and then promptly left the park in disgust as well.

Overall it's a nice park, a bit small but well done. If it gets overcrowded the lines for the limited ride offerings might exceed wait times that are worth it but today was perfect. The pricing would be acceptable so long as you aren't forced to pay for the same thing multiple times, but for the actual cost after the scams you might as well plan a trip to a full size park since the net result exceeds the "small town park" experience price.