Is Six Flags Fiesta Texas Flash Pass Worth It?

6/30/2021

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If you've read my previous post about whether or not the Seaworld San Antonio Quick Queue is worth the money, you'll see a similar theme happening here. Mom and I recently went up to San Antonio for a long weekend to hit the parks now that they have dropped their mask mandates. We already knew we weren't a fan of theme parks while wearing masks, having done that for a week last September when we went to Disney World during COVID. Since we were only going to be at Fiesta Texas for one day we went ahead and splurged on Flash Pass, which lets you make reservations for rides and skip the bulk of the lines. (Read More)

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HOW TO MAKE A SIX FLAGS FIESTA TEXAS FLASH PASS RESERVATION
AND WHY I RECOMMEND YOU DON'T DO IT BEFORE HAND

I know that sounds odd, me (the penultimate pre-planner) recommending that you NOT book the Flash Pass tickets before hand. Crazy talk!

Hear me out.

When I booked our tickets, I also booked the Flash Pass reservations at the same time. There are three different tiers, each costing increasing amounts of money and decreasing the length of time you'll have to wait for your reservation. Don't worry, we'll talk about how to make those reservations a little further down this post.

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Six Flags Fiesta Texas Flash Pass Prices:

Bronze Tier is the cheapest and advertises that it will save you about 25% of the time you'd normally wait in line.
Starting price - $50.00

Gold Tier is next (and the one we went with) that advertises saving you 60% of the time you'd wait in line.
Starting price - $80.00

Platinum Tier is the most expensive and advertises that you will save 90% of the time you'd wait in line.
Starting price - $115.00

Those prices are per person. It's not cheap, even the cheapest one isn't cheap. But, there are a lot of rides at Fiesta Texas, and that brings us to the next part of the post. Which rides are included with Flash Pass Six Flags Fiesta Texas?

I'm going to get to why you shouldn't buy at the start, but this part bleeds into that, I promise.

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WHICH RIDES ARE INCLUDED WITH FLASH PASS SIX FLAGS FIESTA TEXAS?

According to the Six Flags website, the following rides are included with Flash Pass:

Batman: The Ride
Boomerang
Bugs' White Water Rapids
Fireball
Goliath
Gully Washer
Hurricane Force 5
Iron Rattler
Pandemonium
Pirates of the Deep Sea
Poltergeist
Road Runner Express
Scream
SUPERMAN: Krypton Coaster
Sky Screamer
Wonder Woman Golden Lasso (Coming Soon! Single Reservation)

That looks like a lot of rides, right? I'm going to add here that when we went you could also make a single reservation for The Joker, but we didn't ride it because, frankly, it looked terrifying. We did ride The Sea Swinger at Seaworld, kind of like The Joker's much smaller sibling, and that was scary enough.

With all of these rides, if you rode each one once at the lowest tier, your cost per ride to skip the line would be $2.94 per person, per ride, if you were able to buy the Bronze pass at $50. If you're going in the off season that might be the case, but if you're going in the summer or during a holiday, plan on more, so about $3.00 a ride would be the bare minimum if you rode all the rides including Joker.

If you get the Gold Pass like we did, you're bumping $5.50 per ride and that's if you ride every ride available, which probably won't happen.

Here's the thing, when you get to the park, the offerings for the Flash Pass can be QUITE different than what you booked online, as we found out.

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SIX FLAGS FIESTA TEXAS RIDE CLOSURES

When you enter Six Flags Fiesta Texas with a pre-purchased Flash Pass ticket you will be directed to a building in the park where you'll need to turn in the paper ticket and get a wrist band that will both allow you to book your rides and will act as a visible signal to show the staff that you have purchased this addon and are in the right line.

The thing is, the rides you purchased the Flash Pass for aren't necessarily the rides that are open on the day you visit, which is the main reason why I recommend waiting until you get to the park to make that decision.

When we went in June and presented ourselves at the Flash Pass building there was a board on the wall which showed us the rides that were included in Flash Pass that day.

It looked nothing at all like what we'd paid $90.00 apiece for.

Instead of 17 rides that we could ride, there were six.

Yes, six rides.

I almost asked for my money back right then, but decided to go ahead and keep it mainly because I wanted to see how Flash Pass worked so I could write a thorough blog post. So I got the arm band/watch thing, learned to use it, and headed out to book our first pass, from which I could choose:

Boomerang
Bugs' White Water Rapids
Iron Rattler
Roadrunner Express
Scream
Pandemonium

I made a reservation for Iron Rattler and headed in that direction. I'll talk more about how to make the reservation further down, but want to take a moment to talk about the Flash Pass changes throughout the day.

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WHICH RIDES ARE INCLUDED IN FIESTA TEXAS FLASH PASS
IT CHANGES ALL DAY LONG

When we started making reservations for the day there were just six rides available. The other rides were running, I could see them running, but each time I tried to make a reservation on the Flash Pass watch the ride would come up as "Closed".

Once in awhile a new available ride would pop up, and we ended up being able to ride most of the available rides using Flash Pass, but there was no rhyme or reason to it and the "not knowing" what we were actually paying for would prevent me from purchasing this addon again.

I should state that clearly here, I wouldn't pay for Gold Flash Pass again, possibly the Bronze, but not the Gold. It's too much money to risk having rides that aren't open at all, or are open and closing all day long because of malfunctions.

The one thing we could not ride all day long because it was down was Batman. It was down the entire day which was a real shame because it was the ride we were most looking forward to, having never been on one like it.

In the middle of summer you would expect that Fiesta Texas would have all of its rides up and running, maybe not the whole day (we do understand technical difficulties) but at some point during the day. This is peak time for a theme park, not the time to embark on refurbishment.

I read many reviews before I made our Flash Pass purchase and saw a recurring theme of rides being down and people being frustrated. Just know that when you go this is not just a possibility, it's a likelihood.

By the end of the day, when we went back to return the Flash Pass watch, there was a new board up which listed all of the rides available, bringing the total from six at the start of the day, to 13 by day's end.

So, my recommendation is that you wait to buy Flash Passes until you get into the park and see what's running and what's down. It probably will change during the day, but at least you won't spend a ton of money only to not be able to ride the rides you purchased the Flash Pass for in the first place.

They can run out of certain tiers of Flash Pass and they even have signs outside which can be flipped to say, "Due to demand, Bronze is no longer available." So if you're going at a heavy time (a weekend or a holiday) you might want to buy in advance, but even then, it's a whole lot of money to spend without an assurance that the rides will be available.

Let's talk about how you book your ride reservations.

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MAKING A SIX FLAGS FIESTA TEXAS FLASH PASS RESERVATION
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I'm going to admit that I was more than a little skeptical when the employee handed over my Flash Pass watch and gave me a quick rundown on how to use it. Since it involved a touch screen, all I could imagine was me accidentally bumping it on a ride and making (or cancelling) our next reservation.

Turns out, it would be exceedingly difficult to mess it up.

In order to book a reservation you first have to open the selection screen. You do that by swiping left and THEN swiping up. You have to do both, just one swipe won't open the process.

Once you have it open you then swipe up and down to scroll through the rides. Each ride will be indicated with either CLOSED or with an estimated arrival time if you make the reservation.

Let's say you want to ride The Joker. The watch will show you that you can make a reservation for 12:45 and it will tell you how many minutes it is from your current time. If you make the reservation at 12:30 for 12:45 it'll show both the 12:45 arrival time and the 15 minute count down.

When your arrival time arrives the watch will buzz, alerting you to the fact that you can enter the ride queue, in case you forgot.

You can enter the ride queue at any time after your reservation is ready. It's not like Disney where you have to be there within an hour. You can show up whenever, but you cannot make a new reservation until the park attendant has scanned your watch and cleared the current reservation.

There were times (many) when the ride attendants did not have a scanner. We showed them our watch and rode the ride, but it didn't clear our current reservation. I guess you could always use that reservation again, but if you want to ride another ride you will have to go through the process of replacing the reservation.

Once again you'll swipe left and swipe up to open the watch, then you'll scroll through the available rides. When you choose the ride you want (by swiping to the right or left) it will tell you that you are replacing your current ride reservation.

In order to replace that reservation you will be asked to swipe up THREE TIMES to confirm. You can't accidentally replace a reservation, it would be all but impossible.

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FIESTA TEXAS FLASH PASS REVIEW
FINDING THE LINES

I'm going to write a post soon comparing Fiesta Texas and Seaworld, but basically they share the most confusing part of any reservation or line bypass system, though Fiesta Texas is more confusing, at least it was for us.

The Flash Pass line entry area is not always clearly marked. Sometimes it's a huge sign, like the top picture in this post, but more often there isn't a sign at the entrance and you might instead be looking for stickers on the ground or a small sign beyond the entrance. On more than one occasion we stood in line waiting to see a Flash Pass sign, but never found one.

At one point a helpful employee opened some gates for us and let us change lines, but had he not we'd have stood in line for much longer than we paid for, negating the extra dollars spent on Flash Pass.

Fiesta Texas really needs to work on this. If you're not familiar with the park you will likely find yourself wandering around at some point looking for an entry line that should be there, but is not at all clearly marked.

I had visions of myself walking in the exit of a ride only to be told that the ride didn't have a Flash Pass line, or something like that. It didn't happen, but the fact that most of these lines simply go in the exit means it's a very real possibility.

My advice would be that you first look for a sign at the entrance. If you don't see one you should then turn your eyes toward the ground and look for stickers on the pathway. Failing that, go in the entrance and keep an eye out for any signage within the line that tells you to branch off for Flash Pass.

We also asked other people in line, but most were not local and had no more idea about where they should be than we did. :) It was a bit like I felt when I was riding Dare Devil Dive, confused and disoriented.

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FIESTA TEXAS FLASH PASS REVIEW
FINAL THOUGHTS

I'm glad we purchased The Flash Pass so we could see how it worked, and I can see a benefit to it, especially if you will only be in the park for one day or are traveling during a holiday.

Having been to Disneyland, Disney World, Universal Florida, Knott's Berry Farm, Seaworld San Antonio, and Seaworld Orlando, I have used a lot of Flash Pass type products and have a firm favorite. I prefer to purchase the option as long as it allows me to ride the rides without scheduling them in advance.

Seaworld and Universal excel at this, the others relegate you to a schedule that you have to adhere to. Granted, Fiesta Texas doesn't let your pass expire like Disney does, but it detracts (for me) from the experience when I know that I have to be at a certain ride at a certain time if I want to be able to use the pass again and not "waste money".

As much as I am a planner, theme park trips are a vacation and I want them to feel that way when I'm in the parks.

The Fiesta Texas Flash Pass, for me, was more miss than hit. I think if all the rides had been up and running it wouldn't have felt so stressful, but the fact that they kept going up and down all day really gave the entire day this edge of, "I'd better book this right now because the ride might not be open in an hour."

The next time I go I'll plan a full day in the parks and just develop a good Touring Plan instead of paying for Flash Pass.

Whatever you ultimately decide to do, I hope this post has helped you make a decision, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Ty

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