I personally like having the event in December because that's when I start getting anxious to ride a coaster again.  The first weekend of November would be okay but that's immediatley after WOF closes.

Rather than scheduling ERT on the 40 degree and above rides, I say include a Trailblazer pass (front of the line pass) with the event.  This would allow attendees to ride Wildfire, Powderkeg, and ThuNderaTion in the afternoon without waiting in a huge line.

$20 is the retail price.  Here's the details.

Yea I was wondering all day if that was included in this years event. It wasn't so I got one right after lunch presentations and hit Powder Keg real quick. It payed for itself on the first use saving me a 90 minute wait there. (in fact I would of not got on without it with our day swamped like it was this year.)

You should also check on rearranging stuff around on the itinerary. Because it was non stop from ERT to after lunch about 4PM by that time it wax getting cold again and the sun was going down. The rides closed pretty quickly after that. Only TNT ran until park closing. I would like to see the VIP Seating of The Christmas Carol moved to a later showtime during the night, when the rides have closed up. 

Perhaps move the group portions of the event to the evening as a whole?  Something like:

4:30 walkback tour
5:15 dinner
6:45 Dicken's Christmas Carrol
9:30-10:00 ERT on Fire in the Hole (with light variations).

Another thing to look into is doing print at home tickets.  Once you recieve registration and payment you could email attendees back with a pdf copy of their tickets.  This be in an improvement in two aspects:
a.  No one would have to worry about checking in on site (this would mean fewer headaches for both attendees and the volunteers).
b.  Attendees could choose to use their second day on Friday instead of Sunday.

Lots of great comments.  I talked to one member during the event (OrientWolf) who brought up the idea of printing a bar code on the badges themselves.  I suppose we could send badges (with tickets) out electronically to be used prior to saturday.  I am not sure how much work, cost, etc would be involved with that.  It is something we will definitly look into.

The reason we could get tickets out on friday last year, was that Jason, an asst. regional rep was able to pick the tickets up the day before.  It worked, but there are so many factors that could go wrong with that, that I am not sure I would want to do that again.  (Keep in mind that Jeff and I personally pay SDC for the tickets, and the price has a lot of ZEROS!)

As far as SDC's version of fast pass (Trailblazer) I could request that, but it will probably increase the cost of the event, what would everyone be willing to pay for that?  $5, $10, full price?  SDC is already giving us a REALLY good price if you consider what is included.  This is a problem when it comes to requesting a specific time for Dicken's Christmas Carol, I can request early in the day/late in the day, but its all in finding a middle ground with the park, a give and take so to speak.

Also keep in mind the more people that come, the more things I can realistically request.

Sorry for so many details, and I again APPRECIATE every single person that attends, and keeps coming back year after year, thats why Jeff and I try to give you guys the best event we can.  I thought an inside perspective might be interesting.

I also think its VERY funny that two people completely disagreed about the flow of the previous event.  I do happen to agree that it was almost overscheduled, the walk back tour of RiverBattle was a last minute addition, and I certainly wasn't going to say no.   

Jennifer

Perhaps the better way of going about would be giving attendees a discount on the pass (50-75% ideally).  This would mean less expense for those attendees that don't want it and more passes for the park to sell at full price.

In case you miss it -- I posted our PTR from Coaster Christmas on MiG.  There is a preview in our PTR thread on this forum.