Certificate is in my account prior to the final due date to pay the annual fee. In other words I had not paid the fee but got the certificate and followed advise to wait towards the end of the 30 day billing period to cancel, which I ended up not doing.
I called to cancel or downgrade to gold and the Rep offered me $75 or 18,000 pts after spending $1000 on the card to keep it. With the new hotel allowance and the points I kept it. Now we will see if I am successful using the pass. The only kicker is I agreed to pay the fee and cannot cancel the card for a year.

Thanks everyone for chiming in.