Theme parks are ruined if you don't pay for a fast pass?

i dunno, I remember Alton towers and “the corkscrew” being a big deal, you thought yourself lucky if the queue was under 3 hours.

For those saying the nimbus card is a pain I got the full access card for DS for £15. It lasts 3 years and can be used most places.

I've discovered over the years I get free carer tickets to the theatre etc too and so it offset the cost immediately.

Thank you! Another reason why they do it. Sneaky fuckers!

That's not what OP is discussing.
She's wondering whether it's still worth going if you don't pay for a pass.

Yeah, that's it. Thank you. I knew there was a reason. It's the actual operating costs of the rides. They want to run them as few times as possible per day.

It's a bloody disgrace to have families waiting in line for like 2-3 hours for a 3 minute ride. In the boiling hot. I can't comprehend why people do it.

Have you ever played the theme park sim city type games. The thing you learn quickly is that people in queues take up very little space compared to people moving around. You can get a much higher people density if you have lots of queueing systems.

Totally agree Op. We went to Disney in 2024 and the fast passes are insanely expensive but if you don’t get them it feels like you have wasted all the money you have already spent going to Disney. My niece (6 at the time) really struggled with the waiting on the non fast past day!

They do profit from it. If they had virtual queues, they'd just have people going on the less popular rides while they waited, which would ultimately mean they had to run the ride more times in a day, and therefore lost money. Having people standing around not actually riding is very beneficial to them.

I think they should be limited to people who cannot wait in queues, for example those with disabilities.

Or they should be much more limited and only for people who buy certain ticket packages, like if they have a hotel package etc. I don't know what rules I'd enforce exactly, but the queue not moving at all because a whole ride worth of fast pass tickets is let on is not a situation that should occur.

Where that happens, perhaps they should alternate but do 2 x fast pass, then 1 x normal queue. I don't know. But there has to be a better way.

Tbh im a fast pass person for anything, if i can pay extra and get through faster quicker, i`ll pay the extra, and not just for theme parks i do it for all sorts.

When we went to Disneyland Paris I thought who in their right mind would pay £400 for a fast track pass? But fuck me, never again.

You would get to see so much more. Hours were spent in some queues.

Over dramatic? That’s literally the point of her post, that you don’t have to go and that it’s likely not worth it on a busy day without a fast pass. HTH.

Why can't they all just have virtual queues. Like you can log into a ride and then you are allocated a slot. Your phone alerts you within a certain number of minutes to tell you when to make your way to that ride and queue. If you fail to do so and miss slot then you must go back to ride to sign in again.

Unless they profit from having people lingering around in queues? But they can't buy anything if they're in a line.

Surely it's better to maximize the time people are able to purchase things like snacks etc by reducing the amount of time they spend idle but waiting in a long line.

This is why I like Paultons, beautiful park and even in the summer holidays we've never queued for more than maybe 20 minutes.

I didn't find nimbus tricky tbh, we got some symbols which we thought (and said in the application) were borderline and it came back as a yes in 9 minutes.

But it's useless for this theme park for the times when it's needed the most (summer queues). It was fine a few years ago, just the last 2 years it's been a problem.

As a theme park enthusiast, it’s all in the planning. I’ve taken my kids all over the world to visit various theme parks and we’re annual pass holders at Alton towers and universal Orlando.

Sundays in school holidays are generally a quieter day. Get there early before park opens so that you’re in the front of the queue and head to the back of the park first. At Alton towers we start down in forbidden valley and tick off nemesis and galactica, then on the way back we do Alton manor and then across to dark forest. Our last rides of the day will be x sector. Sometimes we will fast track just one ride if the queues are not easing up. At Thorpe park this is usually hyperia.

We also often go for 2 days and stay over so on day 2 we can prioritise the rides we didn’t do day 1. Once you’ve got your heads around Disney’s lightening lane multi pass, the uk parks are a doddle. We did Alton towers the first Sunday of the summer hols and we did 13 rides with no fast pass. Knowing how to get around and where things are does help too.

Of course they’ll be a cap. It will just be a rather large one!

I totally agree with your point about capping the amount of people allowed in each day. As far as I’m aware there’s no cap, and people can just keep going through the turnstiles, so there’s always going to be far too many people trying to get on the rides.

This. 👍

Its pointless going weekends and school holidays unless you fancy paying for a day of queuing with a couple of rides thrown in. Either take the kids out of school for a day or go on an inset day.

RAP aren’t fast passes.

You use the fast track queue so you aren’t standing in a busy queue for 1.6-2 hours.

Then the card is marked to say when you can go on the next ride - which will be however long the queue would have been if you stood in it.

So those people aren’t in queues and aren’t affecting those queuing or making those queues longer.

Unfortunately I think it’s probably at a point now where it’s affordable entrance for all and fast passes which benefits those with money or raise the cost of tickets exponentially which - again - benefits those with money.

Given that Theme Parks are the cathedrals of capitalism if everyone wanted fast passes they would just keep putting the price up until the demand dropped to the number of rides they wanted to sell. Everyone has a price where they would rather join the queue with the masses.

Some parks - e.g Europapark in Germany is the gold standard - have no fast passes, and such excellent operations that the queues are low for everyone.

The problem with the UK parks is that the are just not geared up for peak periods. They operate at <20% capacity more often than 80+%, and in the holiday periods they just can't cope.

I do buy fast passes sometimes. I don't live near any theme parks, so it is not a day out for me, it's a holiday. If I've driven 7 hours to Alton Towers and booked accommodation for the week, and a fast pass one of the days is the difference between a good holiday and a shit one.... then I buy one.

E.g. I spent £800 earlier this year to fly to London and visit Chessington for the weekend with DS. It was an extra £35 each to get one fast pass on each of the main rides DS wanted to go on. Queues were mostly over an hour each. It would have been a waste of money not to.

I do think a couple of well timed single-ride fast passes in a day for ~£10 is often better value than unlimited.

It's lost around 4 million in the last 2 years and has cut staff and closed some rides. They say they have 20 million to invest in new rides but we are yet to see it. It's on a spiral.

Yes it is part of the financialised/surge pricing society, with a twist of "being a bit like a celeb" getting to jump the line if you pay some extra, Big Corp is just going to farm you until you stop playing the game unfortunately