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

...and also out of reach for an increasing amount of the population.
As I said above - it's the way of the world.

I won’t even contemplate a theme park in school holidays without a fast pass. We usually go every other year to justify it but it makes the day enjoyable rather than stressful.

There is an interesting paper on fast passes by J Li - Analysis of queue management in theme parks introducing the fast pass system - where they find that people either value time so buy a pass or value money/savings so just queue in the first come first served queue. It’s interesting in that it says the theme parks are happy with the profit from passes, and fast pass holders are happy with their experience of using one BUT paper doesn’t look at impact on those who have to queue longer or have their day impacted! It also ignores the fact that not everyone can afford a fast pass. For some families the £100 to get in is a huge amount so adding £100s to skip queues is unthinkable; the paper presents this as a simple binary time/money choice where reality is that people might not have the money to spend. I hate fast passes. Think disability queues should stay and fast passes should go but that’ll never happen

I'm a theme park enthusiast. I've been to different parks across the US, Canada, France and Germany as well as the UK.

The two-tier system created by fast passes is a big part of the problem. I see loads of people have already mentioned Europa-Park in Germany, where they do not have this system. It is, without any doubt, the best theme park I have been to. It does not have my favourite ever ride - that's in Florida. But it definitely has the best line-up and experience overall.

It is SO well run, and even on busy days (I've had 4 holidays there, and only ever been at peak times), you will not queue more than about 40 minutes for anything if you watch the queues carefully. It works because it's big, it has lots of filler attractions that are usually walk-on (and these take the pressure off the bigger rides), rides are very well-run with multiple operators getting people in and out, and over the years I've noticed that the same people are working the same rides year after year, which I think makes them super efficient. Without a paid fast track, almost everyone is in the main queue. They do have a limited virtual queue as well, which allows you to bypass the main queue and is free. It doesn't disrupt the main queues all that much because they keep the numbers low.

Food is great there too. It's head and shoulders above any of our UK parks. It is run by the Mack family, who are very good at this sort of thing and make rides for other parks (they built Hyperia at Thorpe Park, and will be building Serpent's Curse, the new water coaster at Paulton's Park).

In the UK, the best theme park in terms of how it's run, queue times and theming is Paulton's Park, in my opinion. But our daughter is 13 now and has been on lots of big rides in Orlando and elsewhere, so she has outgrown Paulton's a bit.

People mentioned the previous 'Fast Pass +' system at Disney. It took a bit of organising but it was quite good because it was free. Prior to that, they used to have machines that churned out paper tickets with a time you could come back to go on the ride. They kept that system longer at Disneyland Paris. But Disney has always felt like it needs military precision to be enjoyed properly, even when 'Fast Pass +' existed. That's why I like Europa-Park so much. You don't need to plan your day precisely. Having been there a number of times, I know I can go on a sold-out day and do everything I want to, and I don't need a spreadsheet or precise plan. It is a bit of a trek but if you do like theme parks I really cannot recommend it highly enough. The food is also great, and good value. They also have two restaurants with Michelin stars if you want to splash out!

Added to that, you don't usually see the Business Class section from the economy section, so you're not watching people in big chairs quaffing free champagne for the duration of the flight while you try to get comfy in economy. Whereas in a theme park queue, you can see other people getting onto the ride while your queue is barely moving.

I only take the kids during term-time.

You are really just arguing yourself into the ground. The fact is that fast passes make a day out at a theme park more expensive and less fun for your customers as a whole and this is obviously going to piss people off who will then, as you say, vote with their feet. Plenty of people on this thread have pointed out that parks without fast passes just work better and have shorter queues.

Can you not see how deeply cynical fast passes are? The park is financially incentivised to offer a poorer experience to paying customers in order to artificially increase queuing times and so flog more fast passes. The original question was whether the passes make visiting a theme park experience worse, and the answer to that is yes. Absolutely they do. Plenty of parks manage without them and the experience of queuing for rides at those parks is almost always better.

Economy class is the same regardless of whether there is a business class section on the same plane, or not. I You still get on the plane, you fly to where you want to go, you get off. Just because there are people in nicer seats than you doesn't make the actual service objectively worse. It's a completely false equivalence.

Not at all unreasonable.
But then that type of day out is my idea of utter hell!

Some parks close for months during the winter times.

Do they close? Thought they were open allyear

Hate fast passes. UK and Florida parks are terrible for this, as is Portaventura in Spain. I hate going to Disneyland Paris since they abolished the free passes you could pick up from machines by some of the rides.

I recommend Efteling in the Netherlands and Europa Park in Germany as really good parks where fast passes aren't essential. The focus is on efficient operations and they keep the main queues moving that way instead (with single rider lines to fill the odd gap).

ETA: oh, and Paultons Park is good too. Don't think they have fast passes.

ETA2: If you like Legoland then we found the Danish one LOADS better than Windsor. It's still operated by Merlin (I think) but even if there was some kind of fast pass option the queues were much better.

Yes, but what happens if you, as the operator of a theme park, piss off your customer base and start losing money?

I used to go to the merlin parks multiple times a year. Now I don't, because the experience at places like Europa Park is just so much better.

Well surely it does. Or at least someone with the same skewed mindset could claim it does.

Because if there was no business class, the spare room in the plane could be used for economy. There would be more flight attendants available for the whole cabin. The cost of the food could go to making the economy meals better. People in economy would not have to wait to deplane.

And probably a whole bunch of other things could be claimed.

And the economics would probably stack up in the same way. In the respect that without business class the plane wouldn't be able to run and everything would get more expensive, as the business class effectively subsidises the economy, in the same way fast passes subsidise normal passes.

The fact is people are voting with their feet. The major theme parks in the UK are losing money, and attendance is down, so it's clearly not working whereas parks which don't have fast passes such as Paultons are doing well. Soo.....

Reduced attendence is probably more indicative of the cost of living crisis than fast passes. Theme parks have pretty good market research. If they thought fast passes were bringing in less benefit than they bought in in profit then they would end them.

Minor for who?

Well if less people are going… then this will improve the queue situation won’t it?!

The “point” is… if you don’t like how a business model works… don’t use the business.

It really is that simple.

This is a theme park. A theme park.

You are still completely missing the point.

The existence of business class doesn't actively make the experience of economy worse. Fast passes do make the experience worse for everyone.

Worse for the people who buy them because it's really the only way to have good day at the time they can go e.g. weekends/ school holidays etc. They are ~£100 per person for a full day's unlimited fast pass, and that makes a single day out at Alton towers for a family of four £500+. Which is fucking ridiculous.

Worse for the people who don't have fast passes, as the existence of a separate fast pass queue results in the main queue running slower. What happens is that the fast pass queue is emptied before the main q, so if you are running a fast pass q larger than the capacity of a single train then the main q basically comes to a standstill. I've literally been at Alton Towers and watched it happen.

The only reason to have them is to make money, and once you introduce them there is then an incentive for parks to then run slower operations in order to make the fast passes look more attractive. Nobody is buying a fast pass if the average q is 20 minutes, but if it's an hour? So then you run your rides with 1 less train or less people operating them.

The fact is people are voting with their feet. The major theme parks in the UK are losing money, and attendance is down, so it's clearly not working whereas parks which don't have fast passes such as Paultons are doing well. Soo.....

It's probably the best the UK can muster but compared to the aforementioned parks it's not great .

We stopped taking the kids for this exact reason. We occasionally go as adults but that’s only because we can go on some random Wednesday during term time when it’s quiet. One time when DH and I went to Alton Towers during term time, we managed all the big 6 (this was before Wicker Man) around 5 times each, no joke, and the maximum we waited was 10 mins per ride. We actually left by 4pm as we’d had enough.

Contrast that to when we took the kids in school holidays. We were there all day and only managed about 5 rides.

And what’s wrong with them feeling frustrated? We can’t, and shouldn’t try, to shield our children from uncomfortable or less than ideal emotions.

It is our job as parents to teach them how to deal with all emotions in a safe space, not to try and ensure they never have to deal with them.

"poor experience" is subjective not objective.

Everyone who goes to theme parks at busy times knows there are going to be queues. They also know that fast passes are available and people are going to be using them.

If the queues don't make the experience good for someone, then simply don't go. Or go at a time when there are less queues.Or pay for a fast pass.

If fast passes were really creating a significantly poorer experience for non fast pass customers, then they wouldn't go. They clearly still do and turn up in multitudes (hence the queues), the only thing that is important to the business is that they do so.

You can hope for example that airlines will stop business class, because the idea to someone in economy that someone is travelling with more space, better food, service etc devalues their experience of their economy flight. But airlines aren't going to stop business class any more than theme parks are going to stop fast passes. While there is a market they will cater for it.

I respect people who vote with their feet, and respect people who are willing to accept the limitations of what they pay for/the value they are getting.

What I don't have much sympathy for are people who still go even though they feel the fast pass situation "ruins" their experience. If it is that bad then don't go.

I think there is probably an argument that the actual wait time increase caused by the fast passes on the non fast pass customers is probably pretty negligible anyway (the number without fast passes completely dominates over the fast pass holders). But I don't have any stats on that.

It does seem a bit weird to me how they make the fast pass holders walk pass the entire queue to get people onto the ride. I would design the rides with shorter access for the fast pass from a different area, or maybe a tunnel they could walk through. That would probably cost more though.

Paultons do not sell fast passes and they have a sensible cap on numbers so the queues are never that busy. Maximum I have queued there (annual pass holder) is 45 minutes when a new ride/area opened.

They are the best family theme park by a mile, place is ao clean, toilets very clean, food is good.

I wouldn't go to a theme park more than once every couple of years and would definitely go less often with a fast pass than more often without.

You are totally missing the point. All the other things you mention are not leisure activities in and of themselves.

The point of going to a theme park is to go on rides. By flogging fast passes the operators are actively making a decision to make the experience worse for people not prepared to pay £100+ per person when they have already charged around £40 entry fee.

It's just cynical as fuck, as it becomes profitable for theme parks to not clear the queues as fast as possible in order to flog more fast passes, and the more fast passes you sell, the slower the main queue gets and you basically have to shell out the extra money to have any sort of a decent day out.

Yes, theme parks are businesses but it's perfectly possible to balance making money and not being arseholes and destroying any goodwill you have with customers.