AIBU to hold place in line for the kids?

This! Completely unfair, others might assess whether to join the queue based in how many waiting, ridiculously entitled approach, queuing and waiting your turn is part of life

You can't queue for people- particularly not 3 of them- you can hold someone's place in the queue if they need a break- but it has to essentially be them that is queuing- otherwise it is not a queue,it's a free for all.

Personally, I also think learning that they need to stand in queues for things they want is a good lesson on rules and structure

Because if every did this, what looks like a small queue to other people and staff could actually be a huge queue. One adult could hold the queue for a family group, a teacher could hold the queue for her class. Where do you draw the line? Everyone needs to queue so people know who is actually waiting.

It’s the same as in a supermarket queue , someone with a few items in a basket or trolley stands at the checkout, it looks like a good queue to join so you send up a quick prayer of thanks to the goddess of queuing, then in trundles their partner puffing and panting as they push a trolley loaded with a family shop for six and expect* to join the queue next to the few items person.

(*not on my watch!)

Or they split up, each staking out a queue and moving over if one queue turns out to be the better , quicker option. Though at least in this scenario someone moves up a space in the rejected queue.

Oh gosh no. That’s ridiculous. Fair enough for maybe one parent to go grab a coffee or something but anyone planning to actually use the thing you’re queueing for needs to be in the queue.

I kicked a bunch of children out of a queue at an event recently. They sent one friend to stand there while they waited outside and then after 1 hour of waiting all 10 of them showed up. 100% no thanks.

The thing is it would make a big difference to the people behind you if your group of twenty suddenly appeared while you held their place til the front. And if you are doing it then someone will do it with more people.

It's only really reasonable if it's like for like, so you're not going to use the ride but the one person you are being joined by is. So no hold up for anyone behind.

It's not acceptable for one person to hold a place for multiple others.

I think with one DC it’d be ok but I’d be a bit annoyed if I was behind and ended up with 3 extras. If everyone did that, your 20 min estimated wait could triple! However 5,3 and 3 is pretty little so I don’t think I’d be too up in arms about it.

Going to the toilet is reasonable. Going on another ride is not.

This has got to be a wind up. No one would geuinely come on MN declaring that they allowed their kids to queue jump and asking if it was ok. If it happened I hope someone had a (verbal) go at you.

Because people gauge the length of wait by looking at the queue length, not by reading all the signs being held up by people in the queue

Yes yabu particularly with THREE kids! Would you have been happy if the person you queued behind had been a teacher or play scheme worker and suddenly 20 kids turned up when you thought it would be your turn in 5 mins?

YABU

There is a direct impact on the patient kids waiting their turn behind your kids. Why aren’t they under as much pressure as you to go on the popular rides?

I heard they open Harrods and fortnums secretly early or late for people like Kate Middleton and Madonna. That’s fine but queue dodging just sucks - and you know it deep down.

I hate this

It’s so annoying. My DD was patiently waiting for her face painting once, when there was only 1 person in front of us he suddenly had 3 children given to him, so instead of being next DD had 4 people ahead of her! Oh and the dad had his face painted too, after he’d already pushed in 3 children whilst there was a huge queue in 30 degree heat and only one facepainter.

Cue lots of British tutting and performance parenting about how rude it is to queue jump and a little preschooler behind us declared loudly ‘he was a very bad man’ 😂😂😂

People are so brazen! Hate this kind of entitlement

Because now the people behind have an extra 15 minutes wait time!

No.
Announcing you're being a dick doesn't absolve you of guilt.

A Dad did similar at a market. My son was waiting patiently for his turn to get face painting, thought he was next but nope the Dad called 3 kids over. 😂

Yabu

You were at an amusement park in the school summer holidays on a sunny day. Queues are part of the amusement park experience unless they have fast track passes available. If your behaviour was acceptable then people would pay someone to queue for them that day.

Of course it's not fair, let's take a step back and look at it another way.
The venue is set out to naturally manage demand. The less popular rides have no queue so kids can literally go on back to back rides. The popular ones have long queue so they can only go on one ride every 20 minutes.
The kids can make their ride decisions accordingly.

However bring in plenty of queue holders for half the families and then suddenly for those families, the kids can get on those rides too without queuing, artificially increasing demand. However the effect on the non queue holding families is the queue is artificially lengthened until all the queue holding families have had their go(s).
With enough queue holding families the adults could in theory make a 2 hour queue on the best ride and exclude everyone else, while those kids could go on back to back rides.

There's no overall increase in capacity of the ride, just your kids get more goes on everything at the expense of those that queue properly

Yes I get "it's only taking a little bit from everyone, for a big benefit for our special kids" but it's still selfish.

It happened me one time waiting in line for face painting. My 2 children stood for ages. There was 1 child onfront of us then just as it was their turn 2 more children turned up and skipped the line. I said to the face paint lady excuse me my 2 children where here before these 2 extra children. Children need taught to queue. Your very selfish your children getting extra rides while you queue. Unfair on adults who go alone with their children and need to queue. Why do you think your precious little darlings dont need to learn to queue?

A tour guide did that to me once. I was queuing behind him to buy a ticket for a boat ride. He bought 30 tickets for his group which meant the boat was then full. (None of them were queuing).

I was thoroughly pissed off, naturally, and as I watched his line trailing along after him I sincerely hoped they’d have a rotten time. When I saw how tightly they were packed on I thought they probably would.

I went off & found a different boat, which was both cheaper and quieter. I forgave them after that.

Massive CF behaviour. Hopefully you'll be chucked out the park next time. The sense of entitlement is astounding, I imagine you'll raise children just as entitled as you who think they are too special to queue.

People complain about behaviour of kids but what chance do they have these days

You're under playing this OP. You should have taken DM, DDad, MiL, FiL, cousin Sarah and the guy next door and your kids could have nipped between rides all day without ever having to queue.