AIBU to hate the concept of fast passes?

[IloveConkers]

Hi, we went to a theme park recently and purchased fast passes. I will never do it again. It felt so wrong for my kids to walk past people in the other queue and take priority because we had paid extra. My husband thinks I am being ridiculous. AIBU?

That's life!

You shouldn't have felt it was wrong at the time you used it. You paid extra. That's capitalism.

The concept, the way theme parks do it probably could be better. At Thorpe Park Fast passes are so expensive. £35 or £80 per person. That's too much for say a family of 4 to pay. Not fair on those who pay to have Annual passes and go regularly.

By far THE best day DH & DS had at a local theme park was winning two tickets on eBay for £10 then paying for premium fastrack, where they could go on as many rides as they liked.

This is now probably something we’ll do once a year as we’ve all been to the same theme park multiple times and probably accessed three rides on average each visit.

I absolutely don’t feel bad about fastrack, blame the theme parks not the punters.

Presumably you also hate…

private health
private school
speedy boarding
indeed anything where you pay extra for speed or better quality?

They aren't any more at DisneyWorld. The system has been changed and it now involves paying extra.

At universal studios we usually stay in one of the hotels which include a 'free' express ticket for the days you stay over.

How much is a day at say, Alton Towers? And how much is a fast pass? Is it per ride, or does it cover all rides?

If they really keep rides shut artificially, I'd say that's fraudulent given that there would be no demand for fast passes if there were enough rides open to keep queues down to sensible lengths. One to report to Trading Standards?

I hate them too, op.

We paid for Fast Passes at the Empire State Building. The queue was enormous and we felt a bit embarrassed walking past everyone, but it was worth it for the huge time saving.

It’s a profit-making scheme. Think about it; with the technology we have today there’s no need for anybody to queue at all for anything. Choose your rides at the start of the day, the system allocates you a time slot for each of those rides and you just turn up at the time. If everybody had this there wouldn’t be any queues! Because it’s so easy to not have queues, the queues must be a feature of the theme park they want to keep for some reason and the only reason I can see is so they can sell fast passes, which is disgusting.

In theory,yes.
But in reality people are generally idiots.

Say a ride boards every 5 minutes

If you and 20 other riders get given a 10:00 ride slot. Some will be at the ride at 9:50 and wait in a queue, behind any if the 9:50 and 9:55 riders, other will get there for just before 10:00, a some will arrive at 10:05, and join the queue expecting to get on the next ride.
Some people will just ignore the time and turn up whenever they want.

How do you manage the riders? Who is turning the riders away? Who is checking the ride time?
What happens if the ride time is delayed for any reason?

This is why the old Disney system worked, you were given a window of 30minutes or whatever. And even then it was only some rides and a limited amount.

If they did that everyone would end up paying more (so that the theme park makes the same amount of money every day) so it would actually be detrimental to most.

When we went to Florida a few years back and a few rides had a “book ahead” system on your smart phone. You just rock up to the ride at your time slot.

This should be the way theme parks work across the board in a tech age. No queuing at all. The theme parks would benefit as instead of standing in a queue people would be walking round, buying ice creams and day trip tat.

The theme park can still only run the same number of rides a day so it wouldn’t cost them anything but everyone would have a much better time.

Dunno why theme parks have queues. Everyone has a phone. You should just be able to go up and check in to a virtual queue and then get pinged when you are in the next group.

I totally agree, it seems really “in your face”, walking past others in the queue. But, we’re over here on holiday, only get to go to one theme park (Lego land) and we will be buying fast passes because last time we went the kids went on about 4 rides and it was a waste of time and money.
It annoys me because there must be easier ways of making the queues managed but they deliberately don’t do it so people feel that they need the fast passes.

Very easy to check by scanning a bar code.
Anyone who turns up late gets reallocated, their fault.
Ride delayed - again, reallocation and new bar code generated. It will still work better at least some of the time than people standing in queues all day long.

Wow cross post!

The old Disney system used to work brilliantly.

It does feel unfair but that’s capitalism for you.

Its a shame Disney is now charging - the old system just involved being a bit organised

I don't like them because I can never afford them!

I can imagine there'd be a fair few aggressive encounters!

I agree with you OP. I'm saying this from a bit of a privileged position, but deally i would love a more socialist state approach, but we don't have that.

It is isn't it. I've felt guilty for things we can afford that friend's have had to wait for. We could afford to pay for private diagnosis for our SEN DC. A single mum friend is waiting on the public list. If I could afford it I'd pay for her DC too. He deserves the same access to a diagnosis and SEN support as my DC.

A fast pass it's in your face, but ultimately it's something that passes, it's one day and doesn't have long term consequences. The unfair provision of things like access to health care, access to education, access to diagnosis and disability support are much much more important, but not in everyone's face so easier to ignore.

Exactly. I definitely use them if it's available. I'm with your dh.

Not anymore!