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?

How do these businesses get away with admitting so many people for so few rides that customers spend most of the day queuing?

And then demand even more money from some to make others queue even longer?

And then their visitors end up scrapping amongst themselves over who is right or wrong.

No other business would get away with charging people so much to stand in queues for the majority of the day, would they?

but to have a blue badge you need to be medically able to drive a car and be able to afford a car (or live in a household with a car and a driver). If you have a disability than means you're medically not allowed to drive, then you're fucked

This is not how a Blue Badge works at all. You can have a BB without being able to drive (my child had one), you can have a BB if you have no car. The application form doesn’t ask if you have a car or can drive. They can be used by the holder in any car they travel in.

Yep.

I know what you mean. Theme parks seem to be doing more and more things where you pay extra for extra privileges. We are going to Florida this summer and Disney have got rid of free fast passes and introduced a new scheme where you pay per ride to jump the queue. Of course people like the Khardasian’s pay a few thousand and get to jump the queues completely and ride on their own. No way I could ever do that

The thing that annoys me even more on this is when fast passes are in the same queue as disability and the fast passes get called forward from the queue. My Ds struggles with queueing anyway as he has asd which is why we have the disability pass, last time we were at Alton towers they did this in the nemesis queue and he panics as he thinks he’s never going to get on if there’s a long queue anyway but then add into the mix calling people forward who are behind us in the queue and it’s a nightmare, we ended to leave at midday last time we went as he got disregulated. I understand it’s to cut down on staffing when they combine the queues as there is an exact fast pass queue line but it’s sometimes shut

I remember when Alton Towers introduced paying to park. Was pretty annoyed that it was another way to squeeze more money from customers. Now it’s pay to enter, pay to park, pay for queue jumping lest you have a shocking experience. Add on the, admittedly optional, photos, food, drink and souvenirs. It’s relentless. Pretty sure there’s a Simpson’s episode predicting this.

Also I don’t know if it’s still a thing, suspect it’s been stopped with Fast Passes, but they used to have single rider queues where you could take up a spare seat. No queue jumping as the seat would be empty anyway.

I’m not sure they keep them shut purely to increase queue times I think it’s more staffing costs, on quiet days you think they’d be shorter queues but then they have less staff so they don’t open all the rides straight away or only run one train instead of two for example.

This. Selfish, individualistic, conservatism.

This is a difficult one for me. I went to DLP last month and to get my disability pass I had to pay for a doctors letter, then pay for a UK access card then early apply for a DLP disability access card. Luckily I got one but as I have a hidden condition my sisters and I felt really bad walking up the disability lane instead of queuing and it took two months of prep to get one. The UK access card scheme does accept doctors letters and I think cost a fiver.
My son gets private health care we pay for independently as its no longer available on the NHS. I do feel guilty that we can afford for him to have it but feel as it improves his life I'm willing to put my social concerns to one side for his health.

They do on smiler and spin ball at Alton towers, it got stopped during covid but had restarted now. Single rider can be a gamble as you can get on quickly or be waiting for ages if everyone is in even groups. We were at Disney before and a man in the single rider queue was going mad as he’d waited longer than he would have in normal queue

Access card is £15 but I think it lasts 3 years so a fiver a year works out at

We have used them before on holiday but what I don't understand is that there must be a better system they can put in place to avoid these stupidly queue times in the first place. 20% of the tickets printed for that day could be pink and those tickets need to use the parks main ride btw 10am and 11am etc. Just to thin out the most popular ride queues. But then they couldn't milk another £100 from families for fast passes I suppose....

• stupidly long queue times

We always used single rider but the last time we went this didn't seem to be working. From memory certain parks merged single rider and fast track which was great.

I disagree.
I am disabled and have disabled DC. We literally cannot stand in a queue for ages and ages. The fast pass is the only way we can go to a theme park. It’s expensive, but the way we afforded it was by only going once their entire childhood. We dont have tons of money. Not everyone who uses fast passes is rolling in money. If there were no fast passes, my DC would never have even experienced a theme park as children.

Why don’t you apply for the Rise Access passes that pretty much all theme parks provide. Free

www.altontowers.com/plan-your-visit/before-you-visit/accessibility/accessibility-theme-park/ride-access-pass/

It’s too late for me and my DC. They didn’t exist twenty years ago when they were children. I’m glad they exist now though, so thank you for updating me.

I think theme parks cram way too many people in and are terrible value for money. 3- 4hr waits per ride is appalling. I think it's unethical for the parks to charge so much and allow so many people in that they are then able to charge you even more for a chance to get on a ride.

Offering half price tickets through cereal boxes is bizarre, when they're so busy that you need to pay extra to actually get on the rides.

I can't even really understand the financial model for it. Surely they'd be better not discounting tickets to half price and even putting the base price up a bit and then offering less fast passes.

Or is it about people spending on the ghastly fast food once they're in the place ?

I love fast passes 😬 theme parks, airport security, anywhere I can get one I will.

Got them every day for our holiday to Universal this summer, means we can go on way more rides than we would be able to normally!

There's lots of things in life not everyone can afford, but isn't that just life?

On you tube there's an interesting documentary about thd rise of fast passes by defunctland its worth a watch! The science behind them is very interesting!

It's one of the things that put me off theme parks altogether. You feel like a second class citizen (well, actually you ARE one!). The Disney system was better, or what about if standard entry prices offered fast access to say, three rides per person, per day ticket?

Siameasy

You could apply this to many scenarios. Are you immoral to own a car when others can’t afford it?
This is capitalism; you not buying fast passes doesn’t benefit those who can’t afford to. So carry on, if you want.

Owning/driving your car has all sorts of moral implications. It increases pollution, it makes roads less efficient leading to greater infrastructure costs, it reduces the viability of public transport, it makes roads less safe which reduces the freedom of children to go out unsupervised, it kills far more people per mile than public transport. Obviously not all of these apply all of the time and sometimes cars are the only sensible option. But not driving benefits others in the population.

Fast passes mean that everyone else queues longer. They leave a bit of a bad taste in the mouth for me. There are limited number of rides goes per day and the theme parks are overbooking, TBH.

I stopped going to Alton Towers after the fast passes were introduced. Such an overt 2 tier system.