To not pay £20 to go to a café (exc. drinks/food)?

[BlowDryRat]

We live fairly near to an English Heritage place (Wrest Park, if you know it). The entrance is through the old walled gardens, where there's a café, gift shop, loos and a playground. Diagram attached.

When the DC were little I'd take them to play in the playground and we'd buy drinks, ice creams, often lunch. The ticket office was after the cafe area so you'd only have to pay if you wanted to visit the house and parkland.

Today was MIL's birthday so we thought we'd take her to the café. We had other plans afterwards so didn't want to visit the house and parkland. They've now moved the ticket office so you have to pay to access the café area. £19+ for one adult (DH and I are EH members).

WIBU to give that a pass and go to a café where you don't have to pay nearly £20 just to get in?

YABU - it makes sense for them to move the ticket office so people have to pay to go to the café.
YANBU - this is a daft move that will stop people spending money they otherwise wouldn't have done.

I understand their decision tbh.

Have they made the playground for paying guests only? They would have had many people use the playground without buying anything in the cafe...they're not there to provide a free playground to people, it's a part of the offering of a day visit there.

I initially thought YANBU but after thinking a bit more I actually think YABU.

Thinking back over the summer we went to various heritage places and had a nice time learning about the history etc and then would go to the cafe which was generally massively overcrowded and understaffed, making what should have been a nice aspect of our day out rather a frustrating and stressful experience. I don't know what percentage of cafe customers were fee-paying visitors but if any were random non-visitors then they were contributing to that stress.

There are lots of cafes that aren't part of a visitor attraction. Perhaps use one of those?

Yanbu to think that £20 is too much to pay to just go to a cafe but the solution is to go to a different cafe, not to expect a heritage venue to open their visitor facilities to non-visitors.

You're not being unreasonable in the slightest to go wherever you want and spend your money, but they're also not being unreasonable in changing their business model (presumably because their margins are getting squeezed) to what I presume they're projecting to be a more profitable model. I know it's frustrating but I guess that's capitalism 😳 (I'm oversimplifying slightly!)

We have a fairly pricey attraction near us that charges for entrance but also allows you to bring in your own food and drink and also provides indoor and outdoor places to eat it. When it first opened serval years ago it sold annual passes that were extremely good value, so people got hooked on it and were very loyal to it as it was seen as good value and not 'grabby". Prices for passes have slowly crept up but people are still loyal, and you can still make it a cheap day out if you have a pass because you can take as much food and drink as you want. That's their model and it works for them.

Its annoying and I wouldnt go either. But I agree that it probably isnt very profitable for them the way it was set up before.

Oh, you’re talking about the Ancient House I think. Yes, ten extra guest rooms. I never visited when it had the cafe but I’ve stayed in there several times. I prefer it to the main hotel. The rooms are lovely.