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

[Twoweeksinaugust]

AIBU to think it's hardly worth even going to a theme park on a sunny day unless you want to pay the £300 extra for a fast pass?
The queues are absolutely awful, and it's very hard for the dc to understand that although it looks like we'll be on the next turn, a dozen people come through woth a fast pass and teh queue doesn't move at all.
It just feels beyond the reach of a normal (but expensive) day out, and is now in the realms of a once every two years thing if you want to buy the passes?

Blackpool Pleasure Beach has shot itself in the foot because you could go in as a spectator for £10 and only pay full price for the DC (or whoever wanted the rides) and then the management decided to charge £30 even if you were not going on the rides. This has cut footfall massively for the food stalls etc. This is probably why the sandwiches had to be thrown away (put the in the bottom of the bag and deny existence). Sometimes I wonder if the people who have these ideas have any idea how to run a business at all.

🥱

I remember those fast passes at Disney, we actually bought Annual passes as well and went several times that year (staying off site). But with the Annual passes (access at 8am )combined with strategic planning of rides and the free fast passes meant you could have a really good day. This was back in 2015 mind you!

We have a season ticket for my child with disabilities because she can't manage a full day at the park, and we can go on good days, not if she has a day when she needs rest.

Except RAP is now so restricted in numbers (or so many people have it) that RAP slots run out well in advance. The entirety of the summer holiday runs out before it even begins.

It's really frustrating.

Visitors choose to travel to theme parks, knowing full well what time they open and close.

People who live nearby have no control over the operating hours, and often lived there before the theme park was built, or before x number of expansions, introduction of bigger and noisier rides etc.

And yes they close for periods of time because they're deadly expensive to run, difficult to staff outside of seasonal work and nobody wants to go trudging around one when its freezing cold, pouring with rain and miserable.

Took DS to Legoland, went there when it opened to when it shut and in that whole time he was only able to get on 3 rides.

Fast passes are limited so everyone couldn't just buy one.

Fast pass aren't even worth it at peak time, they sell too many anyway.

Yeah, that's just wrong. I wouldn't give my dog what they serve at theme parks, it's so disgusting. people should be able to take their own better quality food in if they want, especially if they have allergies or fussy kids or dietary restrictions. They are coming for the rides after all, not a hot dog made of toe nails or chips with black bits on that taste of stale grease.

I’m not sure which of these it is tbh. It’s a massive pain to get the Nimbus card and you’re dancing between the RAP page and the general booking trying to make sure there is space…. So it’s hard work to get and use.

otoh when we were gifted fast passes it was zero faff - straight through to the ride. I’d probably buy a few fast passes next time even though we’d mainly use the RAP.

Agree OP, not keen on many UK theme parks now except Poulton’s Park, they have some good rides, the queues pretty reasonable and the grounds are immaculate.

Legoland Bilund is amazing and so much nicer than Windsor, May half term is not the holidays in Denmark so it’s not mega busy and you can also do the Lego House for a day (highly recommend) and Lalandia if you want to make a week of it.

Hoping to go to Efteling maybe next year. Had a great time at Port Aventura in Spain but that was years ago now, would like to try it again.

Why don't they allocate times for each ticket. So if they can do 10 rides an hour holding 60 people give half an hour slots to 300 people on the big rides, or some other time management system. Means you can plan the day and the park can say every ticket is guaranteed one ride on each of the main attractions. Have a reserve que for people wanting 2nd rides or people who missed their slot, who can fill the none shows. It seems weird you pay the admission but can't actually use all the rides you paid for without hours waiting.

Our local socials are always filled with complaints about passes full stop, and how it was much better when you just went in and paid for each ride. That was last the case in about 2004, but still, they ain't wrong-you got on rides much more quickly and it wasn't always packed, and you didn't spend most of the day queuing!
Fast/speedy passes are another layer of hell. Theoretically, if everyone bought them, they'd become meaningless. So really, it just needs us all to refuse to buy them, and problem solved. Won't happen though, so the theme park makes money for nothing!

Merlin theme parks in the UK are crap. Long queues, rides break down regularly, short opening hours, most rides have fewer trains running than they can. My kids love them, sadly, but they are awful in so many ways. I think it because then they make more money - you have to go back, or pay more to jump queues.

Compare to Efteling in the Netherlands - very short queues, longer opening hours each day, the park is open all year, and rides rarely break down and run at full capacity most of the time. And their equivalent of the RAP gives you a safe and sensory-safe place to wait, but you don't get on quicker. In the UK, RAP means queuing in a busy space (just not the same one as everyone else). My kids have RAP, but in Efteling we didn't need it at all - no queues, despite a busy time of year at the park.

Yes it is part of the financialised/surge pricing society, with a twist of "being a bit like a celeb" getting to jump the line if you pay some extra, Big Corp is just going to farm you until you stop playing the game unfortunately

It's lost around 4 million in the last 2 years and has cut staff and closed some rides. They say they have 20 million to invest in new rides but we are yet to see it. It's on a spiral.

Some parks - e.g Europapark in Germany is the gold standard - have no fast passes, and such excellent operations that the queues are low for everyone.

The problem with the UK parks is that the are just not geared up for peak periods. They operate at <20% capacity more often than 80+%, and in the holiday periods they just can't cope.

I do buy fast passes sometimes. I don't live near any theme parks, so it is not a day out for me, it's a holiday. If I've driven 7 hours to Alton Towers and booked accommodation for the week, and a fast pass one of the days is the difference between a good holiday and a shit one.... then I buy one.

E.g. I spent £800 earlier this year to fly to London and visit Chessington for the weekend with DS. It was an extra £35 each to get one fast pass on each of the main rides DS wanted to go on. Queues were mostly over an hour each. It would have been a waste of money not to.

I do think a couple of well timed single-ride fast passes in a day for ~£10 is often better value than unlimited.

Given that Theme Parks are the cathedrals of capitalism if everyone wanted fast passes they would just keep putting the price up until the demand dropped to the number of rides they wanted to sell. Everyone has a price where they would rather join the queue with the masses.

RAP aren’t fast passes.

You use the fast track queue so you aren’t standing in a busy queue for 1.6-2 hours.

Then the card is marked to say when you can go on the next ride - which will be however long the queue would have been if you stood in it.

So those people aren’t in queues and aren’t affecting those queuing or making those queues longer.

Unfortunately I think it’s probably at a point now where it’s affordable entrance for all and fast passes which benefits those with money or raise the cost of tickets exponentially which - again - benefits those with money.

Its pointless going weekends and school holidays unless you fancy paying for a day of queuing with a couple of rides thrown in. Either take the kids out of school for a day or go on an inset day.

This. 👍

I totally agree with your point about capping the amount of people allowed in each day. As far as I’m aware there’s no cap, and people can just keep going through the turnstiles, so there’s always going to be far too many people trying to get on the rides.

Of course they’ll be a cap. It will just be a rather large one!

As a theme park enthusiast, it’s all in the planning. I’ve taken my kids all over the world to visit various theme parks and we’re annual pass holders at Alton towers and universal Orlando.

Sundays in school holidays are generally a quieter day. Get there early before park opens so that you’re in the front of the queue and head to the back of the park first. At Alton towers we start down in forbidden valley and tick off nemesis and galactica, then on the way back we do Alton manor and then across to dark forest. Our last rides of the day will be x sector. Sometimes we will fast track just one ride if the queues are not easing up. At Thorpe park this is usually hyperia.

We also often go for 2 days and stay over so on day 2 we can prioritise the rides we didn’t do day 1. Once you’ve got your heads around Disney’s lightening lane multi pass, the uk parks are a doddle. We did Alton towers the first Sunday of the summer hols and we did 13 rides with no fast pass. Knowing how to get around and where things are does help too.

I didn't find nimbus tricky tbh, we got some symbols which we thought (and said in the application) were borderline and it came back as a yes in 9 minutes.

But it's useless for this theme park for the times when it's needed the most (summer queues). It was fine a few years ago, just the last 2 years it's been a problem.