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?

I also dont get why people are moaning about "an already expensive day out". On the day tickets online for AT are £34. There are absolutely loads of buy one, get one free deals running, which, albeit at full price would work out as £20 per person. That's an absolute bargain for a full day out, particularly when you compare to £15 for an imax cinema ticket or something or £8 for 2 hours in a sticky softplay.

The dodgy local funfair near me charges at least £5-8 per ride minimum for ones that aren't half as exciting and dont look anywhere near as safe as a big theme park. Other places (like WW in Hyde park) charge even more for the big rides.

Therefore if you go on more than 2 rides you're quids in. If they got rid of fast passes they'd likely just increase the gate price hugely for everyone.

And before you moan "its not just ticket price its food there, gift shop" etc - none of those things are compulsory! Its 8 hours, have a big breakfast and just take some sandwiches! Same with "but we live far away so have to take into account petrol and hotel" - right but AT cant be expected to cover that for you! The same applies when people from other areas travel to where you live, its sort of the whole point of a holiday/day out!

When you think of the prohibitive insurance, staffing, maintenance, building, electricity, procurement etc costs it must take to run a theme park, £20 (or even £34) is nothing. I bet people moaning would think nothing of spending that on a takeaway/new mascara/2 cocktails or glasses of wine/or coffees and cake/insert your own small treat of choice)

You can pay to jump the queue in many many areas of life. Fast track security at airports, speedy boarding, private health care. Theme Parks aren't special in that respect.

Admittedly I didn't have any theme parks local to me growing up, however I only went to a theme park three times and that was when we were on holiday.

My kids are only young but it's not something I will encourage due to the cost and queues, and the fact I have epilepsy so can't do most of the rides, if they really want to go when they are older dh will take them.

YANBU.

Fast passes are absolute bullshit and the problem is, is if you are a family who love theme parks but have to travel a significant amount of distance to actually go to one, you basically have to become part of the problem and buy them otherwise you have a rubbish day.

On anything other than a quiet day at Alton Towers the only way you are getting on all the big rides in a single day is with a fast pass, and then you are part of the problem that results in the need for fast passes because then by jumping the main q, the main q becomes longer and so more people buy fast passes. And then if there is full q of fast passes being constantly filled up, the main q basically doesn't move at all,even if it's not that long.

Not really comparable for any of these examples.

For airports - the plane is still going to leave at the same time however quickly you get on it. You don't lose out by queuing, as you do at a park where time in the queue is time you could be on another ride. You just have the dubious pleasure of sitting in your plane seat for longer.

With a museum, if the queue was very long, you could walk away having lost nothing. Once you have paid to get into a theme park you have spent that money and the longer time you spend in queues, the less you are getting for it.

With a passport, there is no queuing at all, you are just getting on with your life as normal waiting for it to drop through your letterbox. The only reason to pay for priority processing is if you are travelling at short notice or if you suddenly realise at the last minute that you need a new one.

I'm assuming you have never got to the front of the boarding queue, only to be told they have run out of overhead locker space and your bag has to go in the hold!

They are comparable in the respect that many services you can buy offer different experiences based on price.

For example travel often comes in classes which costs more depending on the quality of experience.

The same comes with many things in life.

If someone feels the experience is not worth the cost then best not to pay for it.

I don't understand the whole "kids will not understand it argument". Surely if kids are old enough the concept of money and quality of experience should be something they can understand, as well as why they have to queue, and that their parents don't have access to limitless resources.

If they aren't capable of understanding these things, then you have to ask yourself the question whether a theme park at a certain cost/experience level is the best place for them.

Came on the thread to say go to Europa Park. A million times better than UK theme parks (family owned NOT private equity so entry fees get reinvested). We just went in July and it was amazing. 20 mins queues max and so many rides. No fast passes sold

Same with efterling it's owned in a different way

Europa park puts the UK parks to absolute shame.

Level of theme and operations/ maintenance etc is just not even in the same universe.

I don't know whether kids would understand it or not as I don't have any - but I think at any age it's going to feel frustrating at the very least if you are standing in a non-moving queue watching other people walk straight onto the ride, no matter how well you understand the reason for it.

Yes, it's awful. Try Efteling and Europa Park as PP have suggested. We were at Europa park recently on one of the busiest days of the year. Because there are no fast passes the queues moved fast ànd the longest wait was 40 minutes. Most of the popular rides you could get on in around 25 minutes. They are vastly more charming than any parks in the UK too.

Then presumably they won't want to go back. Or maybe say, I don't want to go back for a few years until we can save up to get the fast pass.

Educating kids and teaching them to think, rather than just trying to shield them from lifes realities.

I think you're missing the point that theme park operators are monetising a poor experience - they are taking a normal, less than ideal experience (queuing) and making it into a bad experience by introducing fast-passes, so they can make more money.

I understand the whole 'they are a business, they need to make money' argument but making money shouldn't involve deliberately creating a poor experience for some of their customers.

I hope people will 'vote with their feet' and not go back - as I have.

You are totally missing the point. All the other things you mention are not leisure activities in and of themselves.

The point of going to a theme park is to go on rides. By flogging fast passes the operators are actively making a decision to make the experience worse for people not prepared to pay £100+ per person when they have already charged around £40 entry fee.

It's just cynical as fuck, as it becomes profitable for theme parks to not clear the queues as fast as possible in order to flog more fast passes, and the more fast passes you sell, the slower the main queue gets and you basically have to shell out the extra money to have any sort of a decent day out.

Yes, theme parks are businesses but it's perfectly possible to balance making money and not being arseholes and destroying any goodwill you have with customers.

I wouldn't go to a theme park more than once every couple of years and would definitely go less often with a fast pass than more often without.

Paultons do not sell fast passes and they have a sensible cap on numbers so the queues are never that busy. Maximum I have queued there (annual pass holder) is 45 minutes when a new ride/area opened.

They are the best family theme park by a mile, place is ao clean, toilets very clean, food is good.

"poor experience" is subjective not objective.

Everyone who goes to theme parks at busy times knows there are going to be queues. They also know that fast passes are available and people are going to be using them.

If the queues don't make the experience good for someone, then simply don't go. Or go at a time when there are less queues.Or pay for a fast pass.

If fast passes were really creating a significantly poorer experience for non fast pass customers, then they wouldn't go. They clearly still do and turn up in multitudes (hence the queues), the only thing that is important to the business is that they do so.

You can hope for example that airlines will stop business class, because the idea to someone in economy that someone is travelling with more space, better food, service etc devalues their experience of their economy flight. But airlines aren't going to stop business class any more than theme parks are going to stop fast passes. While there is a market they will cater for it.

I respect people who vote with their feet, and respect people who are willing to accept the limitations of what they pay for/the value they are getting.

What I don't have much sympathy for are people who still go even though they feel the fast pass situation "ruins" their experience. If it is that bad then don't go.

I think there is probably an argument that the actual wait time increase caused by the fast passes on the non fast pass customers is probably pretty negligible anyway (the number without fast passes completely dominates over the fast pass holders). But I don't have any stats on that.

It does seem a bit weird to me how they make the fast pass holders walk pass the entire queue to get people onto the ride. I would design the rides with shorter access for the fast pass from a different area, or maybe a tunnel they could walk through. That would probably cost more though.

And what’s wrong with them feeling frustrated? We can’t, and shouldn’t try, to shield our children from uncomfortable or less than ideal emotions.

It is our job as parents to teach them how to deal with all emotions in a safe space, not to try and ensure they never have to deal with them.

We stopped taking the kids for this exact reason. We occasionally go as adults but that’s only because we can go on some random Wednesday during term time when it’s quiet. One time when DH and I went to Alton Towers during term time, we managed all the big 6 (this was before Wicker Man) around 5 times each, no joke, and the maximum we waited was 10 mins per ride. We actually left by 4pm as we’d had enough.

Contrast that to when we took the kids in school holidays. We were there all day and only managed about 5 rides.

It's probably the best the UK can muster but compared to the aforementioned parks it's not great .

You are still completely missing the point.

The existence of business class doesn't actively make the experience of economy worse. Fast passes do make the experience worse for everyone.

Worse for the people who buy them because it's really the only way to have good day at the time they can go e.g. weekends/ school holidays etc. They are ~£100 per person for a full day's unlimited fast pass, and that makes a single day out at Alton towers for a family of four £500+. Which is fucking ridiculous.

Worse for the people who don't have fast passes, as the existence of a separate fast pass queue results in the main queue running slower. What happens is that the fast pass queue is emptied before the main q, so if you are running a fast pass q larger than the capacity of a single train then the main q basically comes to a standstill. I've literally been at Alton Towers and watched it happen.

The only reason to have them is to make money, and once you introduce them there is then an incentive for parks to then run slower operations in order to make the fast passes look more attractive. Nobody is buying a fast pass if the average q is 20 minutes, but if it's an hour? So then you run your rides with 1 less train or less people operating them.

The fact is people are voting with their feet. The major theme parks in the UK are losing money, and attendance is down, so it's clearly not working whereas parks which don't have fast passes such as Paultons are doing well. Soo.....

The “point” is… if you don’t like how a business model works… don’t use the business.

It really is that simple.

This is a theme park. A theme park.

Well if less people are going… then this will improve the queue situation won’t it?!

Minor for who?