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Food & Beverage 2019

Don't know what is going on RCR this year but the reviews continue to be dire. Have they had a new chef or something? I say chef quite loosely as we know putting precooked food in a microwave to warm it up isnt really cooking!
The experience we had in June was far from dire; we had a wonderful meal and even won a free retail item!
 
The problem is it’s just so inconsistent. It can go from relatively really good one visit to absolute garbage the next.

Another issue is I’ve found sometimes some of the vegetarian items are out of stock but they just don’t tell you and send the food down regardless with the items missing
 
Daft question time. Do all the F&B outlets take card? Even the small ones scattered around the park?

Our bank notes are different here in N.Ireland and not accepted on mainland UK even though they're pound sterling. I usually get a load of bank of England notes for our visit but I don't like carrying a lot of money around with me on park.

Please do not say you thought we used Euro here or some strange leprechaun currency. I'm British and live in part of the UK.
I do love the old that not uk currency when region variants appear. A friend of mine was visiting from Scotland and got his banknote refused.

We came out of the shop and joke "this is a local shop for local banknotes"

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I believe that both Scottish & Northern Ireland bank notes are legal tender in England & Wales. However, a retailer is OK to define what money they will accept - i.e. they can refuse to accept £50 notes (was a huge problem years a go with the old green British £50 which was fairly easy to forge). Did you know that 1p & 2p coins are only legal tender up to 20p in total?

I do know from my time at Towers that they get stung each year with an influx of forged notes (mainly Scottish) during the Scottish school trips period. Clearly some people take advantage of the fact that staff are unfamiliar with Scottish notes & they may well get away with passing a dud one.

Back when I worked in a bank in the midlands, we used to accept Scottish & Northern Irish notes, as we had to, but we never gave them back out to anyone. They were returned to out cash processing unit to be sent back to their respecive country of origin.
 
I know this isn't much, but i had a rollover hot dog from the Forbidden Valley outlet today.

Best one i've ever had!

That's about as adventrous as i get, along with Eastern Express.
 
"Look how we slap down these mediocre-at-best ingredients with minimum effort and care possible"

Don't forget our "smallest ever portion of coleslaw in a plastic single use cup because fuck the environment, we aren't washing up a ramekin!"
 
Anyone else get slightly annoyed with this fad of just piling the contents of almost an entire meal on top of each other and calling it a burger? Call me old fashioned, but my personal understanding of a burger has always been that you can pick it up quite easily and take a nice bite out of it. People are just taking the mickey these days by making a meal and then surrounding it with 2 pieces of bread and calling it a burger. I'd rather just have the contents spread across a plate and use a knife and fork, thanks!
 
Well hopefully we'll hear from the Merlin "Head of Product Excellence" to inform us how high quality the food at the RCR is.
 
I would love to see the Coke freestyle machines at towers. I used these at Thorpe last week and it was great on such a hot day, it was also nice to have still options on there rather than just fizzy options.

Would be good to see a annual pass yearly option as well, as I wouldn’t want to pay £8 a visit.

Only issues I came across was one section of machines which had no ice and by the end of the day the same section of machines had pretty much no flavours left.

However Mezzo Mix Zero is awful and nothing like the proper Mezzo Mix.



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This is my issue with Thorpe. They removed normal coke fountains in shops to place freestyle venders - but you can't use them if you're an annual pass holder, a change slot / contactless card booper and a chip in the cup would be all that's required to make it work for all cup types.

Even if annual pass holders could buy their freestyle cup and reactivate it for the day when they visit, it would be better.
 
This is my issue with Thorpe. They removed normal coke fountains in shops to place freestyle venders - but you can't use them if you're an annual pass holder, a change slot / contactless card booper and a chip in the cup would be all that's required to make it work for all cup types.

Even if annual pass holders could buy their freestyle cup and reactivate it for the day when they visit, it would be better.

You would have thought that would be an ideal opportunity for Merlin to whip up a PR piece about how they are being environmentally friendly by stopping all those plastic Freestyle cups piling up at annual passholders houses, thus reducing plastic waste (a rather hot topic at present!)

They did use to do the quencher annual pass a few years ago - can only assume the bean counters did not like how the figures stacked up. Or, Merlin just feel that if people want the Freestyle product they are willing to pay for it on each visit.

The profit on soft drinks from a Freestyle machine is sky-high. You only have to look at the USA where machines of this nature are very common (i.e. ones that mix the drink from concentrate on demand). Every McDonalds / Burger King in the USA allow free refills on all soft drinks - and the drink sizes over there are way bigger.
 
I currently use the annual pass cup that costs 75p to refill, and usually only refill 2 or 3 times (unless it's a really hot day). So that saves me a lot of money.

But if they are replacing drinks fountains with vending machines it surely makes sense to make sure they work for all purposes first.

Still if they offered me to buy a freestyle cup, and reactivate it for ~£3 on each visit I'd probably go for it for convenience.

Also because the quencher cups are the worst designed things ever. Blackpools free refill cup is far better, easier to clean and use without dribbling or losing parts.
 
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