I guess the difference with somewhere like Liverpool is that fans have the choice of purchasing something before/after to avoid paying the inflated prices, there’s a whole host of chippys/burger vans and the like around the ground which are more reasonably priced.
I wonder how much of that is baking in an extra 20% on the headline price to avoid any loss of income from annual passholders.
I suppose the point I was trying to make is that it's not beyond the realms of possibility that Alton Towers have no say or sway in what Aramark are charging for F&B options.
Oh yeah, I get what you mean but I would be absolutely amazed if Merlin handed a contract to Aramark that said the equivalent of "charge what you want, we don't care how high it goes". There'll almost certainly be caveats in there that allow and require involvement from them.
But they don’t take the rap. When I enquired with Towers re vegan options the answer was “I can’t tell you as it’s Aramark and nothing to do with Towers”. Possibly a poorly trained customer services person, but then even staff on the food outlets weren’t particularly knowledgeable about what they were selling. So I can see a similar defence bearing taken by Towers when people complain about the food prices too
Oh wholly agree on that front, hence the "should" - since I know it's not always occurring at the customer facing end. I seem to remember them doing the old teflon shoulders excuse with the first hygiene ratings at Chessington too. It's lazy and shouldn't be happening when they're selling food on their resort with their branding - especially when there's no reasonable way of bringing it up with Aramark save for catching a manager when on park. I agree that it likely comes from a lack of training and knowledge of dealing with a third party operator, easier to play the blame game than actually take ownership.
