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Should front row seats be a premium add on

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GaryH

TS Member
Was thinking about this last night. You queue for hours for a ride then only to find you have to wait even longer for front row, or you don’t get front row on a ride. For some people/rides it doesn’t matter, for others, such as Nemesis, it does enhance the ride experience.

So, in order to guarantee a front row ride, would it be an option to charge people to ride at the front? Would having a charge reduce the front row queues? What would be a price you would pay to secure a lesser queue on the front row of your fave ride? Should it be only included in the VIP package?

I guess there is the argument for back row rides on some as well, eg Wickerman but for the sake of not complicating things, I’m sticking with the front for now!
 
Let's not give merlin ideas....

I think an additional front row queue is fine, if people want to wait extra to sit at the front that's more than ok, but starting to charge for the privalige seems outrageous in my opinnion.
 
I don't think so, as I don't like the idea of people potentially being priced out of 'better' seats. If this were to happen, I think that the public should be told to go to a particular row without having a choice in order to reduce front row queues as they may be exacerbated by people paying for the front row.
 
Absolutely not.

The average guest seeing Fast Trackers swanning past is bad enough, to then add a premium for a front row seat gives the impression that unless you pay more you’re not getting the same experience as those who would pay extra.

At least with front row queues you have the option to wait a little longer by choice.
 
I think I'm in the minority here, but I don't think that it's a bad business idea - especially as Blackpool already charge extra for riding in the spinning seat on Icon / Enso.

The reason why I am not against it is because it would at least force Merlin to offer guaranteed rides in the front row, which I don't think many rides do anymore (besides Colossus and Nemesis Inferno, off the top of my head).

EDIT: I think that Stealth has a front-row queue as well.
 
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tactic said:
Let's not give merlin ideas....

I think an additional front row queue is fine, if people want to wait extra to sit at the front that's more than ok, but starting to charge for the privalige seems outrageous in my opinnion.
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Agreed!! If Merlin ever did implement such practices, they'd make a fortune on Oblivion :oops:
 
AudioEngineer974 said:
Agreed!! If Merlin ever did implement such practices, they'd make a fortune on Oblivion :oops:
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Merlin claim that all seats on Oblivion supposedly offer a front-row view - but this isn't true, in my opinion, and so you are probably right! (especially as half of the train is on the front row, as you say)

EDIT: Also: if I am understanding the OP correctly, I think that he is only saying that you should have to pay for a guaranteed seat on the front-row, and that Merlin would otherwise randomly allocate people from the main queue to the front row instead (granted: Blackpool don't do this with Enso, but they aren't as busy and so it would be a bad idea not to occupy spare seats at Merlin parks as it would leave part of the train empty most of the time).

To expand on the original post: perhaps Merlin could offer paying guests a guaranteed seat anywhere on the train, and not necessarily on the front row.

I remember seeing somebody on The Smiler be disappointed that they weren't allowed to ride on the front row - especially as they offered to wait for the next train.
 
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Secret Weapon said:
I think I'm in the minority here, but I don't think that it's a bad business idea - especially as Blackpool already charge extra for riding in the spinning seat on Icon / Enso.

The reason why I am not against it is because it would at least force Merlin to offer guaranteed rides in the front row, which I don't think many rides do anymore (besides Colossus and Nemesis Inferno, off the top of my head).
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I don't think that is correct, enso is differnt type of seats, essentially a completely differnt experience, in addition how often are the enso seats full? on only one of their trains it is bad, but not terrible, but when you block out an entire row for all trains it will dramatically impact capacity (nemesis will go down by 12.5%)

in addition who would be willing to pay how ever much for front row seats, when you could just queue (presumably you would have to queue any way for them) unless it is really cheap then there would be little point (if they were really cheap, and the skip the line then you lose out on fast track sales) the problem is if lets say 5 people per hour was willing to pay, but for the dispaches you could have filled 100 seats in that time, it just adds to queue, reduces the fast track capacity and worse.

I really don't think people would be willing to pay for it.
 
Why stop with the front row? Many peeps would prefer the back. I say every single seat should be analysed by an independent team of experts, and charged accordingly. Had a bad week and had to replace a blown tyre on your car? Sucks to be you, off to the middle of the train you go!
 
Let’s Gamify the whole thing.

Earn points with in-app spending on food and merchandise. Sync your YouTube, Insta and TikTok accounts to earn points for Likes and Subscribes.

Boost points by watching in-app adverts and submitting 5-star reviews to Feefo, TripAdvisor and Google.

Spend your points on queue-jumping and front row seats.

Refer a family to MAP to earn 30 seconds baseball bat access to the confiscated drone cupboard.
 
VerticalLoop123 said:
Don’t tempt them with the whole Ryanair thing- they’ll start charging extra for large bags and all the MAP lot will kick off as they can’t bring their wheelie picnic bags with their sausages in flasks. 😂
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If that stops the ridiculously over the top wheelie trolley things that they pull along behind them which all their little darlings insist on sitting in then I'm all for it!
 
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