Fastrack - more being sold?

Just read something amusing on Alton Towers' website:

How can I buy?

You can buy Fastrack tickets online at altontowers.com or alternatively when you arrive at the Resort Box Office on Towers Street! We strongly advise you to buy before you visit as numbers are limited and tickets sell out in busy periods.

When are they available?

Fastracks are only available on days when we predict that they will be good value for money - so on some of our off peak dates you may find they are not available. If you would still like to purchase you can do on the day from the Resort Box Office.

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http://www.altontowers.com/events/fast- ... Howitworks

It's funny because neither point seems to ring true right now...

Having visited both on Tuesday and today the answer to the Fastrack' mystery seems obvious, almost all of the Fastrack' queues were full of school kids, school trips should not be allocated these tickets quite simply, whilst I understand these kids want the most rides in only a few hours it was this that clogged up the entire system on both rides in fact on Tuesday there was a ride op telling people the single rider queue on Oblivion was closed.

I think my judgement is right and will see when I go again in a couple of wes once the school trip hype is done with.

I am pretty shocked that school children are actually being permitted to take the money which these tickets cost.

When I visit with children they are limited to £5.00 each. Now, I understand high school children may take more - but fastrack tickets are really expensive!

I still believe the high and low of the mater is the quantity of tickets being sold. School children or not there simply shouldn't be that many tickets available to guests.

AstroDan said:

I am pretty shocked that school children are actually being permitted to take the money which these tickets cost.

When I visit with children they are limited to £5.00 each. Now, I understand high school children may take more - but fastrack tickets are really expensive!

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I would say a quarter of the children had wristband fast tracks as well which to me seems wrong on price too. I certainly wont be giving my kids that much to spend when they go to a theme park etc. It did also make me wonder if the schools themselves promoted this approach and perhaps they were cheaper for the kids.

Also yes I agree with Fastrack' however not in this quantity in any way shape or form.

I went to the park yesterday - as it was my boyf's birthday and we go every year for that. We also always buy a fastrack Scream, to make the most of the day. Usually the Scream fastrack is magic and ensures we get on the 3 big rides no problem at all - but it wasn't good yesterday.
Air was great though, worked really well and we then chose to queue for 25mins to get front seat - ace.
Nemesis - well when we got their the fastrack queue had burst out of the queue area and was actually outside the ride. It took us 35 mins to get to the fastrack door and then a further 15mins to get to the station. Not great to be honest. The lady on duty just wasn't letting many fastrack through - despite the size of the fastrack queue.
Oblivion we queued for just over an hour... which was I think the same queueing time as the main queue. Annoyingly three people pushed passed us, saying they were fastrack - we said we were too, and 90% of the queue was (you could see the cards/wristbands) and then they claimed they had friends at the front. They actually climbed over the barrier to get round my boyf who was deliberate blocking them. A further two queue skippers came up the fastrack section and then climbed the barrier and joined the regular queue. My boyfriend had a go, but nobody stopped them.
When we got to the place where the queue splits I noticed some lads go on as single riders, and then after a very short while they went on the ride - they then came back and rode a second time as single riders... that was super annoying as we had moved 3m in the time they went on twice! The thing is I don't want to be a single rider - I want to be there next to my boyfriend chatting/screaming experiencing it together. The fastrack queue was super slow moving on Oblivion.
In previous years the Scream fastrack has just worked so well - i felt bad as the scream fastrack was an extra birthday prezzie for my boyfriend to ensure his day was special. In retrospect - maybe I should complain?
At the very end of the day just before 5pm there was no queue for Oblivion at all - so lesson learnt there. :-/

cinabar said:

At the very end of the day just before 5pm there was no queue for Oblivion at all - so lesson learnt there. :-/

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It was like someone had pulled the plug in a teenager bathtub today watching them all stream out the park at about the same time then the park was quite so it really is true, last thing of the day the lines are the shortest

cinabar said:

In retrospect - maybe I should complain?
At the very end of the day just before 5pm there was no queue for Oblivion at all - so lesson learnt there. :-/

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Do it. I've complained. You paid to be "Fast Tracked" through the queues and this wasn't the case no matter what their terms and conditions state. At the same time they also state that tickets are limited, false advertising?

cinabar said:

In previous years the Scream fastrack has just worked so well - i felt bad as the scream fastrack was an extra birthday prezzie for my boyfriend to ensure his day was special. In retrospect - maybe I should complain?
At the very end of the day just before 5pm there was no queue for Oblivion at all - so lesson learnt there. :-/

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I would certainly complain!
You have paid for something to increase the capacity of your day and it seems to have not helped at all. I would firstly use the contact form on this page:

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Explain the situation, that it felt a waste of money, there were simply too many fast tracks sold than the rides could deal with and that you were unhappy with your day.
They may ask you to write to them, so also keep your park tickets and fast track tickets if possible.

yes complain, and get more fast tracks so you can experience the palava again ;D

The nemesis queue picture is shocking, would hate to go when it's like that.

Fireworks last year was exactly the same - Nemesis and Rita both had fastrack queues stretching to the main entrance. The Nemesis FT queue stayed that long for at least the 2 hours I was in the main queue ???

Thanks for the advice everyone
I filled in the complaint form which oldgitben linked too - thanks.

Even if I hear nothing back - at least some customer complaints might highlight to them that the fastrack system isn't working :-/

*Copies my Facebook post*

"I actually feel sorry for Towers (I could be wrong in this but) The pressure from Merlin to make money is slowly destroying the park. I heard Fast track Oblivion was near the entrance. I mean FFS it's giving the park such a bad rep. Money over guest experience = Altons' original vision ruined. Such a shame we live in a world of corporate greed filters into every aspect of our lives - even a day out to escape from the world. "

The correspondence I received this morning still stated that Fastrack was indeed "Limited". Hmmm…

Well apparently most fastrack options sold out on several days this week, so we know it must be limited. The real issue is what is the limit? Just because there is a limit doesn't mean that it's appropriate - it could be equal or higher than the ride capacity and they'd still be well within their rights to claim it was limited.

I was on park from about 3.30 on Weds and it was very busy, queue board stated 100 mins for Air, 80 for Oblivion, etc. Pretty much everyone there were school trips, and it does seem they love to buy fastrack. For me it wasnt too bad as by 4pm most of the kids start to leave, and when we did Oblivion at about 5.30 it was walk on, and the same for Sub Terra.

I have to say if I had paid to buy fastrack and then had to queue an hour I wouldnt be best pleased. Yes you might have "fastracked" the main queue, but you still had a very long wait, and its because of the fast track that the main queue would have been so big.

I really think they are either selling too many fastracks for the day, not selling timed slots, or selling too many of the same timed slots.

After my complaint, they emailed to apologise saying the park was exceptionally busy that day. It was a fairly vague email, but did offer me a couple of free fastracks (for each person in my party) on my next visit. Hope that is still valid in a years time, and that it works a little better!

I got the same but wasn't sure how to redeem them? You just talk to e-mail to guest services or something?

Normally you'd just take a copy of the email to the Resort Box Office on Towers Street

I still don't think the "it was a busy day" answer is good enough personally. Regardless of how busy the park is they should never be overselling Fastrack and in such high quantities. It just causes both parties to loose out. These limits need to be reviewed ASAP to ensure we don't see a repeat of this every time the park gets busy. I think even for event days those queues are unacceptable.

When I visited DLP and Phantasialand they were busy days. I didn't see any of their Fastrack queues tailing miles back and stopping the main queues from running efficiently.