But Chessington is easily accessible by train and Thorpe has a reasonable bus to the station. For Alton Towers there is little alternative to driving so the car park charge feels more of a rip off.To be fair it’s been £6 for as long as I can remember, certainly not gone up for over 10 years! Compared to Thorpe and chessie which have gone up massively since they were only introduced a few years back.
Shhhh, they read the forums...That price seems criminal.
Hope Merlin don't get any ideas.
Not so much "public" transport, there is Lynx buses but American public transport isn't great. Some hotels have shuttles and the on-site hotels have buses and boats (or can walk). But the hotel shuttles can be infrequent and you are sometimes still paying for them in the resort fee. Also many hotels charge for parking too.Not defending Universal charging that amount for parking - it's utterly ridiculous - but aren't there multitudes of shuttle busses/other public transport options to get you there?
Something's got to pay for the purple paint they've used on the car park monorail station!Towers have held their parking fee at £6 for years, presumably in no small part because they know that people have no alternatives and charging annoys people.
With inflation being so high at the moment they probably feel they can use that as an excuse to increase it.
Universal hotels don’t charge a resort fee. On my visits staying onsite I have found the shuttle busses frequent. Staying offsite or in a villa transport is more of an issue. However with parking charges at many hotels and at the theme parks (seaworld is $30 I believe now, although some uk tickets do include it), plus the high cost of hire cars currently the last two trips o have not had a car and used onsite transport and Uber.Not so much "public" transport, there is Lynx buses but American public transport isn't great. Some hotels have shuttles and the on-site hotels have buses and boats (or can walk). But the hotel shuttles can be infrequent and you are sometimes still paying for them in the resort fee. Also many hotels charge for parking too.
I honestly think the parking at Alton is a non-issue. Even if they doubled it.
With Chessington and Thorpe. It's 6 hours (instead of 3.5) and £700 for four of us on the train from my house. They can charge whatever they want for parking.
Was it ever actually confirmed it was “to fund the relief road”. I think the commitment by Alton Towers / Tussauds at the time was much more vague more like it’s to look into the prospect of potentially adding a new road.For me it’s the principle of it.
It was brought in to fund a new relief road that never happened.
Alton is very remote with limited public transport options - charging people who have no other means of getting there is wrong. After all these people are paying to keep the business going many of whom have driven hundreds of miles to get there.
If there was a viable alternative to cars then fair enough and the charge would be valid.