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2023: General Discussion

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Parking has gone up by a quid, both standard and express:

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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.
 
djtruefitt said:
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.
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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.
 
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?

Seven quid a pop to park your car at Towers, or struggle with the horrendous public transport situation. It's a quick and easy buck for them as they're taking advantage of a captive audience, but I can't imagine it leaving anything other than a sour taste after a 4pm close where you've struggled to get on much. If anything - that and how expensive tickets are (I'm probably not going to bother renewing my annual pass this year) - it puts me off going a bit, especially when you consider how expensive fuel just to get there is.
 
mo237 said:
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?
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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.
 
The last time parking was increased was 2011. I am no fan of the parking charge but it is pretty standard at theme parks these days across the world.

Of all the increases going on at the moment, such as criminally high hotel rates and the arbitrary 10% increase in food prices to cover the profit margins of their new outsourced provider, an extra quid for parking for the first time in 12 years is way down the list of concerns for me.
 
jon81uk said:
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.
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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.

In fact worked out cheaper staying onsite than staying offsite and having a car and using Uber/onsite transport instead 3weeks last summer spent about $180 on Uber. If stayed off site where previously stayed or similar with cost of car, parking at the hotel and parking at the parks it would have cost $1900! That’s excluding fuel. Interestingly disney have just dropped the parking charge for onsite hotel guests at their resorts plus you continue to be able to park at the parks without charge as well (although I am sure the cost is factored into there current nightly hotel rates instead!).
 
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.
 
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.
 
GaryH said:
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.
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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.
They probably did look into it, found JCB won’t co-operate and that was the end of it.
 
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I'd wager those complaining wouldn't actually be paying it anyway. Since even the most basic annual passes include parking!
 
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