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2024: General Discussion

AT86 said:
The old 241 deals might be drying up. However it seems deals with brands are still part of the Merlin strategy.

A new offer with Kelloggs has gone live for all Merlin UK attractions from 1st July 2024 - 30th June 2025. Instead of the old 241 deal based on the vastly inflated gate price, this new deal is 25% off for two tickets per voucher off the online price.

This means depending on your date tickets can be as low as £21.50pp versus the previous fixed price of £34pp under the 241 model.

You can see the prices before needing to enter the code printed on the cereal boxes, as an example this is the current price for bank holiday Monday in August. Obviously the prices are always subject to change now that Merlin use demand based pricing.

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Full info here: https://merlinmagic.biz/kelloggs/

Buried in the T&C's is the allocation of how many tickets are available each day under this offer, the dates are split into 4 categories based on popularity, with less tickets available for busy dates.

Previous 241 offers blocked out key Scarefest and Firework dates entirely. However this deal does allow you to use the offer even on these dates, but there aren't as many tickets available. But you could bag a bargain if you plan ahead.

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For example you can currently book Fireworks Friday for £28pp.

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On the one hand I think this is bad thing as its a much lower price than the old 2for1 and I’m surprised they didn’t go with a smaller discount like the Carex ones. But the other argument is as it is based on the new variable pricing they can raise the price at any point and this has clearly defined limited availability in certain days.
Also maybe could be a slow move away from the 2for1 to 25% off and then 20% off.
 
Spent the day in the park on Saturday and had a really good day. Ride queues and op's were very good throughout the day.

Morning started a little hap hazard though. All the gates advising guests that Nemesis and Curse would be open at 10am for non hotel guests were open, no staff stopping anyone, so myself and Joe Public just walked through thinking there would be a queue at Nemesis and Curse for such guests when we get there. We walk down Haunted Hollow right to the end where the musical graves are only to have a member of staff chasing everyone down the path shouting at them. We were told to walk all the way back to Battle Galleons, which we refused, so instead he sent people up to the entrance for Curse where they kept the large black doors closed until 10am.

I notice today on media they have staff now actively stopping guests going through which is better, however, given you can start queuing for all rides from 9am, they need to come up with a better system for doing this. If they were to give hotel guests a wristband, have non hotel guests still able to access the queuelines from 9am, and let those with a wristband through the fast track/RAP queue entrances instead. Much simpler.

I thought the park generally looked good. Liked the additional seating areas by Woodcutters, the Pimms and Coffee vans and seating by the lake, and all the picnic tables on the lawns. We took a packed lunch and it was nice to (a) not feel ripped off and (b) sit on the lawns and relax with our own food.

I'll leave some comments about RCR in the relevant thread but we all had a really fun day.
 
Just to be clear on this, they are stopping non- hotel guests from going to Forbidden Valley at all before 10? My son wants to go on Galactica first thing
 
That’s annoying, going this Friday. I’ll have to have a chat with my son, see if I can persuade him to try Wicker Man first instead or something. He doesn’t want to do the Dark Forest or X Sector coasters so they aren’t really options.
 
geo4chg said:
That’s annoying, going this Friday. I’ll have to have a chat with my son, see if I can persuade him to try Wicker Man first instead or something. He doesn’t want to do the Dark Forest or X Sector coasters so they aren’t really options.
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There's nothing preventing you from hanging around the Forbidden Valley entrance until 10am, and heading to Galactica from there. You'll still be where the queue starts. Everybody else, apart from hotel guests, will have to wait with you.
 
geo4chg said:
That’s annoying, going this Friday. I’ll have to have a chat with my son, see if I can persuade him to try Wicker Man first instead or something. He doesn’t want to do the Dark Forest or X Sector coasters so they aren’t really options.
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If he enjoys Galactica then he should be alright on Th13teen and Wicker. Those 2 are relatively tame and plenty of fun
 
Ethan said:
If he enjoys Galactica then he should be alright on Th13teen and Wicker. Those 2 are relatively tame and plenty of fun
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He wants to do Galactica and Wicker Man but had his heart set on trying Galactica first. He’s done Thirteen before but wasn’t a fan really, more to do with the theming than the actual ride.

I’m thinking if we get there early enough we could try and be near the front of the queue for Wicker Man and then hot foot it over to Galactica via the lakeside garden path before the queues get too big but we’ll see. As he doesn’t want to do Smiler etc I’m pretty confident we’ll have plenty of time in the day for all the rides we want to do even if we do hit some largish queues.
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
There's nothing preventing you from hanging around the Forbidden Valley entrance until 10am, and heading to Galactica from there. You'll still be where the queue starts. Everybody else, apart from hotel guests, will have to wait with you.
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You can’t get near Foridden valley until 10am. They have gates by RMT, WM and Haunted hollow stopping people heading into gloomy wood and forbidden valley until 10am.
 
GaryH said:
You can’t get near Foridden valley until 10am. They have gates by RMT, WM and Haunted hollow stopping people heading into gloomy wood and forbidden valley until 10am.
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Not everyone has wings? Colour me shocked.

If you really wanted to, you could go via the gardens to the Forbidden Valley Skyride station.
 
AT86 said:
Seems fastrack packages have ‘online’ and ‘walk up’ prices now.

The walk up price is £5 on top of the online one.

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Towers being greedy and it shows. I wish for the day when fastrack might not exist. Everyone should wait their turn no matter how much money they have. RAP needs to be changed to a virtual queue too so they’re waiting the same time as the main. Sick of seeing videos on social media of people bragging about skipping lines because they have ADHD
 
Ethan said:
Towers being greedy and it shows. I wish for the day when fastrack might not exist. Everyone should wait their turn no matter how much money they have. RAP needs to be changed to a virtual queue too so they’re waiting the same time as the main. Sick of seeing videos on social media of people bragging about skipping lines because they have ADHD
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I don't think it is greedy, as Fasttrack should not be essential. Raising the food prices and cutting quality is greedy. But everyone has the option to use the standard queue and the fewer people using FT the quicker the standard and RAP queues move.

Of course (and this is not relevant to this thread) those with a RAP should not be skipping queues if the system is correctly managed, they should be waiting the queue time out elsewhere and rejoining the queue after the time has elapsed.
 
Ethan said:
Towers being greedy and it shows. I wish for the day when fastrack might not exist. Everyone should wait their turn no matter how much money they have. RAP needs to be changed to a virtual queue too so they’re waiting the same time as the main. Sick of seeing videos on social media of people bragging about skipping lines because they have ADHD
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While a virtual queue is preferred the current system isn’t any different to what you describe as long as the OP times out the rider correctly?
 
I noticed that the top two tiers of fasttrack cover 13/14 rides respectively and it made me think, how many rides does the average person get on in a peak day at AT?

Especially considering the at best varied availability, late ride openings and 5pm closing time. 14 individual rides even with a FT seems quite the achievement!
 
Bowser said:
I noticed that the top two tiers of fasttrack cover 13/14 rides respectively and it made me think, how many rides does the average person get on in a peak day at AT?

Especially considering the at best varied availability, late ride openings and 5pm closing time. 14 individual rides even with a FT seems quite the achievement!
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I've had days where we got Smiler, Oblivion, Rita, Thirteen, Nemesis, Minetrain all done before lunch or similar, so six rides in a half day with short queues, 12 rides is possible on a quieter day I guess if operations are OK. Might get all 13/14 with FT if no breakdowns. In theory busier days have 6pm close of course.
 
Bowser said:
I noticed that the top two tiers of fasttrack cover 13/14 rides respectively and it made me think, how many rides does the average person get on in a peak day at AT?

Especially considering the at best varied availability, late ride openings and 5pm closing time. 14 individual rides even with a FT seems quite the achievement!
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We went midweek, during the school trip season, on July 10th.

We managed 3 x on Rita, Th13teen, Spinball Whizzer, The Smiler, 2 x Oblivion, Wickerman, Heave Ho, Battle Galleons, Congo River Rapids, Runaway Mine Train, Curse at Alton Manor, Blade and Galactica. We also had a wonder through Sea Life.

13 rides, without counting re-rides. No Fastrack used. No single rider. Nemesis Reborn wasn't operational all day, sadly. Oddly this is a day where home sitting app checkers sad there were poor operations throughout, and one user on here (who hasn't been back since) reported a 160 minute Rota queue (which I didn't witness).

As you and others have mentioned before, sometimes it's down to pure luck / rotten luck. During the disastrous weather during Alton After Dark (experienced the same day as you), we only managed 4 rides and that was with extended opening hours.

I do wonder how app queue times and queue times experienced on a visit correlate. I'm sure newly anointed Computer Scientist, and hobbyist statistician/data analyst, @Matt N could come up with some sort of self-reported experiment for people to conduct when they're visiting.
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
I do wonder how app queue times and queue times experienced on a visit correlate. I'm sure newly anointed Computer Scientist, and hobbyist statistician/data analyst, @Matt N could come up with some sort of self-reported experiment for people to conduct when they're visiting.
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Challenge accepted!

I may have to delve back in time a little to get a properly representative sample, but I’ve got some ideas…
 
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