People pay for X amount of hours on park in advance so the park should honour that. Imagine if you went to watch a film at the cinema and they cut the last 20 minutes because not many people showed up?
This. I was thinking this morning about similar examples. It really is terrible customer service to shut the park 2 hours earlier than your very own clearly stated ‘earliest closing time.’
I don’t really think even the most avid park fan can defend that really unless it was because either something catastrophic had happened or in the case of extreme weather. From the sounds of it, on Easter Monday it was a bit wet and a bit quiet on the park. To me that is most certainly not a good enough reason to kick people out 2 hours early.
Also fobbing people off with rainy day returns etc is no use if you are unable to return anytime soon. Remember not all of us live down the road from the park and can’t go anytime we please because of work, family and other commitments. My brother for example comes over from North Yorkshire once or twice a year to visit BPB. He is very limited to when he can visit, tends to plan said visits months in advance around work, childcare etc, and as such would be mightily cheesed off and rightly so, if the park happen to call it a day a few hours early because they can’t be bothered to honour their publicised opening times.
It’s bad enough closing early if you planned to be in the park all day, and perhaps even worse for those who arrive early / mid afternoon expecting to get 4 hours in and only getting 2 for example.
My local Spar shop closes at 10pm. Many times I’ve popped in during the final 10 minutes, they may be mopping the floor and preparing to close but they have never refused to serve me or decided to shut an hour early because it’s quiet or because they simply can’t be bothered.
Does a car garage cancel your booked afternoon MOT because it was an otherwise quiet afternoon and they’ve decided to close an hour or two early? No because they value your custom and so honour what you have booked in good faith.
As somebody else has said, it could become a slippery slope where we find that it may happen more often or it may be 3 hours next time instead of 2. The saddest thing of all is that they seem totally able to hide behind their T&Cs which basically state that they can do what they like. Good luck to anyone who decides to pursue this further with the park!