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Christmas 2021: Christmas Markets

Making passholders pay £11 for rides is appalling. I have just spent £229 on my pass - more than ever - and the Christmas event being £20 entry + £11 rides is dreadful. I'd probably pay for the lights but parking and rides on top!?

Incredible audacity from ATR.

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AstroDan said:
Making passholders pay £11 for rides is appalling. I have just spent £229 on my pass - more than ever - and the Christmas event being £20 entry + £11 rides is dreadful. I'd probably pay for the lights but parking and rides on top!?

Incredible audacity from ATR.

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Although I agree it is not great and that particularly with the platinum pass that appears to have no restrictions, the pass terms clearly exclude all Christmas events.

"6. The Platinum Pass is subject to additional charges including, but not limited to, entrance fees, reservation or pre-booking fees (where applicable), parking fees, and/or booking fees for entry into:
6.2 All Christmas event openings including, but not limited to, the LEGOLAND® Windsor Resort Christmas event and Chessington World of Adventures Resort Christmas event;"

So I agree, the basic rides and parking should be "free" for at least platinum, probably gold as well, but they aren't doing anything that isn't already advertised.

I think Chessington had a big problem a few years back with the Christmas event not being sustainable as it was just full of passholders.
At least with AT offering three different events this year they could give passholders at minimum free parking and market entry and then charge for lightopia and maybe rides.
 
Out of interest, is it known what rides are on offer at the event this year?
 
AstroDan said:
Making passholders pay £11 for rides is appalling. I have just spent £229 on my pass - more than ever - and the Christmas event being £20 entry + £11 rides is dreadful. I'd probably pay for the lights but parking and rides on top!?

Incredible audacity from ATR.

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That is madness. I know it is in the T&Cs but when as a platinum pass holder I have just paid £299 I do not expect to have to pay another £31 to experience the Christmas event in full. I wanted to go along but not sure I will bother with those prices.
 
Merlin are just profiteering by labelling Christmas a paid event.

Other parks don't do this around Europe. Christmas is a season like any other.

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jon81uk said:
I think Chessington had a big problem a few years back with the Christmas event not being sustainable as it was just full of passholders.
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Surely this event is more about bringing an audience to the stallholders? If I was a potential stallholder, I'd be a lot more interested in a plot if I knew that x figure of annual pass guests will be encouraged to attend as well as day guests.

As it stands they risk having a half-dead event, stallholders pulling out and the whole thing dying a death.
 
AstroDan said:
Making passholders pay £11 for rides is appalling. I have just spent £229 on my pass - more than ever - and the Christmas event being £20 entry + £11 rides is dreadful. I'd probably pay for the lights but parking and rides on top!?

Incredible audacity from ATR.

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Two words.

Trentham Gardens.

Why would anyone pay for this, especially locals, with this down the road. Free parking. Free shops and stalls.

It should be £15 all in with free parking. That’s the sweet spot. It’s the first year they’ve done it, charge more next year.

And the service will still be garbage


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WillPS said:
Surely this event is more about bringing an audience to the stallholders? If I was a potential stallholder, I'd be a lot more interested in a plot if I knew that x figure of annual pass guests will be encouraged to attend as well as day guests.

As it stands they risk having a half-dead event, stallholders pulling out and the whole thing dying a death.
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I think the park is looking at the limited ride capacity in terms of allowing passholders in. The risk to AT is that by allowing too many people in with ride entry the queues are long because of the limited number of rides open. In turn that then gives a poor experience to the guests who are there for Santas Sleepover and paying a lot of money for an event the park has built a good reputation of over the last 10 years or so.

I think there should be free parking (ie market entry) for everyone. Then discounted ride entry for passholders to manage capacity.
Everyone has to pay the up charge for the lightopia event. Santa visits are an additional charge or exclusive to sleepover guests due to the very low capacity.

if almost the entire park is open, as some European parks offer at Christmas then I think it would make sense allowing passholders in for “free”. But for the lower capacity event I can see why AT are reluctant to.

The low capacity of Santa visits is why Chessington had issues a few years ago.
 
It’s interesting that certain passes have different exclusion dates and that is the main point of differentiation between them, eg if you don’t want restrictions then you’d buy Platinum.

So if I bought a pass thinking there were no restrictions because the Christmas dates are not blackout dates, it would certainly come as a surprise that in fact they are. And the way that’s implemented is by some drafting buried in the T&Cs.

The whole thing feels underhand and yet another cash grab.
 
I couldn't get Santa Sleepover to fit our work schedule so was going to book just a day visit, but as I now see was mentioned a couple of pages back it seems you can't book a Santa visit as an add on to a day visit? When you think of all the ways they try and squeeze pennies out of your pocket, then this absolute licence to print money that people would actually want they don't do. Mental.
 
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pluk said:
I couldn't get Santa Sleepover to fit our work schedule so was going to book just a day visit, but as I now see was mentioned a couple of pages back it seems you can't book a Santa visit as an add on to a day visit? When you think of all the ways they try and squeeze pennies out of your pocket, then this absolute licence to print money that people would actually want they don't do. Mental.
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This is definitely a capacity issue. Santa meet is low capacity so easier to keep it restricted to the sleepover guests.
Maybe if the day tickets are popular this year they will rework it to add more Santas. But trying to offer it to more guests and then failing leads to very bad guest feedback.
 
jon81uk said:
This is definitely a capacity issue. Santa meet is low capacity so easier to keep it restricted to the sleepover guests.
Maybe if the day tickets are popular this year they will rework it to add more Santas. But trying to offer it to more guests and then failing leads to very bad guest feedback.
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It only has a capacity issue of they give it a capacity issue, it is very easily and relatively cheaply multipliable to give scale, and profit.
 
pluk said:
It only has a capacity issue of they give it a capacity issue, it is very easily and relatively cheaply multipliable to give scale, and profit.
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Finding enough cast to pay the role and paying them the right wage for doing that may not be cheap.
 
jon81uk said:
Finding enough cast to pay the role and paying them the right wage for doing that may not be cheap.
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It certainly is cheap compared to the multiple quid every couple of minutes that can be charged. It is definitely a very profitable endeavour.
 
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