The issue with a £100+ ticket price is it makes a day visit completely unaffordable (or perhaps more accurately infeasible) for a broad cross-section of the population.
Parks that have high day ticket prices often have a high percentage of people purchasing multi-day tickets, which are more competitively priced. You cite the example of Disney and Universal having £100+ day ticket prices, but it’s important to note that Disney and Universal parks are overwhelmingly visited by out-of-area tourists who probably have multi-day passes, which are far more competitively priced on a per-day basis.
A 14-day unlimited ticket to Universal Orlando Resort is a little under £400, if I’m remembering rightly, and the equivalent ticket at Walt Disney World is a little over £500. This works out at £50 or less per “theme park day” if the ticket is used on every potential day, and that’s before you even consider park hopping (visiting multiple parks in 1 day). I’d wager that very few people buy £100+ day tickets to any Disney or Universal park as a result.
If you were to do the same at Alton Towers, it would not have the same effect, as the visitor makeup is very different. Alton Towers is overwhelmingly visited by regional day visitors or 2 day visitors at most, so far more people will be buying day tickets than multi-day passes. If you price your ticket at £100+ per person, that will be at least £400 for a family of 4 for a day before you even consider food, fuel spending, merchandise etc; you’re most likely looking at over £500 for 1 day at a theme park, which is a completely unpalatable proposition for most of the population, I would wager. When you can have a week’s holiday somewhere or even spend multiple days abroad for less than £1,000 if you play your cards right, one day trip costing over £500 would be obscenely poor value for money and would only appeal to the very richest families. Even outside of the cost of living crisis we’re currently living in, most working class families would either not be able to afford this at all or baulk at it if they could afford it.
I would also say that the IPs and prestige of Disney or Universal warrant higher prices as they attract higher demand and rightly or wrongly have a certain aura associated with their brands that no other theme park company can compete with. I think even parks like Europa Park and Efteling, let alone regional parks like Alton Towers would be given very short shrift if they tried to charge Disney or Universal prices.
Should Alton Towers’ entry and annual pass prices be a little higher than they currently are? Probably. But I don’t think hiking them to the extent suggested is in any way necessary, and swings the balance too far in the other direction. Parks need to appeal to the lowest common denominator and strike the right balance between price and guest flow; they can afford to annoy a few people by raising the prices slightly, but they can’t afford to completely cut off a huge proportion of the population from being feasibly able to visit.
