Do UK parks have the worst queue times in Europe?

[Poisson]

The trick in ride design is to allow enough dwell time but still allow capacity. Removing loose articles before the station reduces dwell, staff telling guests to get on with it does too (I witnessed the staff on Olympia absolutely eviscerate somebody for trying to faff and it was beautiful) plus people will crack on if they see staff locking down restraints.

 

[Bowser]

The trick in ride design is to allow enough dwell time but still allow capacity. Removing loose articles before the station reduces dwell, staff telling guests to get on with it does too (I witnessed the staff on Olympia absolutely eviscerate somebody for trying to faff and it was beautiful) plus people will crack on if they see staff locking down restraints.

Another issue i've realised in the course of this discussion is parks with the most intense rides tend to suffer from queue issues the most, hence why at the likes of AT and TP it is particularly prevalent.

At parks like Efteling and Disneyland Paris you can take your baggage and loose items on the vast majority of rides, eliminating the faff. There is of course an element of regional health and safety variations too as i can't imagine bags would be allowed on Corkscrew if it was still running today.

 

[NuttySquirrel]

Another issue i've realised in the course of this discussion is parks with the most intense rides tend to suffer from queue issues the most, hence why at the likes of AT and TP it is particularly prevalent.

At parks like Efteling and Disneyland Paris you can take your baggage and loose items on the vast majority of rides, eliminating the faff. There is of course an element of regional health and safety variations too as i can't imagine bags would be allowed on Corkscrew if it was still running today.

Goudurix at Parc Astérix is a rather similar ride to Corkscrew and it is bags on. It feels very odd, even if you understand the laws of centrifugal forces.

Actually it's family friendly rides that seem to have the most boarding faff from my observation - often around which children are required to sit with which adults, kids not understanding how to fix their own restraints, last minute cold feet etc.

 

[Bowser]

Goudurix at Parc Astérix is a rather similar ride to Corkscrew and it is bags on. It feels very odd, even if you understand the laws of centrifugal forces.

Actually it's family friendly rides that seem to have the most boarding faff from my observation - often around which children are required to sit with which adults, kids not understanding how to fix their own restraints, last minute cold feet etc.

Yes i actually had Python at Efteling in mind which essentially is Corkscrew and is also bags on. They even have signs explaining centrifugal forces! At least without that you're eliminating one notable aspect of faff as people are boarding straight away and hosts can immediately assist.

 

[Smiley]

Or just provide free lockers and build them in by design. I still don't understand why theme parks aren't obsessive about throughput, as they are about reducing staff/operating costs.

 

[Bowser]

Or just provide free lockers and build them in by design. I still don't understand why theme parks aren't obsessive about throughput, as they are about reducing staff/operating costs.

Because throughput often isn’t their number one priority, especially when there’s money to be made from lengthy queues.

The parks with the shortest queues and/or no fast track tend to be the ones not operated by large investment companies, multinationals and so on.

 

[Matt N]

The parks with the shortest queues and/or no fast track tend to be the ones not operated by large investment companies, multinationals and so on.

Isn’t queue length in part due to size/calibre of park rather than ownership?

A larger, more visited park will have longer queues than a smaller one by nature of a greater quantity of people and rides not having infinite capability to increase throughputs; you’d simply never get the queue times of Paultons at Disney or Universal, for example.

 

[Bowser]

Isn’t queue length in part due to size/calibre of park rather than ownership?

A larger, more visited park will have longer queues than a smaller one by nature of a greater quantity of people and rides not having infinite capability to increase throughputs; you’d simply never get the queue times of Paultons at Disney or Universal, for example.

Not always. Parks like Europa and Efteling have far more visitors per year than any of the Merlin parks, have comparably shorter queue times and neither have Fast Track systems.

More importantly, they openly have business models that prioritise customer experience.

 

[neil_wilson]

There certainly are lots of different things you can do to raise throughputs, and there are different trade offs. Some of them have bigger capital costs (CAPEX) and some of them have bigger operating costs (OPEX)

One of the things I came across when I was researching my efficiency books is that parks with bad queues were sometimes trying to improve things, but were prioritising where the worst queues are, which isn’t necessarily a very good strategy, although I’m sure it is sometimes.

For example, you might have a terrible queue for a ride that does 100 guests an hour. The problem is that even if you increase the throughput by 20% you’re not adding that many extra guests an hour. You either need to find something that increases the throughput by a massive percentage, or find something very cheap that will increase the throughput. Otherwise you end up spending a lot of money to get a small number of people on a ride each hour, which often doesn’t look very cost effective, and is unlikely to be sustainable for long.

Whereas if you’ve got a ride that already does 1,000 guests an hour and you can increase the throughput by 20%, you’re getting an extra 200 people on a ride each hour. It’s often worth spending a bit of a money to do that.

There's no point in adding lots of extra throughput where it isn't needed, so there probably is a balance between where it's needed and where the low hanging fruits are.

 

[Smiley]

There's no point in adding lots of extra throughput where it isn't needed, so there probably is a balance between where it's needed and where the low hanging fruits are.

The issue is exactly OPEX, and management's desire to keep it down. All UK theme park management seem to want a lowest gate price, and yet so many people want a better experience. No-one seems to ask them if they're prepared to pay a few quid more for it, rather than £40 for a shit time or £140 for a good time....

 

[Benzin]

Is that £140 EACH?

None of our parks can charge that. Not without losing money hand over fist.

Even Paultons feels fairly steep, though that is in direct comparison to Merlin prices which are mired in BOGOF. And the recent increase for essential companion tickets.

 

[Bowser]

The issue is exactly OPEX, and management's desire to keep it down. All UK theme park management seem to want a lowest gate price, and yet so many people want a better experience. No-one seems to ask them if they're prepared to pay a few quid more for it, rather than £40 for a shit time or £140 for a good time....

It’s quite interesting to compare to the direction the music industry has taken, where hundreds of thousands of people will now commonly pay multiple times more for a single ticket to spend a few hours at a concert

 

[Smiley]

Is that £140 EACH?

If you want unlimited FP then that's about the mark. Last time at AT (where we spent £600 on 2 nights) we paid around £50 for FPs on the 2nd day and went home after lunch. Not queuing for 1 hr for a ride. Including food, travel, etc that's £1000 for 3 people - which is crazy insane money to spend when most of it is queuing.

 

[Smiley]

It’s quite interesting to compare to the direction the music industry has taken, where hundreds of thousands of people will now commonly pay multiple times more for a single ticket to spend a few hours at a concert

It's a (unique) experience and people are prepared to pay. UK theme parks seem to be a "race to the bottom" when it comes to pricing and experience. Apart from their hotels and tree houses - all super expensive, but well themed and managed. Yet the same poor experience in the park.

Someone (hopefully Universal) will bring a change. Maybe a £100+ ticket price in return for a better experience. I'll be first in line!

 

[Matt N]

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.

 

[Smiley]

Should Alton Towers’ entry and annual pass prices be a little higher than they currently are? Probably.

I don't disagree with anything. Just that people want a good experience - and UK theme parks rarely deliver. If you've been to Disney, you know the experience you are paying for. I'm not suggesting every UK park deliver the same (it's expensive) but I think one of them could.

Given the total cost of going to a theme park, I'd prefer to pay 25%-50% more and have a better experience.

 

[Bowser]

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.

I don't think a ticket needs to be £100 but essentially the majority of customers are either MAP holders paying a fraction of the price for multiple visits or people using various offers and likely paying closer to £30 each.

So i think there's a middle ground and the likes of Paultons have demonstrated that £40-60 is palatable for a regional park in exchange for a higher quality product. Of course that does also rely on potentially abandoning the fast track model and significantly increasing the annual pass price. Also whilst i've used Paultons as an example i do accept for many customers the price currently often incorporates a free younger member of the family/group attending which helps people with the overall economics.

Overall though i don't think there's one answer to the Merlin queue times issue as it's a combination of many ingrained factors. It's a shame the information about number of MAP holders/visitors isn't public though as i'm incredibly curious what the ratios are.

 

[owenstreet7]

I think the main difference between the UK and the likes of Europe and the US is that with the UK, there's a high value for money annual pass scheme with the Merlin group that offers families and people the ability to visit these attractions for a fairly low yearly price.

Europe doesn't have a huge Merlin presence in the same way and the closest company of a scale similar to Merlin would be Walibi.

With Six Flags, it's a lot more spread out across a larger area so it's not as much of an impact.

I'd say it's high demand in a high density area for a chain of theme parks that has a monopoly on the industry in this country.

 

[flyingguitar]

If you want unlimited FP then that's about the mark. Last time at AT (where we spent £600 on 2 nights) we paid around £50 for FPs on the 2nd day and went home after lunch. Not queuing for 1 hr for a ride. Including food, travel, etc that's £1000 for 3 people - which is crazy insane money to spend when most of it is queuing.

There is a reason fast pass costs so much, if they were cheap everyone would have one, disney had them cheap with gene+ (something like $20) and it essentially meant there was the non paied queue at 120 mins (even though there is less than 20 mins worth of people there) and the paied queue which is what it normally is without fast track. Pricing it higher reduces sales and the profit, but means you don't end up with a paied and non paied queue.

I am not saying I like fast pass, I would like no system, but having it expensive is important.

 

[Benzin]

For comparison:

One day at Europa costs €52.
Phantasialand is €68 (it's ALWAYS been stupid expensive).
Asterix is €54.
Efteling caps at €53.

It's not about the ticket price, it's about the value for money and how the parks approach the management. Merlin's "sell them low" method has been a potential pitfall for years, and knocking up the cost to £100 for entry alone will not solve the issue. Especially given the amount of BOGOF and MAP users.