Do you currently have a Merlin Annual Pass? Have you ever had one?

[Matt N]

Hi guys. With TowersStreet being an Alton Towers fansite, many of the site's discussions centre heavily around attractions operated by Merlin Entertainments. One of Merlin's key products designed to appeal to people who visit Merlin attractions more frequently is the Merlin Annual Pass, which gains you entry to all of Merlin's UK attractions for a whole year, amongst other privileges. I'd wager that some on here visit Merlin attractions pretty often, but at the same time, some hold great disdain towards Merlin and want to give the company as little of their money as possible. With this in mind, I'd be interested to know; do you currently have a Merlin Annual Pass, and if not, have you ever had one? If you don't have one, what puts you off buying one?

Personally, I do not currently have a Merlin Annual Pass, but have had one in the past. We very often used to have them as kids, and we used to have them in alternating, non-Florida years going into my teens. The last season when I had a Merlin pass, however, was 2021. I had a Premium Merlin Annual Pass that I purchased in February or March 2020, and it got extended by a stupid number of months to something like December 2021 due to the COVID lockdowns. My parents and I really hammered the Merlin parks in 2020 and 2021; I reckon I got 10 park visits out of that pass!

However, I have not had a Merlin pass since that 2021 season. These days, I don't have a Merlin pass simply because I'm not sure I'd get value for money out of one. Living in Gloucestershire, I don't really live close enough to any of the 4 theme parks to visit them super frequently, and to get value for money out of even the cheapest tier of Merlin pass nowadays, I'd need to do at least 5 Merlin park visits per year. I'm not sure that I'd necessarily do more than 5 in a typical year these days; in a typical year, I probably do a minimum of a 2-day visit to Alton Towers and 1 or 2 days at Thorpe Park. If either park has a new notable draw, I might also do a day at Chessington or Legoland. On occasion, I might do two 2-day visits or a couple of extra day trips to Alton rather than just the one weekend, but those occasions are getting rarer. I'm probably going to be spending a 3rd day at Alton at some point in 2024, but that's only because we got given a free return visit due to visiting on 23rd March, so it's not a "paid" visit to Alton. Had we not had that free return visit, we probably wouldn't be going back to Alton this year.

When we were kids, we used to get value for money out of the Merlin passes because we used to do things like go to London and do some of the midway attractions at least once a year, as well as going to Warwick Castle, our nearest Merlin attraction at a 1.5 hour drive away, once or twice a year, alongside the annual weekend at Alton Towers. But we don't really go to the midways so much anymore; the last time I visited a Merlin midway attraction in London was no later than 2015, and I haven't been to Warwick Castle since 2017.

But I'd be keen to know; do you currently have a Merlin pass, and have you ever had one? If you don't currently have one, what puts you off buying one?

 

[Matt.GC]

Since "non-Florida years" are almost every year for most people (I haven't been since 1994, and for a family of 5 you're looking at £15k which is more than some people earn in a year), I have had a Merlin pass for a while to ensure the whole family get plenty of theme park itches attended to.

Despite living absolutely nowhere near any Merlin parks, I made good use of it. For a couple of years we had them for all of us and I took my kids everywhere multiple times. Then, only I had one and we used Share the Fun. Then I binned mine off and just stayed with the Alton annual offerings. Now I own no pass for any Merlin park at all.

Was great when I was field based. I used to travel all over the county and visit the parks whenever I could. Visited after a job interview, on the way home from head office, on a day when a meeting was cancelled, when I got stuck in traffic on the M25, and on a day when there wasn't much work on. If I was near a park, I'd go in.

I didn't bin it all off because of the value, the price, because I got bored, or the fact that I wasn't on the road anymore. But because I could see how this kind of patronage was/is ruining the parks. Since owning my first pass to ending my last one, there's been a very marked decline in the quality of the parks. The chief victim of that downgrading process has been my favourite of the bunch, Alton Towers. Now a shadow of it's former self, now just another typical Merlin park, only in a nicer and more historic location.

These cheap passes, and the social media RAP abusing culture that runs hand in hand with them, is a business model that I think cheapens the parks and is ruining all of them. Especially Towers, which has been dragged down most predominantly. It's just another logo on the MAP attractions list now.

I now expect Merlin to earn my custom, and they rarely do these days. I only visit because I love theme parks and I love Towers. I wish they'd charge me double but increase the quality rather than sell me discount passes for 10-4 days that offer increasingly tacky experiences.

 

[BigShadowtinytree]

I’m into my third year of having merlin passes for my family and I. The first year we definitely got our moneys worth and had multiple visits to the parks. Especially Alton Towers which is our closest Merlin park (about 1hr 40mins). Stayed at the ATH on one occasion too. Thorpe is a park that my partner and I visit without the kids as they can’t go on any of the coasters apart from flying fish, and I know it would upset them seeing all those big coasters and not being tall enough to go on any of them yet so we’re patiently waiting for them both to hit 1.4, which sadly still seems like it’ll be some time away. We did chessington a few times and stayed at the hotel on one occasion, and legoland a few times too.

Last year we did fewer visits for a number of reasons. Partly due to capacity/operational issues most of the parks were/are experiencing and partly due to personal stuff going on. Didn’t even bother to visit chessington despite the new area opening.

This year we’re going to try and visit the parks more, so far we’ve had 2 visits to Towers (3 for my partner who did a solo visit on a quiet term time day). Definitely want to try and get to Chessington and Legoland at least once and will hopefully be able to palm the kids off on grandparents for a weekend or two so we can have our adults only visits to Thorpe.

We try to do Warwick Castle a couple of times a year even though it’s our closets big Merlin attraction at only 35 or so minutes away, any more then I worry it’ll get a bit boring, I love the shows they put on there especially Falconers Quest, but there’s nothing really new there to make me want to visit more often. It’s a nice chilled day out on a sunny day though. We did Dragon Slayer during the first year which was really good and the pass discount on tickets was a huge selling point.

We’ve done Sealife and Legoland Discovery Centre in Birmingham a couple of times but again, too many visits and those places become much of the same.

I want to go to London and make use of the passes there at some point, but I don’t really want to drive and train tickets are really expensive so haven’t got around to doing that yet. Same with Blackpool although I wouldn’t mind taking the car for that as we’d probably stay overnight as it’s a long journey anyway.

Have done Cadbury World once since they were introduced to the merlin pass fold, but like the other Merlin midways too many visits and you just end up getting bored and not appreciating them enough.

Overall im happy with the passes, it works out great value. We only need to visit a merlin park once a month and it’s essentially pays for itself (I totally get the argument that Merlin Passes are too cheap and don’t necessarily disagree) so that’s what we aim for as a minimum. We’ve saved a bunch of cash with the free parking being included as well, and the 20% discount comes in handy when buying merch too.

But I’m aware that as the years have gone by our usage of them as decreased and the novelty has worn off a bit. I feel like with visiting the parks more often (without a pass I might visit a park once or maybe twice a year) you notice more of its faults, capacity issues, RAP abuse, overselling fast tracks, poor food offerings etc and that has in a sense ruined the magic for me a bit. But I like coasters, I do enjoy myself most of the time when I visit and my family have had some great days out on them, so not ready to cancel them just yet.

 

[Auribus]

Not currently but did have both a Season and Annual Pass in the past for regular visits to Towers -- which is my local park.

It's just the lack of upkeep in the park, Hex, Skyride, lack of replacement of Enterprise and other flats on their way out like Blade that gives me the hump. There are price savings from a consumer point-of-view, yes, but buying an annual pass is also a future investment. That you as a customer will exchange your cash now in expectation that in X amount of time [months or a year] the product will be in a "good" state of repair.

The biggest factor in their favour for me was convenience. In pre-covid times, I'd check the weather, say, on Monday and decide to go the very next day on Tuesday just on a spur of the moment thing. Sometimes I'd even leave a decision to go on the morning itself. Just get up, wash, have breakfast, look out onto a glorious sunny morning and decide to drive there, park, scan my pass in the turnstiles and off I go. Nothing can beat that convenience. Admittedly, at the time I had a really large and flexible employer and could book time off at short notice or work flexi-days.

There's also that time I drove off on the Tuesday and around half-an-hour into the drive my car computer flashed up low tyre warning. Oops! Did a quick visual check, looked fine but I drove back and checked it at the tyre place [it was only one bar out from recommended]. So I went Towers the day after. Had I booked it through the website, I would have had to cancel and rearrange a non-transferable ticket or arrive substantially late.

I've never yet got bored of a visit to Towers when I do get here. This is "me" time I make for myself to escape the pressures of daily life and whatever else is going on around the world. Even if I don't go on many rides I just enjoy the sunshine, the stunning amount of variablility in the park, the atmosphere and walking around the park from a fitness point of view and just taking it all in.

 

[rob666]

Usually have a BPB pass.
Only exception was post smiler crash, when I did a merlin for the shorter queues.
This year should have been a merlin for the new rides, but because of the skyride specifically, I refused to give them my money.
So £20 on parking and £1 on fishfood so far this year.
Thorpe will be similar.
Back to the Beach next year, just to wind up the old gits.
Still got the rest of my world tour of Britain to come.

 

[John_P]

Have a merlin pass, think I usually eek enough out of it each year on park entry, parking, and discounts.

Always nice if I'm in a location with a dungeons, Sealife centre, London eye, Tussauds etc and there's some availability can pop in to spend an hour. If they had a Sealife centre were I Iive I'd probably visit every month. Just find them so relaxing.

Should be using it to visit all the theme parks this year, plus at least one discounted entry into a foreign park.

Have a pleasure Beach pass as well, usually by now I'd have done at least 2 trips to Blackpool and had 4/5 days were I'd go into the park for a few rides. But this year I've managed 1 day so far (this Friday just gone), however be getting free entry to a couple of the partner parks in the coming months.

 

[Bowser]

Last year we had our first MAP (Gold).

This year we went Platinum as we visited on Xmas Eve and I figured it was worth the gamble that we’d visit on one other exclusion date.

The value for money is absurd for how much we use them. I think we’ve already done 6 theme park trips and 4 visits to Madame Tussaud’s.

 

[Manchester1894]

First timer here too. Bought with AT our local, and kids will love Thorpe and Chessington later this year.

 

[TPick]

Platinum pass holders here, and we absolutely hammer it if I am honest. Our son absolutely loves the parks, and it is so easy when we have a spare afternoon or if he is having a particularly bad day to just pop down to one of the parks for a few hours. The rest of us enjoy the parks as well but it doesn't bother us if we don't go for a while and we can see all of the parks faults, but for him it's different.

I lose track how many times we visit Merlin attractions in a year - we are lucky as we are close to three parks for a start. We are probably over 10 theme park visits already.

As we use RAP we may find we go less this year due to the recent changes as we may not be able to do as many spontaneous visits due to there being no pre-book slots available. For example, we have had to book three weeks in advance to get a RAP slot for a weekend at Legoland.

 

[Bowser]

Platinum pass holders here, and we absolutely hammer it if I am honest. Our son absolutely loves the parks, and it is so easy when we have a spare afternoon or if he is having a particularly bad day to just pop down to one of the parks for a few hours. The rest of us enjoy the parks as well but it doesn't bother us if we don't go for a while and we can see all of the parks faults, but for him it's different.

I lose track how many times we visit Merlin attractions in a year - we are lucky as we are close to three parks for a start. We are probably over 10 theme park visits already.

As we use RAP we may find we go less this year due to the recent changes as we may not be able to do as many spontaneous visits due to there being no pre-book slots available. For example, we have had to book three weeks in advance to get a RAP slot for a weekend at Legoland.

I'm in a very similar situation (except the park proximity). Will see how the rest of the year goes in terms of RAP bookings but i imagine we'll be making fewer visits as a result and likely won't renew the Platinum.

 

[WillPS]

I always really wanted one as a teenage fanboy, then eventually me and my girlfriend then (wife now) got one in 2009/10.

A combination of reasons meant I didn't renew, and in fact I didn't visit Towers or any Merlin attraction other than Sea Life for 7 years after that. I'm an 'every 2 or 3 years' visitor now, and I enjoy it much more as a result.

No intention to get another, but the thought of getting one for me and my nephew when he gets to the magic 1.4m height has crossed my mind.

 

[Poisson]

Started with an ATAP in 2009, think we upgraded in 2011 to a Merlin. Had one ever since, just renewed my Platinum pass.