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Farce-track

I'm sorry but who are all you to dixtate what people can and can't spend their money on! For example. ..if you gave 10 people £50..no 2 people would spend it on the same thing. If people want to buy fast track. ..let them do it as long as it's used appropriately!

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badlydrawnkelBel said:
I'm sorry but who are all you to dixtate what people can and can't spend their money on! For example. ..if you gave 10 people £50..no 2 people would spend it on the same thing. If people want to buy fast track. ..let them do it as long as it's used appropriately!

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That is a complete and total misrepresentation of the argument. The argument isn't that people should or should not buy it; it's that Towers should not offer it (or should be more restrained with their offerings).
 
I think 40 per hour is reasonable. It will not severely disrupt the main queue, at least not to the point of tipping the waiting time. Any higher than that though and they will find themselves stepping into tricky ground.

Agree with Rob in another topic that it should be around £10, not £5/£6 - even at £10 they will easily sell out. I think they missed an opportunity there. People will be willing to pay high prices for Fastrack for a new ride such as this. For some guests £10 would be worth skipping the 3 hour queue.
 
The problem with FastTrack is that it is oversold, under priced, and the money generated goes straight to the profit line, rather than been invested back in to the rides. They are issued without a time allocation, and are the first thing that is offered for any guest complaint.

I do not have a problem with the principle of Paid for FastTrack, if they are only sold on medium to high days, kept to a minimum of 10% of the rides throughput, allocated on a time slot allocation, and the revenue generated from it is invested back in to the ride(Maintenance, improvements, upkeep. Although you could argue the cost to get in to the park should cover all these). If people are willing to pay a premium to jump the queue, which has a minimal impact (hence no more than 10% of ride capacity) and that money is been invested back in the park or allowing a cheaper entrance price for everyone (Wishful thinking, I know), it is a good thing for everyone.

Some of the things Towers do that is just disgusting, unacceptable, and is treating guests of the park with contempt. This includes, selling FastTrack on quiet days, selling FastTrack on ride entrance, exaggerating queue times, or running rides under capacity to increase queues, advertising FastTrack tickets on Ride Information boards.

Its hardly surprising guests figures have dropped by 10% in 2012 when these things are occurring and interesting that the 3 most visited parks in Europe (2012) do not have FastTrack which you pay for. FastTrack used to be a premium which guests only used for special occasions, sadly at Towers, it is seen as something you have to buy to have a good day.

As for the Smiler, I am sure when the ride was originally planned, FastTrack would of been going on sell for the ride in June/July time, assuming it opened in March. I also like to think when budgeting for the ride, they took in to account the revenue from FastTrack to re-coup some of the initial cost and if this is the case, I understand the "early" start of FastTrack sales. If this is not the case, and this is being used purely for increasing profit, than shame on Towers.

As for how much it should be, an hour of your time, is difficult to measure, but I like to base it on how much I earn per hour. That makes £5/6 seem very cheap to save 3 hours, as even on minimum wage, 3 hours work would be £19. I think having it priced at £20 with a limit of 40 tickets an hour, would easily sell out, and it quadruples the profit made from it. The other option is selling another 120 tickets, and that is pushing it up from 5% of the hourly ride capacity to 22% assuming 3 trains on 740PPH.

Towers always introduces new things to cheaply, and then has to increase the price, I am looking at the Swimming Park annual pass as a good example of this.

If Towers had started selling the FastTrack at £20, and it did not sell out, it would of left itself plenty of room to move, and put a positive spin on it. As it is now, all it can do is increase the price, and this leaves a negative impression.

Ian
 
People should not be able to pay extra to give themselves a better experience, and in doing so make everyone else's experience worse.

It's wrong. End of

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Sam said:
People should not be able to pay extra to give themselves a better experience, and in doing so make everyone else's experience worse.

It's wrong. End of

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I disagree completely. If the allocations are sensibly restrictive then the impact on everyone else is minimum and is unlikely to be noticed. There is nothing wrong with fastrack in principle (although I know many disagree, I'm not getting into that argument again). It just needs to be managed properly.

:)
 
Rob said:
Sam said:
People should not be able to pay extra to give themselves a better experience, and in doing so make everyone else's experience worse.

It's wrong. End of

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Click to expand...

I disagree completely. If the allocations are sensibly restrictive then the impact on everyone else is minimum and is unlikely to be noticed. There is nothing wrong with fastrack in principle (although I know many disagree, I'm not getting into that argument again). It just needs to be managed properly.

:)
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I think we have two choices, Everyone pays more, or there are perks, which have a minimal impact (Please see previous post for more detailed explanation) on other guests offered for a premium, which allow the park entrance to remain lower.

If everyone has to pay more, that could prevent people from being able able to afford going to the park, so the compromise seems acceptable to me. However, that compromise, does mean you have to wait a little longer in queue lines.

Other option is, instead of increasing the price, it remains the same, and instead of a 14 inversion, £18 million coaster, we get a £2 million 2nd hand 2 inversion Vekoma.

Its all swings and round abouts, Towers needs to make a profit, FastTrack is an easy source of profit, if they did not make the profit from FastTrack, they would need to increase prices elsewhere, or limit investment in other areas (Which is already happening)

I don't think anyone is saying that Towers FastTrack is working, or the right way to do it. In fact, I think everyone agrees that Towers is abusing the FastTrack to increase its profits and hurting guest experience. However, as myself and others have suggested, when FastTrack is implemented sensibly, and in a way that has a minimal impact on other guests, it is a great source for generating additional revenue, which can be used to improve maintenance, or to support investment in new rides.

Ian
 
Reading this thread and an experience in the SRQ on Oblivion Yesterday have made me want to physically go and take this issue up with Guest Services. Yesterday it suddenly dawned on me that the throughput for Blivvys main queue has essentially halved ever since they made the right side of the queue and Section B of the station exclusive for Fastrack. What was a 40 minute queue could have been 20 minutes but the Fastrack queue was also consistently full. Add in Airgate Faff and operators sending trains round with empty seats despite the SRQ taking me 45 minutes and you see how much of a disruption this causes. It's the same deal with Rita - the throughput on Rita is bad enough as it is and a constant stream of Fastrack guests only delays this further.

I'm not opposed to Fastrack - it's a great revenue generator but it really needs to be managed better. As somebody who I have forgotten (Sorry :-[ ) mentioned earlier, if they use a system like they were running in the Smiler yesterday where a limited amount are allotted per hourly time slot, they could still generate Fastrack revenue but minimise the impact on the speed of the regular queue.
 
Fastrack for The Smiler being sold at £10 today. So they've either read Rob's post on here and thought 'why did we not think of that?!' or they caught on that guests will be willing to pay that much. ;)
 
I'm sorry but that's just plain wrong. Even I would pay that and I hate Fast Track. Does anyone know how long the queue was for it?
 
£10!!! Thats disgraceful. We queued 2 and half hours yesterday and that nearly killed me - I would of happily paid £5 for a fast pass yesterday, but a tenner is just taking the ****
 
There are only 40 per hour, so it is severely limited. I think it's entirely wrong for them to be doing so though... Fastrack should be kept well away from the ride for the whole of this season and the signs for the queue should not have been installed or should have been covered up until needed so people don't spot them and query why they can't buy a ticket...
 
GaryH said:
£10!!! Thats disgraceful. We queued 2 and half hours yesterday and that nearly killed me - I would of happily paid £5 for a fast pass yesterday, but a tenner is just taking the ****
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If anything I think £10 is acceptable. You want to skip the 2 and a half hour queue, fine, you pay for that privilege.

Whether fastrack should be on the ride at all is my issue. They should be getting the ride up to full capacity before they start screwing over the main queue even more.
 
Ive got no problem with fast track, if people want to waste their money , that's fine, £10 a pop, nice business for towers, the ride wasn't cheap.

Ive never bought a fast track and i never will.
 
Hmm pay £10 only for it to breakdown and get told to try later. You try later, but now have to wait with the people who's timeslot is now due meaning you hardly save any time. Fastrack should be kept away from new, tempermental rides

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£10 is perfectly acceptable, it's a premium product and therefore a premium price. If people wanna pay it, they can pay it, if they don't they wont.

People automatically assume there's fastrack on every ride ever though, doesn't matter if there's no signs up or if it's a new ride, they assume there's fastrack and get irritated when there's not. At least there's a (severely limited really) option for those who really want to pay it.

Plus it gets the staff used to merging with fastrack and see how everything works, which I believe is why there's now fastrack on there.
 
It shouldn't have been added so early on. This is blatantly just a money making exercise, and not about the customers. After all, if it were truly about the customer and guest satisfaction, they're actually annoying MORE customers in the main queue than they would be pleasing in the Fastrack queue.

Despicable.
 
£10 a pop, with 40 tickets per hour?

£400 an hour...

Assume 11-5 operation (dunno if it officially opens at 11 or just assume that Smiler doesn't open till 11) means £2400 more being spent per day... That'll pay for a fair few staff members and no mistake...
 
Apparently it was £6 yesterday for Smiler Fastrack and not the £10 that we posted on FB, that was just what a member of staff told me. I do think they could sell it for £10, certainly in its first year.

They were selling 40 an hour yesterday and had sold out the whole days allocation by 9.30am.

Fastrack Smiler is now also included in the gold wristband package.
 
Smiler should not be included with gold/platinum automatically, but added as a bolt on instead, maybe £5 for gold and £10 for platinum. People buying those packages are the sort of people who'd pay whatever price they were quoted.

Assuming 40/hr between 11am and 5pm they've sold 240 in 30 minutes, and before the park has officially opened. It's obviously too cheap at £6/hour, I suspect they'd still sell out at £10.

If Alton Towers are going to legitimise queue jumping, then I want to at least feel like the people using the system are being fleeced for all they're worth.
 
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