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Fireworks 2016

Leah said:
I'm in splash landings on Sunday night, if I get to the park early enough on Sunday, can I still claim a fastrack?
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You are entitled to fast track for each day of your visit, in your instance it will be the Sunday only. You should get an email with a fast track voucher which you just show at the fast track entrance. If not, when you check into your hotel first thing Sunday morning (obviously you won't get your room until after 3pm, but you can check in before then) don't forget to ask them for your fast track tickets, they will print them off at the hotel. Don't forget to print off your email and bring that along with ID, MAP if you have one and your credit card that you paid with, they will ask to see these. To make full use of your fast tracks, check in early and get to the park for opening. Beware that the fast tracks might be busier than the normal queue lines. I think I only used my hotel fast track only twice on each day during the scarefest as the normal queues were walk-on's while the fast tracks queue lines were full :eek:
 
Hotel Fastrack's are now almost completely pointless as they're only valid until 12pm. Every year, more and more privileges for hotels guests (and also MAP holders) get removed.

Scarefest this year, I had close to a 4 hour drive. Because we didn't check in until 1pm there was no way to use them in the park, and they wouldn't give me tickets for the 2nd day. So all guests must get to the hotels early, check in, get to the park, and try to whizz around 4 rides before 12pm. Unrealistic for most people.

Fastrack was once available to all guests at any time. In recent years it's only been handed out when ERT isn't available. Screw you Merlin!
 
PeteB said:
Hotel Fastrack's are now almost completely pointless as they're only valid until 12pm. Every year, more and more privileges for hotels guests (and also MAP holders) get removed.

Scarefest this year, I had close to a 4 hour drive. Because we didn't check in until 1pm there was no way to use them in the park, and they wouldn't give me tickets for the 2nd day. So all guests must get to the hotels early, check in, get to the park, and try to whizz around 4 rides before 12pm. Unrealistic for most people.

Fastrack was once available to all guests at any time. In recent years it's only been handed out when ERT isn't available. Screw you Merlin!
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They should have given you fast track for the second day, they advertise that you have fast track for each day of your visit. Have you sent a polite email to the guest services and see what they say about it?

I would double check you emails prior to your next visit just in case they updated the voucher to include the fast track. I had a similar problem with the first weekend of the scarefest. When I checked in, they didn't give me any fast track. Luckily when I got to the turnstiles, I remember that I wasn't given any and I still had my printed off email confirmation. I took this into the guest services and they gave me some fast tracks. They wouldn't not have done this without proof of the printed off email. They said that my email voucher was updated the night before, which was no use to me as I was already getting some sleep for the big weekend. They wanted proof that I didn't have printed off fast track ticket and making sure that I wasn't wangling more fast tickets out of them.

I've got my confirmation emails printed off for checking in tomorrow and I've already written across it underneath the details in big letters "Don't forget ERT Fast track tickets"

You will only be given 1 fast track ticket between the number of people that it has printed on it. Not great if you and your family wants to do different rides at the same time. These are valid for the two days of your visit, so even if they ticked off Oblivion for example on the Saturday, you can still use the same fast track for the next day on Oblivion. To be honest, the main queues were walk on's first thing in the morning, so the staff never bothered ticking mine.
 
I don't get why the Fastracks for hotel guests cannot be valid till say, 3pm onwards. Or even the whole day (like it used to be when Fastrack was a standard hotel perk).

The issue I found last weekend with limiting it to 12pm, you get all hotel guests using the Fastrack queues, which results in the Fastrack queues being just as long as the main queue (if not just a little shorter than the main queue), far from getting on the ride quicker. Plus with rides typically being quieter in the morning, rides like Nemesis were walk on so the Fastrack queue was closed. Which kind of defeats the object of the perk.
 
Over the scarefest (6 days in total) I lost count how many people turned up early at the turnstiles expecting ERT (they said that at the time of making their booking that the website said that ERT was included in their resort say) and they had no idea about the two hour fast track, so they didn't bring their booking confirmation or fast track voucher :rolleyes:

I also saw over the scarefest that some people just showed the ride ops the email on their phones to gain fast track entry.

Roy :)

Now off to bed to get a good night sleep, look's like I've got an early morning, 4 hour drive and a fun packed weekend coming up :)
 
WELL DONE AT!! I see they are now only accepting pre booked tickets into park on website. So if you live nearby DONT JUST TURN UP!!! Merlin don't want your money! They cancel Friday night and now don't want your business on Saturday night! I bet other organised firework displays wont turn you away!! Poor show AT and Merlin. Don't complain if profits are not what you expected, if your turning custom away!!! Remember some schools were off school yesterday so kids would have liked to go to AT yesterday and seen fireworks last night. Instead my wife and I spent best part of £ 80 taking kids to cinema, snacks and tea (That money could have been Alton's to add to profits not Odeons!!!)
 
themeparkfan said:
WELL DONE AT!! I see they are now only accepting pre booked tickets into park on website. So if you live nearby DONT JUST TURN UP!!! Merlin don't want your money! They cancel Friday night and now don't want your business on Saturday night! I bet other organised firework displays wont turn you away!! Poor show AT and Merlin. Don't complain if profits are not what you expected, if your turning custom away!!! Remember some schools were off school yesterday so kids would have liked to go to AT yesterday and seen fireworks last night. Instead my wife and I spent best part of £ 80 taking kids to cinema, snacks and tea (That money could have been Alton's to add to profits not Odeons!!!)
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They won't have closed the gates for the sake of it. They can't physically, safely, get any more guests in to the park. This was expected for today based on the amount of pre-bookings.

What surprises me (or doesn't... really) is that lots of food outlets are currently CLOSED! Including the likes of pasties etc. in the Dark Forest. Woodcutters had/has a queue bending round towards where the ice cream van usually is! Tomorrow shouldn't be as bad, and I don't expect them to reach capacity, however it will still be heaving.
 
According to the ridetimes.co.uk site ALL the rides are now closed bar two but it's only 5 o'clock.
 
StrictlyAl said:
According to the ridetimes.co.uk site ALL the rides are now closed bar two but it's only 5 o'clock.
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All the rides listed as closed are within the fireworks landing zones. If the queue for Smiler, for example, is 90 mins, and they want the area cleared by 6:30, they will have closed the queue at 5:00. :)
 
Well they could have opened yesterday to allow for more customers and more takings!! POOR ORGANISATION!! Esp if what you say about food courts is true too. Don't AT or Merlin want to make money??? Perhaps Shareholders need to ask questions and AGM;)
 
themeparkfan said:
Well they could have opened yesterday to allow for more customers and more takings!! POOR ORGANISATION!! Esp if what you say about food courts is true too. Don't AT or Merlin want to make money??? Perhaps Shareholders need to ask questions and AGM;)
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They would likely have hit capacity anyway, even if they did have a show on last night.
 
Im just making the point that AT better not make any comments on poor trading results or a tough year if they cant cater for the customer and their needs!! How much is a hotel room tonight? £400? How many rooms they got? 100s Just think how much they could have made if they had those bookings last night too? I just wont belive their sob stories of reduced takings!! its their own doing!!
 
themeparkfan said:
So even more profit!!
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I don't think that they really would have made much more profit (or any really) if they had extended the event.. I can imagine it's extremely expensive to run the fireworks weekend and gate figures yesterday probably wouldn't be anywhere near capacity. Whereas today I would say it was expected.

Also there is clearly a reason they've had to cut the Friday this year and I don't think they'd have taken the decision lightly as it's always been a popular event for towers.
 
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