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Merlin Annual Pass

rob666 said:
I so wish all season passes were at least £1500.
The queues at the Towers would be so much shorter, again.
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How many years have Merlin been offering the "cheap" annual passes? Can see attendance numbers back to 2009 and they're pretty consistent (excluding Covid) but do they pre-date that?
 
Bowser said:
How many years have Merlin been offering the "cheap" annual passes? Can see attendance numbers back to 2009 and they're pretty consistent (excluding Covid) but do they pre-date that?
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Annual passes for all the Tussauds parks were around since 2003 at least as I had one back then. Used to be about £70 for the five/six (London Eye wasn't on it originally) Tussauds attractions but rose to around £120-150 when they added the Merlin attractions I think. £70 in 2003 is £122 in 2023, so the passes have gone up faster than inflation (but also now have more than five attractions).
Of course single day admission was a lot lower back then as well.

But generally I think the pass was always good value if you would make more than five visits a year. The biggest change after the pandemic was they removed the family discount, it used to be cheaper to buy three or more.
 
I think the biggest thing was Tussauds never really pushed the annual pass and it was quite exclusive to own one. When Merlin took over they really ramped up the marketing and now every man and their dog seems to own one.
 
Bowser said:
How many years have Merlin been offering the "cheap" annual passes? Can see attendance numbers back to 2009 and they're pretty consistent (excluding Covid) but do they pre-date that?
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Believe me, the longer queues and the end of off peak walk on days came with the push for season passes...
Then they reduced the prices for them and the queues got bigger.
Then they slowly doubled the price of fasttrack...and sorted!
 
Should've seen the writing on the wall when they did that "use fastrack queues in summer" offer in 2009 and suddenly the queueline was full.

Compare that to the heady days of early rider in Lost City at Thorpe when they just about filled Vortex.
 
Alsty said:
I think the biggest thing was Tussauds never really pushed the annual pass and it was quite exclusive to own one. When Merlin took over they really ramped up the marketing and now every man and their dog seems to own one.
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Could I point out my elderly, antisocial, three legged wonderdog doesn't have a season pass.
Good job with the skyride still shut.
 
But it has rarely been walk on though.
Haven't most of the queues been around the half hour mark all season?
I'm proud to say I seem to have broken my old ridetimes habit pretty much.
 
Walk-on days are not always the best imo.
I find the lack of queues, really whittles down how much time it takes to cover the whole park, so my luch-time to mid-afternoon, you find you've done everything, and are too knackered to want to stay because you've had no respite in the queues. Last time I was so tired, I just found myself on my way home by 3pm.
That being said, this was without the aid of Skyride, as it was down all season. If it had been running, I could easily have made it to closing.
 
Towers gets far fewer guests now than it did 10-15 years ago (3 million in 2010 has never been topped since, as far as I know) but it seems they might have evened out some of the peaks so that there's less difference between the busiest and quietest days. I'm not sure how
the proliferation of passholders would play into that though.
 
jon81uk said:
Annual passes for all the Tussauds parks were around since 2003 at least as I had one back then. Used to be about £70 for the five/six (London Eye wasn't on it originally) Tussauds attractions but rose to around £120-150 when they added the Merlin attractions I think.
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Even better than that, you could get the Tussauds Annual Pass using Tesco Clubcard vouchers, which were worth 4x when spent on rewards back then. That meant you could get an Annual Pass for only £20 in Tesco vouchers, practically giving it away for free! They were good years!
 
Johnny Rocket said:
Even better than that, you could get the Tussauds Annual Pass using Tesco Clubcard vouchers, which were worth 4x when spent on rewards back then. That meant you could get an Annual Pass for only £20 in Tesco vouchers, practically giving it away for free! They were good years!
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Yep, and there were times when big packs of loo roll or whatever would immediately give 200 points, meaning you could buy 10 packs and be sorted for a year's worth of both rollercoasters (and loo roll). The waits for statements were the only issue!
 
Presume everyone got the email from Merlin this morning, my interpretation of that is they are now capping passholder entry numbers regardless of the availability of general admission tickets?
 
Well they've put that caveat in there, yes. How they actually implement it is yet to be seen, as unless there has been a change to the systems then the pre-books are not linked directly to your pass at the turnstiles (at least not at Alton Towers). But having different allocations of different ticket types is similar to how they now operate hotel room rates.

I still think that if you're going to any of the parks on an off-peak day you'll be fine without a pre-book. But always safer to pre-book if the park is likely to be busier.
 
Rob said:
the pre-books are not linked directly to your pass at the turnstiles
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I've never tested this (and wouldn't as i only visit with my family and wouldn't take the risk) but assumed it was the case. It seems a massive glaring flaw in the system that surely they are aware of?
 
Don't see any real change with these T&Cs, they had already quietly moved on from the 2022 promises about access being possible as long as general tickets are on sale. Maybe it is now more formalised, although the 2022 statement remains on their website.

With regards to pre-booking not being linked. They will be aware of this, and maybe changes are on the horizon or possibly even going to appear this year.

Certainly if something is at capacity, or has high demand, they often do check. Madame Tussauds in London for example.
 
Tom said:
Don't see any real change with these T&Cs, they had already quietly moved on from the 2022 promises about access being possible as long as general tickets are on sale. Maybe it is now more formalised, although the 2022 statement remains on their website.
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I spoke to Merlin a few weeks ago when i was unable to book tickets to an attraction despite GA availability and they said:

...when Passholder tickets sell out, we will notify the attraction to see if it is possible to move 'paid' standard tickets over to Passholders slots. This is a manual process, so sometimes there is a delay in arranging this, and unfortunately it is not always possible - I do apologise if this was the case when you were trying to get booked in.

If this happens in the future please do get in touch with us and we will try to help get you booked in. We do take slightly longer to reply to emails, so if you are wanting to visit on the same or next couple of days, please do get in touch with us on Live Chat or by phone.

My interpretation of the new T&C is they will no longer be doing this?
 
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