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Ride Access Pass and Disabled Access - 2024 Discussion

Vicki said:
Not specifically RAP but for any of you who use mobility aids or have obvious conditions, have you ever had a situation like this occur on park?

Was walking through AT yesterday with my white cane, and was suddenly accosted by a child running up and getting VERY close to me, hand outstretched towards my cane, shouting "What's that?! What's that?!" repeatedly.

I am an introvert and am actually a bit self conscious about needing to use a cane, so this absolutely floored me and I just kept walking in complete silence trying to get away. The parent of the child finally caught up to them, and got them away from me, apologising and starting to explain what a cane is for, but good grief it really rattled me, and the friends I was with.
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My son has an obvious condition so we'll typically get people staring at or questioning his behaviour. He also wears an iPhone for communication so understandably other children tend to be curious about that!

RAP queues are in a way a nice refuge from daily life as you're surrounded by people who are more aware and understanding.

Hope your experience wasn't too upsetting and agree with @Shaggy_Dog_ that it perhaps came from a place of innocent curiosity.
 
Shaggy_Dog_ said:
I definitely can see how it would have been unsettling for you if you feel a little self-conscious about using your cane but perhaps the child may have been neurodivergent and was genuinely just asking what the cane was for and just inadvertently overstepped the boundaries somewhat?
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Yep 100% agree with you, and due to many, many friends being neurodivergent that was actually my first thought. I think it threw me as every other similar experience I've had has been with people at a distance where I've just overheard the questioning etc. I'm not used to people running up to me :D

Gotta love curious kids - although I think I'll skip my friend's suggestion of wrapping fairy lights round my cane for Scarefest as I suspect that'd be like a beacon for them :D

Getting back to the proper topic, I would absolutely love RAP to go digital at all parks - I was in Orlando in 2022 and Disney have a system that, although very, very heavily used (they're not allowed to ask for proof of disability, so a lot of abuse happens, sadly) it worked well. Similar to Merlin, but all done through their app: select your ride, it tells you what time to go back, and then you enter via their equivalent of the Fast Track entrance, so no one knows you're using the disability service apart from the host as you scan in. Scanners at the entrance to every queue, so no cheating the system and trying to get on earlier than your time. No dealing with paper time cards, it's (in my opinion anyway) really good.
 
Just watching TPWW vlog from the quieter Sunday and visually the RAP lines look as long as ever. Obviously most of the rides were running at lower capacity and that day may have also been partly a victim of the booking fiasco.
 
We use RAP for our son and we were part of the many it would seem that received no communication at all regarding the changes. We found out by chance a couple of weeks ago but it was way to late to get a slot for the Chessington passholder day that we had booked to go to. We took a punt and visited anyway as it was easier to go and hope that the park wasn't too busy than deal with the fallout of telling someone that doesn't understand that we aren't going. We went to Guest Services when we arrived to see if anything could be done (Guest Services were great to be fair) and they said we could join a waiting list for cancelled slots and that we would receive an email if any freed up. Didn't know this was a thing so signed up and to our surprise at around 2:30pm we did receive an email saying a slot had freed up and to visit Guest Services. Interestingly a few people came to Guest Services at the same time with the same email, so not sure how that system works but maybe they bulk email at various times of the day, or once a day?

It felt like half the rides were closed which is par for the course on a passholder day, but from what we saw looking at the RAP queues they didn't seem any noticeably shorter than a normal day - maybe this was because of ride availability as things like Tomb Blaster, Tiger Rock and Dragons Fury were not running. One thing we did notice is that once we received our RAP slot the RAP queues did seem to get longer, certainly when we went to Mandrill Mahem the RAP queue was the longest I have seen it. May have been a coincidence but it looked like all those that got a slot later in the day all headed to the bigger rides.

Will just have to see how it pans out over the season I suppose, their communication and general handling of this has been poor, and I'll be honest I feel a bit for the Guest Services guys that have to deal with the fall out at the parks. We have booked to visit Chessington again this weekend and noticed fairly early this week that all the RAP slots had gone for this weekend - looks like spontaneous visits may be more difficult this year.

One question regarding RAP at a different park, does anyone know if they will have a member of staff at the entrance to Curse at Alton Manor? I can't stand using the RAP queue for that ride as it just looks like you are pushing in. It's very uncomfortable.
 
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TPick said:
One question regarding RAP at a different park, does anyone know if they will have a member of staff at the entrance to Curse at Alton Manor? I can't stand using the RAP queue for that ride as it just looks like you are pushing in. It's very uncomfortable.
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Curse has a merge host now (due to Fastrack) so RAP don't have to force their way onto the porch themselves anymore. Much easier for us RAP now. :)
 
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Skyscraper said:
Curse has a merge host now (due to Fastrack) so RAP don't have to force their way onto the porch themselves anymore. Much easier for us RAP now. :)
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I had a bad experience here on our last visit. There was no queue outside The Curse but our RAP had a long time on it following WickerMan so I asked if we could still use the entrance to save my son having to walk the lengthy queue and they wouldn’t allow it 🤯
 
Bowser said:
I had a bad experience here on our last visit. There was no queue outside The Curse but our RAP had a long time on it following WickerMan so I asked if we could still use the entrance to save my son having to walk the lengthy queue and they wouldn’t allow it 🤯
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Good to see they're enforcing the RAP timeouts though. Pretty sure one of the reasons the RAP queues have got so big is because staff are under-timing.
 
Timing was a bit hit and miss today. First ride on Nemmie didn't get signed off but then rest of day tended to be on point give or take 5 minutes. Guy on Alty Mans didn't even check either.

Good to see. Shame we couldn't do Parent Swap though as meant always one of the group missed out on whatever we were riding due to babysitting duties.
 
Sadly today was our worst ever visit to Alton Towers.

In terms of the RAP, the queues were the longest i have ever seen.

Obviously there are several potential caveats to this:

1. Ride availability was abysmal for most of the day so naturally the only operating rides were going to be oversubscribed.

2. Possibly the numbers cap was not in place due to the poor implementation and communication of it going live months after tickets had already been purchased (see last weekend).

Additionally:

- On two occasions i witnessed people skipping the RAP line.

- For the brief period that Thirteen opened, both the fast track and RAP queues were so long that they far exceeded the initial merge deviation, meaning dozes of people were unwittingly in the wrong queue.

- The path leading from WickerMan to The Curse via the rapids was gated shut, meaning we had to travel by one of the much longer routes. This on top of the defunct SkyRide was a brutal blow to accessibility.

From being hopeful that the changes to RAP would lead to a better functioning system, i now have to accept that it is completely broken and Alton Towers is no longer accessible to us as a family unless we take our son out of school to visit.

Also i notice that after every visit to Chessington or Legoland they email to ask how our RAP experience was and AT have not...
 
Bowser said:
Sadly today was our worst ever visit to Alton Towers.

In terms of the RAP, the queues were the longest i have ever seen.

Obviously there are several potential caveats to this:

1. Ride availability was abysmal for most of the day so naturally the only operating rides were going to be oversubscribed.

2. Possibly the numbers cap was not in place due to the poor implementation and communication of it going live months after tickets had already been purchased (see last weekend).

Additionally:

- On two occasions i witnessed people skipping the RAP line.

- For the brief period that Thirteen opened, both the fast track and RAP queues were so long that they far exceeded the initial merge deviation, meaning dozes of people were unwittingly in the wrong queue.

- The path leading from WickerMan to The Curse via the rapids was gated shut, meaning we had to travel by one of the much longer routes. This on top of the defunct SkyRide was a brutal blow to accessibility.

From being hopeful that the changes to RAP would lead to a better functioning system, i now have to accept that it is completely broken and Alton Towers is no longer accessible to us as a family unless we take our son out of school to visit.

Also i notice that after every visit to Chessington or Legoland they email to ask how our RAP experience was and AT have not...
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I reckon number 1 & 2 of your points will probably explain 'most' of your issues today. Give it a few weeks and hopefully the RAP situation will be better. I'm amongst the most cynical people around when it comes to AT, but I think we need to let this backlog of people who had been caught out by the early RAP problems work its way through first. But yeah, not a great look.
 
BarryZola said:
I reckon number 1 & 2 of your points will probably explain 'most' of your issues today. Give it a few weeks and hopefully the RAP situation will be better. I'm amongst the most cynical people around when it comes to AT, but I think we need to let this backlog of people who had been caught out by the early RAP problems work its way through first. But yeah, not a great look.
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I'll certainly keep an eye on the reports of others but unfortunately we don't have the luxury of giving them a few weeks as it's not a regular trip for us and not something i want to put my son through again anytime soon. A day at a theme park ending with everyone feeling deflated and disappointed is very sad. It's one of the few family activities we get to do so i suppose i feel cheated.
 
Bowser said:
I'll certainly keep an eye on the reports of others but unfortunately we don't have the luxury of giving them a few weeks as it's not a regular trip for us and not something i want to put my son through again anytime soon. A day at a theme park ending with everyone feeling deflated and disappointed is very sad. It's one of the few family activities we get to do so i suppose i feel cheated.
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Yeah, I get that. I can't argue against it. You've paid good money too, as everyone would have. I'd be annoyed myself. You'll be aware that they've offered free tickets for todays customers to come back for free another day though. It's not ideal, I know. Maybe you can't get back later on this year, I get it. Basically, they should just get as many rides working as possible, then when it gets windy there will be enough other rides to take up the slack.
 
BarryZola said:
Yeah, I get that. I can't argue against it. You've paid good money too, as everyone would have. I'd be annoyed myself. You'll be aware that they've offered free tickets for todays customers to come back for free another day though. It's not ideal, I know. Maybe you can't get back later on this year, I get it. Basically, they should just get as many rides working as possible, then when it gets windy there will be enough other rides to take up the slack.
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It certainly highlighted how weather vulnerable they are. Think i've taken for granted Legoland's offering in comparison, especially in the winter.

Oh and side-note, the toilets at AT are truly atrocious. Are there no designated disabled toilets?
 
Bowser said:
It certainly highlighted how weather vulnerable they are. Think i've taken for granted Legoland's offering in comparison, especially in the winter.

Oh and side-note, the toilets at AT are truly atrocious. Are there no designated disabled toilets?
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I can't help you with the disabled toilets, but I'm sure someone else will be able to advise. Just on a general note, I thought and hoped that Towers was going to get off on a really good footing this year, but I've been slightly disappointed, even taking into account the backlog in RAP bookings. The opening day was very good, however.
 
Bowser said:
Oh and side-note, the toilets at AT are truly atrocious. Are there no designated disabled toilets?
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There are various dedicated disabled toilets in almost every toilet block, including changing places toilets in X-Sector, Towers St and behind Woodcutters.
 
Most are radar key operated though. But those can be purchased online. Definitely a disabled loo outside Dark Forest.

Do think with the shocking availability yesterday its hard to judge the success/failure of RAP. Friday was quiet for it on pretty much everything we did (though wheelchair queues always different and we didn't set foot into Dark Forest or X-Sector) even though were a few number getting RAP in the morning.

They were also being lenient to those who haven't pre-booked yet. Was expressly told it was the only time they'd be allowed to do so. I'd imagine if you weren't on the system or in any of the Facebook groups you could easily not know.
 
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