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Ride Access Pass and Disabled Access - 2024 Discussion

bigal_06 said:
I am a programmer and I can see the figures in the background from the website.

Take Alton Towers for 1st May for example - this is what I can see:
"available": "804",
"capacity": "860",
"used": "56"

All the parks have variations probably based on expected numbers and probably staffing reflects this but Legoland is the one that varies the capacity so much. Perhaps because Legoland is aimed at kids more so than the other parks so not as busy during school days.
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Interesting!

Then I think we can potentially extrapolate from that it refers to total RAP numbers including accompanying guests considering you have to enter that prior to booking?

Although I will note AT were not enforcing that aspect on our visit.

Presumably there's no separation between Red and Yellow Access numbers on the figures you can see?

860 still seems very high (especially when most of the rides aren’t working).

GooseOnTheLoose said:
Least amount of attractions, especially when you remove Cbeebies.
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CWOA lists 34 whilst AT lists 39. I'm not sure why you'd removed Cbeebies from the equation, it has attractions with queues (some quite lengthy) just as CWOA has various children's attractions.

Both parks currently have attractions closed so perhaps that is being taken into account but seems unlikely.

Also general note to everyone, AT and CWOA have a fair amount of "sold out" RAP dates so looks like the days of spontaneous visits are mostly over :(
 
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Bowser said:
CWOA lists 34 whilst AT lists 39. I'm not sure why you'd removed Cbeebies from the equation
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For the overall demographic appeal of the park. Cbeebies has a high ratio of available attractions to age appropriate guests to the rest of the park.

I'm willing to wager that there are more RAP guests, on average, who make use of the RAP queues for the rest of the attractions in the park and that Alton's own metrics point toward this. Taking that into consideration, there are fewer appropriate attractions for the majority of RAP users at Alton Towers than other the other parks, so they have less RAP availability.
 
Alphe86 said:
Does feel like a large percentage of RAP users are younger then older. See the insanity of Thirteen or WM’s Rap queue every day last year.
And you don’t get it so much in CBeebies because it rare to get a young diagnosis for most things
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Two other considerations might be:

1. The older you are with a disability the less likely you are to visit a theme park (or at least go on as many rides).

2. I think it's also a reflection on the demographics of the park. Overall AT appeals to a slightly older family crowd and CBeebies alone isn't enough to justify the cost of a visit for many.

Also from a personal perspective we weren't able to take our son to a theme park till he was around 8 (though he was diagnosed age 2). It's a difficult day out and to spend potentially hundreds of pounds when you might have to immediately leave is probably something many parents in similar situations are cautious of.
 
bigal_06 said:
Doing some digging and here are the current RAP capacities for each park.

Alton Towers - 860
Thorpe Park - 946
Chessington - 960
Legoland - Varies based on dates - For example 1St April 750, 2nd April 787, 6th April 825, 15th April 637, 16th April 225.

Unclear on what the capacity means as in that's how many slots are available or how many people using RAP in total?
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That’s a lot of people fighting over a few back rows…..

Needs to be capped further to enhance the experience for everyone.
 
If you lower the cap it becomes a lot of people fighting for limited tickets, availability is already an issue at certain times. There's no easy fix here.
 
John said:
If you lower the cap it becomes a lot of people fighting for limited tickets, availability is already an issue at certain times. There's no easy fix here.
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I was against it previously but after seeing the new reality I’d be in favour of only 1 accompanying guest (potentially 2 for Red Access considering they require a carer).

Cap remains the same and you’ve reduced numbers by around 50%. Perhaps only for the busiest rides.

Of course even then the issue becomes staff enforcement.
 
It kind of defeats the purpose of the RAP if you're allowing that many users in that they end up having to queue a substantial amount of time anyway.

Any solution will inevitably disappoint some people, but it really isn't good for anyone (particularly those with more severe disabilities), in it's current form.
 
Best solution is to improve the number of non-ride attractions across the parks.

More shows and the like. Then spreads everyone further.

I'd imagine the caps are inclusive of the entire group as when booking it asks for your party size.
 
Bowser said:
Interesting!

Then I think we can potentially extrapolate from that it refers to total RAP numbers including accompanying guests considering you have to enter that prior to booking?

Although I will note AT were not enforcing that aspect on our visit.

Presumably there's no separation between Red and Yellow Access numbers on the figures you can see?

860 still seems very high (especially when most of the rides aren’t working).



CWOA lists 34 whilst AT lists 39. I'm not sure why you'd removed Cbeebies from the equation, it has attractions with queues (some quite lengthy) just as CWOA has various children's attractions.

Both parks currently have attractions closed so perhaps that is being taken into account but seems unlikely.

Also general note to everyone, AT and CWOA have a fair amount of "sold out" RAP dates so looks like the days of spontaneous visits are mostly over :(
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It's total number of tickets. Aka if you select 4 on the form it counts 4.

Edit: shared between all rap.
 
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I must admit, I am quite surprised when reading about other people's RAP experiences, especially when it comes to queue times. Using Alton Towers for an example, as it is far for us we generally only visit twice a year for a few days at a time and that will be during one of the school holidays, and in all the years we have been using RAP I don't think we have experienced a queue longer than the main queue and our overall experience has been pretty good. Worst ride queue is probably RMT, maybe half hour or so but the main queue at those times is out of the entrance. Admittedly we can't do the 1.4 rides but generally the worst queue we have each day is for picking up the time cards.

It's interesting to hear other people experiences, as I said, we don't visit AT a lot but we do visit the other parks a lot and generally our RAP experiences with a few exceptions, have been fine.
 
TPick said:
in all the years we have been using RAP I don't think we have experienced a queue longer than the main queue
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I don't recall anyone saying they had experienced this either tbf. The issue has generally been that the RAP wait times in themselves have been excessively long and that's in contrast to the purpose of RAP for people unable to do that for extended periods.

WickerMan and Thirteen seem to be two of the worst culprits for this of the sub 1.4m rides so perhaps you have avoided them?

Compare this to Legoland where we have very rarely waited more than 10 minutes for access to a ride and the wait time is afterwards where you can sit etc.... as intended.
 
Bowser said:
I don't recall anyone saying they had experienced this either tb
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Ah, my bad, I thought I had read that there had been reports of RAP queues being longer than main queues.

We do ride Wickerman and Thirteen. Longest we have had for Wickerman has probably been back to around level with the shop entrance, and for Thirteen maybe three quarters of the way down the ramp. Maybe we have just been fairly lucky. RMT has by far the worst queue.

I'll agree that Legoland and Chessington are probably a better experience for RAP.
 
TPick said:
Ah, my bad, I thought I had read that there had been reports of RAP queues being longer than main queues.

We do ride Wickerman and Thirteen. Longest we have had for Wickerman has probably been back to around level with the shop entrance, and for Thirteen maybe three quarters of the way down the ramp. Maybe we have just been fairly lucky. RMT has by far the worst queue.

I'll agree that Legoland and Chessington are probably a better experience for RAP.
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Last weekend WickerMan was back as far as the main entrance gate and Thirteen was down past the photo cabin. They are the worst I’ve seen them but equally I’ve never seen them as “good” as you describe.

WickerMan does tend to move quite regularly at least plus the views of the ride make it a bit more tolerable.
 
From the Alton Towers Accessibility Facebook Group...

IMG-20240330-WA0019.jpg

IMG-20240330-WA0018.jpg

IMG-20240330-WA0013.jpg

Absolutely disgusting that Towers are bending to demands and giving people RAP who not only don't have a pre-book but don't even have a photocard! 🤬🤦‍♂️

No wonder the RAP queues are long lol. If they keep doing this then people will always chance it because they know Towers are so lenient.

On the brighter side, the suggestion in the middle screenshot of putting benches in the RAP queues is an excellent idea, although I don't think most RAP queues are wide enough.
 
They said they would be handing them out up to and including yesterday due to the bad way it was communicated.
The next 2 weeks will be the litmus test
 
I guess with the queue being so insane it was a case of bend over (since they’ve mostly bent over anyway) and keep the queue moving to stop escalations slowing things down
 
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