Ride Access Pass and Disabled Access - 2026 Discussion

[GooseOnTheLoose]

I have no objection to virtual queuing being extended to all guests, I already said I thought that this was a good solution to the problem and neutralised the whole issue. When we went to Euro Disney 13 years ago they had a form of virtual queuing for their RAP guests and it worked fine. What you are referring to is abuse of the RAP system by people in the park, whereas what Merlin have introduced is a widescale reduction in people able to access RAP in the first place which is a totally different issue....

Virtual queuing for all sounds like a really good solution on paper, but in reality it ignores the fundamental physics of theme park design.

Queue lines are not just waiting areas, they are reservoirs. They act as sponges which soak up thousands of guests at any given moment, keeping them off the pathways and out of the circulation areas.

If you have 25,000 people at Alton Towers, and you implement a 100% virtual queuing system, you suddenly have 25,000 people standing on the pathways, trying to get into restaurants, or looking for a bench.

Alton Towers (or really any park in the UK) simply don't have the infrastructure to support that. The pathways are narrow garden trails. The retail and food and beverage capacity is woefully insufficient to absorb that many free roaming guests (especially given the current speed of Aramark's service). You would trade standing in a queue in a cattle pen for a crush loaded gridlock on the paths where you physically can't move to get to a toilet.

Disney and Universal can dabble with this because they build massive thoroughfares, huge retail emporiums and high capacity sit down restaurants specifically designed to hold crowds. Even then, they still haven't gone fully VQ. UK parks are essentially rides bolted onto fields with narrow connecting paths.

If you remove the physical queues, the park infrastructure collapses. It doesn't neutralise the issue, unfortunately, it just moves the misery from behind a fence to the path in front of it.

 

[Thameslink Rail]

What Merlin has neglected in recent years that would help is having attractions that don't involve queuing such as shows and walkthroughs. The pirate show in Mutiny Bay and the various theatre shows were excellent crowd soakers and broke up the monotony of queue, ride, queue, ride. We still have shows in CBeebies Land but they've mostly gone in the rest of the park.

 

[Hid]

What Merlin has neglected in recent years that would help is having attractions that don't involve queuing such as shows and walkthroughs. The pirate show in Mutiny Bay and the various theatre shows were excellent crowd soakers and broke up the monotony of queue, ride, queue, ride. We still have shows in CBeebies Land but they've mostly gone in the rest of the park.

I think Towers is the biggest offender of lack of shows throughout the park. Chessington and Legoland do have show venues still in use and Thorpe has a new one on the way. But Towers has the theatre just sat there and no main stage, I used to think fountain square was the best place for the stage to go rather than the lawns

 

[Burbs]

Virtual queuing for all sounds like a really good solution on paper, but in reality it ignores the fundamental physics of theme park design.

Queue lines are not just waiting areas, they are reservoirs. They act as sponges which soak up thousands of guests at any given moment, keeping them off the pathways and out of the circulation areas.

If you have 25,000 people at Alton Towers, and you implement a 100% virtual queuing system, you suddenly have 25,000 people standing on the pathways, trying to get into restaurants, or looking for a bench.

Alton Towers (or really any park in the UK) simply don't have the infrastructure to support that. The pathways are narrow garden trails. The retail and food and beverage capacity is woefully insufficient to absorb that many free roaming guests (especially given the current speed of Aramark's service). You would trade standing in a queue in a cattle pen for a crush loaded gridlock on the paths where you physically can't move to get to a toilet.

Disney and Universal can dabble with this because they build massive thoroughfares, huge retail emporiums and high capacity sit down restaurants specifically designed to hold crowds. Even then, they still haven't gone fully VQ. UK parks are essentially rides bolted onto fields with narrow connecting paths.

If you remove the physical queues, the park infrastructure collapses. It doesn't neutralise the issue, unfortunately, it just moves the misery from behind a fence to the path in front of it.

Totally. Mandatory virtual queueing was experienced at Walibi Holland during COVID and was absolutely disastrous. The park wasn’t even all that busy (finding somewhere to sit and/or eat was generally fine) but the queues themselves were far longer than they otherwise would have been. For instance Untamed had a 200 minute virtual queue on 2 trains. The year before I never waited more than 80 on 1 train. It also meant that the filler rides which weren’t on the VQ system had ludicrous waits too.

See also the water “coaster” slide at Volcano Bay which used to frequently gather 4+ hour virtual queues.

 

[John]

Part of the problem at WH was akin to a common complaint about RAP abuse in that people could go on smaller rides whilst virtually queuing for the major ones, this resulted in minor rides suddenly having hour queues but also meant longer VQs for the main rides than if every ride utilised a VQ. It's possible it might have worked a little better if they'd gone further and implemented it for EVERY ride. That said, the issue of displacing people out of the queues would be a problem even if you had a truly effective VQ system. Towers and Chessington arguably have enough space to just about get away with it, Thorpe absolutely doesn't.

 

[Matt N]

I agree vastly with what Goose and others have said about virtual queueing. The fact that Volcano Bay, which is a) a waterpark, and thus packed with more non-queue entertainment and b) specifically designed with virtual queueing in mind has recently scrapped it should be indicative of its flaws in practice. If put in place at Alton Towers tomorrow, it would be an unmitigated disaster, even if would ostensibly be more “inclusive” by making everyone suffer from the same problems.

The other aspect which I haven’t seen mentioned is that normal queueing allows for a throughput buffer. If the ride breaks down or throughput fluctuates, it doesn’t really matter. For virtual queueing or anything involving timeslot allocation to work properly, though, a fixed throughput is assumed. For the concept to work as intended, that throughput must stay the same.

But in reality, this almost never happens. Rides break down. Guests faff on the platform. Platform staff themselves vary in speed. Any dip in throughput results in your virtual queue simply becoming a virtual queue to join a standby queue rather than the intended virtual queue to seamlessly board a ride. From having visited Volcano Bay, I remember some rides frequently had standby queues of up to 30 minutes even after having waited in the virtual queue.

 

[Dave]

We've never done that, and to assume that all RAP users are using it in that way is just wrong. I have no objection to virtual queuing being extended to all guests, I already said I thought that this was a good solution to the problem and neutralised the whole issue. When we went to Euro Disney 13 years ago they had a form of virtual queuing for their RAP guests and it worked fine. What you are referring to is abuse of the RAP system by people in the park, whereas what Merlin have introduced is a widescale reduction in people able to access RAP in the first place which is a totally different issue....

I don’t think anyone thinks all users are abusing RAP, I don’t think the majority of RAP users abuse it, but a sizeable minority do, and sadly they are also quite vocal about it (you don’t have a to dig deep into social media to find people advising on how to get RAP).

Sadly virtual queue for all works mathematically but not practically. Maybe AI will crack it before it destroys the world but at the moment it’s a non-starter.

 

[SuperMuscleMan]

Hi all, long time lurker, first time poster.

I have to say I'm quite heartbroken by the changes to RAP. I've been using RAP - and its past equivalents - since the mid 2000s, and as a visually impaired person it's been an essential part of me accessing a place that I've been obsessed with since I was 11 years old. I can't manage stairs in standard queue lines - I've tried, and being pushed on the Nemesis queue line steps (even while using my white cane) made me really unsafe in that environment. Part of my visual impairment is that I have no depth perception and it takes me a long time to navigate steps and other physical barriers, as well as changes in lighting and dark queue lines being difficult (which is a common feature of many of the standard queue lines at Alton Towers). I use the non-ambulant access on rides like The Smiler, where I can't manage in the ambulant RAP or standard queues due to strobe lights and the crowded stairs. But my Nimbus card has now put me under the category of 'difficulty with crowds', so I'm no longer eligible for RAP.

So much of the discourse around the changes has focused on neurodivergence, but it feels like those of us who are blind or partially sighted aren't being recognised as affected by this too. I've often felt like visual impairment gets forgotten when people talk about access, and it feels like Merlin have forgotten about us too.

I feel annoyed for you mate. To me your condition is a physical one and your card should be looked into again. You have physical restrictions that could cause injury to you or others and that's just not right.

I know of people myself that abuse the system. I agree it needs changing. My friends that have autism seem happy to abuse the system, and if they do then I'm sure others do

I think it's good to split between physical and crowd's but some people really need to be evaluated correctly. It's less like Alton's fault but that by the origination that categories you.

With all this mobile phone technology I'm also surprised this is all so manual on the day and an inclusive app should be designed that could include RAP and other systems, tips and support to the variety of users that need them.

 

[Bert2theSpark]

Maybe AI will crack it before it destroys the world but at the moment it’s a non-starter.

AI will not ‘crack’ what is simply a human problem, it does not come up with original thoughts, only pattern recognition that can mimic and accelerate existing logic patterns within design parameters set by humans.

Any ‘solution’ (or most likely least worst option) will involve recognition of the humanity of it’s users, both the well-intentioned and ill-intentioned ones and the subjectivity of when it is needed and when it isn’t.

 

[NuttySquirrel]

It makes me wonder how they went about reviewing all past applications in light of this change, and whether there are other people who've not been given the correct symbols.

I had an access card for a while, which I applied for when my endometriosis pain was so bad I couldn't stand for more than about 15 minutes at a time. I was given the Queueing symbol on the Access Card - which now that the symbols have been split out has been converted to 'Difficulty with Crowds'. This is just plain wrong, it should have been 'Difficulty Standing'. I could reapply for the correct symbol, but fortunately I'm not in as much pain now as I was a few years ago, and in recent times I couldn't even get a slot to use it anyway so I will probably not bother trying to get it changed. But if it is an accommodation you need I would definitely appeal - I cannot see how a VI person could safely navigate any of AT's queues so should by default receive the 'level access' symbol.