Ride Access Pass and Disabled Access - 2026 Discussion

[imanautie]

I fear you are mistaking a suggested adjustment for a mandatory one.

Nimbus provides a menu of potential adjustments that a venue could offer for that symbol. It does not dictate that every venue must offer all of them. "A virtual queue" is listed as an option, yes, but so is "a quieter entrance" or "avoiding congestion".

Merlin's argument (and I suspect their legal defence) relies on two points; the environment and the reasonableness test.

A theme park is, by definition, a crowd. Even if you use a virtual queue, you are still surrounded by 20,000 people. You still have to navigate the crowded pathways, the crowded merge points and the crowded baggage holds. If a guest truly cannot handle crowds, Merlin is arguing that a queue bypass system doesn't actually solve the fundamental environmental issue of being at Alton Towers on a Saturday in October.

If providing a virtual queue to everyone with the Crowds symbol results in the collapse of the park's operations (as we have seen with the 90 minute RAP queues and unobtainable reservations), it ceases to be a reasonable adjustment. It becomes an operational burden that disadvantages all other guests.

If we look at Nimbus' definition closely: "This indicates that standing isn't necessarily the issue, but the environment of the queue is."

If standing isn't the issue, then physically waiting isn't the barrier. The barrier is the congestion. Merlin sells a product that avoids congestion: Fastrack.

By narrowing the RAP criteria to strictly physical / medical necessity, they are effectively saying: "If you physically cannot wait, we will help you. If you find waiting distressing but are physically capable of it, we have Quiet Rooms, or you are welcome to purchase the premium service designed to skip the line."

It is a brutal interpretation, but it is logically consistent with a business trying to reduce an alleged 30% user base down to a manageable 5%.

Where's this 30% figure come from? Does not line up with the known (I'm not the only person who knows how to see the numbers) capacity for rap Vs day tickets.

 

[John]

The number presumably comes from before there was a cap on the number of people using RAP.

I believe the guy currently trying to deal with the issue through the courts claimed Merlin provided a figure of 30% of their guests using RAP before the cap

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

Where's this 30% figure come from? Does not line up with the known (I'm not the only person who knows how to see the numbers) capacity for rap Vs day tickets.

The alleged 30% figure I referenced (I never stated it as fact and am highly critical of the figure) comes from Christian Jarvis' efforts to reform ride accessibility all over the world, although mostly at Merlin parks, in not only his image but his naming rights too... Though the less said about his shady antics the better.

However, I am absolutely fascinated by your assertion that you "know how to see the numbers".

Unless you have a login for Merlin's internal reporting dashboards or their Accesso backend, I assume you are inferring this data from scraping the availability on the pre book portal?

If that is the case, you are measuring the Cap, not the Demand or the Prevalence.

You are seeing the arbitrary limit Merlin has placed on bookings to stop the system collapsing. You are not seeing the total number of people who hold a pass, the number of people who are eligible but couldn't book, or the actual throughput impact on the day.

Confusing the number of available slots with the number of eligible users is precisely why we are in this mess. Please, do enlighten us on your methodology. I do love a good spreadsheet.

 

[imanautie]

The alleged 30% figure I referenced (I never stated it as fact and am highly critical of the figure) comes from Christian Jarvis' efforts to reform ride accessibility all over the world, although mostly at Merlin parks, in not only his image but his naming rights too... Though the less said about his shady antics the better.

However, I am absolutely fascinated by your assertion that you "know how to see the numbers".

Unless you have a login for Merlin's internal reporting dashboards or their Accesso backend, I assume you are inferring this data from scraping the availability on the pre book portal?

If that is the case, you are measuring the Cap, not the Demand or the Prevalence.

You are seeing the arbitrary limit Merlin has placed on bookings to stop the system collapsing. You are not seeing the total number of people who hold a pass, the number of people who are eligible but couldn't book, or the actual throughput impact on the day.

Confusing the number of available slots with the number of eligible users is precisely why we are in this mess. Please, do enlighten us on your methodology. I do love a good spreadsheet.

Yep it's the cap I keep eyes on, be a much bigger problem if the total passholders number was public!

Not an exact measurement I know,but useful to at least compare last year to what merlin are saying

 

[Ash]

I’ve said it on this topic before but in 2006 on Nemesis you would see, based on what I experienced, around 50 people a day at most on a busy using whatever the RAP system was back then.

This number is now at 100s of not 1000s a day.

The reasons, rights and wrongs of that can be debated till the cows come home. But that’s my experience for what it’s worth (before the bird says anything)

That situation replicated across an entire park is not sustainable. A line always has to be drawn somewhere. As it’s has become more accessible this has increased the pool of people it is open, then eventually with the same ride capacity’s and trying to maintain a level of access to such a wide group, something had to give.

And this was done restricting access before the turnstile via the booking system. This I suspect was to try and the reduce the need to restrict the pool of people. To which they got slaughtered, maybe the execution was bad, but what choice did they have.

As someone who doesn’t use the service, observationally it seemed to have had the desired effect.

Merlin, for reasons known only to them are now looking at restricting the pool of people, which “may” open up overall capacity.

It was glaringly obvious the current situation could not continue. Same ride capacity, ever increasing pool of people, same RAP capacity, just doesn’t work.

Add to this a minority abusing the system, early block bookings, large parties and paper passes being manipulated, I’m afraid you reap what you sow.

As you will all know, I’m first to jump on Merlin, but on this I genuinely think they are caught between a rock and a hard place. Not everyone can get their own way, but dealing with people’s “entitlements” in this day and age is extremely difficult.

Good luck to them.