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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

AshleeKel said:
Bar 360 has now become Fin's Bar & Grill. I quite liked Bar 360, and going from the typical Merlin style of rebranding and offering less, I'm worried that they'll have made the place worse. I'll try it out next time I go but I don't have high hopes.
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It had a bit of a refurbishment last season with the bar being moved to the side and the seating moved around, the menu also got changed then and wasn't as good as before, and not anywhere near like it used to be (used to be very similar to Woodcutters).
 
The menu last year actually became very similar to it's original menu as Glasshouse. It went woodcuttery and not great. Now it's back to being okay (remember it is a hotel restaurant now so it needs the variation that Glasshouse had).

However, this unit has had more changes and investment than probably any other F&B unit in merlin. Whenever Corner Coffee tries to beat it's record, it changes again.
 
It seems that, despite their best efforts to prevent people from wanting to visit, Thorpe Park are having to increase the prices at peak times for adults by 20%. Last year it was £49.99, but now it's £59.99! And yes, kids over 1 meter have to pay that too.

If this doesn't put people off, it will only be a matter of time before they start charging people to use the toilets and actually train staff to be as slow as possible, rather than the current system where they're trained and then left to go at whatever pace suits them.
 
Isn't that more than Towers charge?

The most stupid bit is the 1 meter price. So if you are between 1m and 1.4m you can barely ride anything but have to pay the same as everyone else? Madness!
 
The website states the 2015 gate price is £49.99, online tickets are £24.99 (if booked a few days in advance), which i think is same as last season. The £59.99 charge is for a 12 month Thorpe park season ticket.
 
Maelstrom said:
The website states the 2015 gate price is £49.99, online tickets are £24.99 (if booked a few days in advance), which i think is same as last season. The £59.99 charge is for a 12 month Thorpe park season ticket.
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£60 notes!!!

Plus it's busy so prob won't get on many rides, it's like there milking it before they have to compete with Paramount
 
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jon81uk said:
Basically, we want you to pay 25 off peak or 30 peak but we are addicted to giving out 2for1s and so we need to artificially inflate the gate price.
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This.

It is a horrible mess and they only have themselves to blame.

I recognise that 90%+ of guests book in advance - but it's the headline rate that people will notice and it is that which will cause people to simply say that Thorpe Park is a 'rip off'.

The fact that with a BOGOF Thorpe Park will now be £30.00 in itself is shocking. Entry was only £30.00 in full back in 2007.
 
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I remember looking at Tripadvisor reviews of AT, many people saying it's expensive rip off but they were smart enough to get a voucher deal. Nobody ever says its value for money, even if a voucher, just that it's less of a ripoff.

Trouble is the vouchers basically give free advertising so they are stuck in a trap and can't stop.
 
I don't know if anybody's realised, but in pounds, a ticket for Disneyland is £64.

Yep.
 
That's the point. For only £4 more you can visit the very definition of a theme park.

Where as Thorpe has to be one of the worst major parks in Europe.
 
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£60 for Thorpe Park.....

I mean I'm not the parks biggest fan but it comes nowhere close to being worth that.
 
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£60 - is obviously to much to pay for a one day entry to thorpe, if someone pays that they are simply silly.

Online you can book day before and get it half price, there are vouchers everywhere and if the worse comes to the worse, you can get a Thorpe Park annual pass on the day for that price. They don't want people to buy tickets on the day, this price is there to discourage that.
 
I don't understand the logic of a business discouraging customers. Particularly Thorpe, whose customer numbers haven't exactly been great the past few years.

Next year's dark ride better be mind blowing.
 
Disney don't expect you to pay standard day price either. Most guests will visit as part of a trip, visiting both parks over multiple days at a discount. The fact Thorpe have priced themselves even within the same league as Disney is shocking. And more than Towers which uses the same pricing structure,

If Thorpe Park really don't want people to show up they should just stop advertising and save themselves a fortune.

Its a thought I had the last few summers at Legoland. Every day over the summer the park was rammed, Just to get in there were 2 queues extending all the way down to the standard car parks and 1-2 hour queues for almost all rides in the park. The park was undeniably too busy yet they kept spending a fortune on advertising. Skip ahead a few weeks after the summer and even the weekends weren't that busy.
In Lego's defence their target audience are school kids so it wouldn't make sense to move the adverts to term time periods but for Thorpe they could easily do so. They'd then get more guests in the off peak season (justifying better operations) and avoid over capacity plus charging through the nose at peak times.
 
Why can't Merlin just see that if the parks were actually good enough then people would be willing to pay £30-£35 for their day out, perhaps with a small 10% discount online, and thus eliminating this discount culture which only serves to devalue the brand?

I couldn't care less that the actual price paid for Thorpe by most guests is around £25-£30.

The fact is, it is the headline rate which is talked about by the public - and when they see figures of £60 pushed around - it does nothing to increase the perception of the park in the public eye. It is £10 more than Alton Towers on peak days - which seems insane. Most people use offers to get into Alton Towers too - Thorpe Park should not really be more expensive than Alton Towers.

THE WHOLE WAY THAT MERLIN OPERATE TICKETING IN THEIR BRITISH PARKS IS ABSURD.

Only Alton Towers is actually large enough to cope with guests.
 
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