Hi,
Newly signed up today after doing a bit of reading. I cam across this forum when I was researching the various annual passes for Merlin. Apologies for the long opening post.
I'm a father of two children that are now of the age where theme park visits are becoming more common (4 and 6), we have recently purchased standard passes for the merlin group and started to use them. Legoland and Alton Towers in the last couple of weeks. We used our clubcard vouchers to buy all the passes, with the thought process being that if we didnt take advantage of them then we havent really "wasted" anything.
Turns out we are likely to use them quite a bit. Though what I had overlooked is how painful it can be keeping a 4 and 6 year old entertained in a very long queue. Legoloand not so bad as they could go off and play with lego in the centre of the queue whilst mum and I did the "boring" bit. Being confined to school holidays for the further afield trips means and weekends for the others were more likely to be visiting at busy times, so I got looking at the prices of fast passes and doing man maths in my head.
Now I know that after reading a few threads on here that the VIP passes appear to be a bit of a taboo subject and the holders possibly mocked for having more money than sense, but the man maths in my head came to the conclusion that in order to avoid years of tantrums and "are we there yet" type questions from the kids, the VIP passes represented "good value" over and above the daily fastpass options.
Whilst I think it would be better if fastpass did not exist in any form at all (and thus neatly avoiding the "how come they get on first daddy?" type questions) I have well and truly fallen victim to the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" logic.
Not knowing how long the waiting list is, I assumed that I may as well get myself on the list and hope that passess become available around the time my kis are tall enough to take advantage and go on some of the bigger rides. (they are currently only 1.1m).
I emailed merlin only to be told that the waiting list is closed. So you cant join the waiting list for these passes. Only when they know how many have not renewed, will they then sell these passes to those on the waiting list and then open up the waiting list again. I questionedwhy this was as it appears to defeat the entire purposeof a waiting list because it just shifts any bunfight for passes, to a bunfight to get on the waiting list, but the representitive at merlin seemed unable to understand this logic.
Has anyone any experience of this? How long is the waiting list? am I being a bit premature in joining it now when I anticipate the kids wont get full advantage for at least another 3 or 4 years.
This week was my first visit to Alton Towers for quite some time and I noticed that rides seemed to be opening up later than park opening times which seemed strange. Some not until about 2 hours after we entered the park at 9.30 (we stopped at the hotel on site for my sons 6th birthday so got in early).
Having read further on here it seems ths is now the norm. Yet all the places designed to part parents with their cash were all up and running. I wonder of this is some ploy to up the sale of fast passes to the easily led like myself
Newly signed up today after doing a bit of reading. I cam across this forum when I was researching the various annual passes for Merlin. Apologies for the long opening post.
I'm a father of two children that are now of the age where theme park visits are becoming more common (4 and 6), we have recently purchased standard passes for the merlin group and started to use them. Legoland and Alton Towers in the last couple of weeks. We used our clubcard vouchers to buy all the passes, with the thought process being that if we didnt take advantage of them then we havent really "wasted" anything.
Turns out we are likely to use them quite a bit. Though what I had overlooked is how painful it can be keeping a 4 and 6 year old entertained in a very long queue. Legoloand not so bad as they could go off and play with lego in the centre of the queue whilst mum and I did the "boring" bit. Being confined to school holidays for the further afield trips means and weekends for the others were more likely to be visiting at busy times, so I got looking at the prices of fast passes and doing man maths in my head.
Now I know that after reading a few threads on here that the VIP passes appear to be a bit of a taboo subject and the holders possibly mocked for having more money than sense, but the man maths in my head came to the conclusion that in order to avoid years of tantrums and "are we there yet" type questions from the kids, the VIP passes represented "good value" over and above the daily fastpass options.
Whilst I think it would be better if fastpass did not exist in any form at all (and thus neatly avoiding the "how come they get on first daddy?" type questions) I have well and truly fallen victim to the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" logic.
Not knowing how long the waiting list is, I assumed that I may as well get myself on the list and hope that passess become available around the time my kis are tall enough to take advantage and go on some of the bigger rides. (they are currently only 1.1m).
I emailed merlin only to be told that the waiting list is closed. So you cant join the waiting list for these passes. Only when they know how many have not renewed, will they then sell these passes to those on the waiting list and then open up the waiting list again. I questionedwhy this was as it appears to defeat the entire purposeof a waiting list because it just shifts any bunfight for passes, to a bunfight to get on the waiting list, but the representitive at merlin seemed unable to understand this logic.
Has anyone any experience of this? How long is the waiting list? am I being a bit premature in joining it now when I anticipate the kids wont get full advantage for at least another 3 or 4 years.
This week was my first visit to Alton Towers for quite some time and I noticed that rides seemed to be opening up later than park opening times which seemed strange. Some not until about 2 hours after we entered the park at 9.30 (we stopped at the hotel on site for my sons 6th birthday so got in early).
Having read further on here it seems ths is now the norm. Yet all the places designed to part parents with their cash were all up and running. I wonder of this is some ploy to up the sale of fast passes to the easily led like myself