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What's the right price for a theme park admission?

In some ways, it reminds me of what has happened to the music industry. When we moved house over the summer, it dawned on me how much money we have spent on CDs over the years. Probably tens of thousands between us.

Now, most of our listening habits are met with a monthly spend less than a CD album would have cost in Woolworths 20 years ago - £15 for a family Spotify subscription, that does this household, my brother, his wife and my best friend.

Now, when a band that I really like comes out with a special edition something or other for £25, I scoff a little, I am ashamed to say.
 
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This pattern of paying less for goods is just a continuation of the industrial revolution. It used to cost a fortune to buy pepper, pineapples, cutlery, cloth etc., until mass production decimated prices.
CDs, DVDs and video games have found their distribution model replaced with a mass production model, with on-demand delivery.

Live entertainment, including theme parks, doesn't follow that model so far. Truly immersive VR might threaten it in the future, (easier to build bytes than track) but not just yet.
 
For me it depends on what the parks have to offer. The UK Merlin parks I'd pay no more than £30 for, others like Blackpool ,Mingo and Drayton would have £20 seem fair to me. More "resorty" parks like Europa I'd pay upwards of £40 thanks to the high quality, but I wouldn't do $100 for one Disney park in a million years like they do now.
 
£20 for a ten coaster park like the Pleasure Beach? That feels a bit low.

When wristbands were launched at £25 in 1999, that's £37.70 in 2020, with inflation.
 
For Drayton or Flamingo Land I’d say they’re £25 parks, but the Pleasure Beach is deffo £30 or so for me.

£20 for any real “park” is very low I’d say. In the UK I’d be saying this bracket is for parks like LWV, Fantasy Island or Oakwood.
 
@Ian I think you have probably hit the nub of the issue. With somewhere like the smaller parks that you mentioned, I am not sure how much longer it will be possible to maintain, staff and operate a park like that at £20 a pop, the costs are skyrocketing, attendance is flat (or dropping) and there isn't the capital available to invest back into those businesses.

Again, maybe I am too blasé about these things, but £20 doesn't sound like much to me for 8 hours entertainment. Two Burger King meals at the motorway services today cost me £18 + change.
 
Oh I agree that £20 is very low and has questionable long term viability. But I think this is the issue when you try and benchmark the parks against each other. If, as a lot of us seem to be suggesting, Towers is a £35-40ish park for example then you almost need to work backwards from there I’d say.

Is £10 enough of a difference between say Towers and Drayton? Equally, is £5 enough of a difference from Drayton to say Lightwater Valley? I don’t know.

The problem is, comparing to Europe, Towers for us is our equivalent to the likes of Europa and Phantasialand (in terms of status and comparative offering to our other parks - not necessarily a direct comparison of offering and quality), but I think a lot of us seem to be in agreement that the current quality of the park and operations is not reflective of the pricing bracket that it’s German counterparts sit in. Is the problem with UK pricing simply that the Merlin parks are too far detached from the rest of the UK industry?

It’s a bit of a chicken and egg really though. Many parks happily seem to exist around the £25 mark, but for it to be sustainable you need to ensure you have enough guests coming through the door at that price. You don’t get new guests in without investment though, but that then needs money to build!
 
I get the impression that a lot of people in this topic either aren't accounting for inflation or else are significantly undervaluing their hobby. £20pp doesn't go very far when it comes to the substantial costs of operating and maintaining major rides, before you even think about the multi-million pound CAPEX for installing a major new coaster.

As I posted in the BPB topic, I recently paid £30 for Oakwood (online price), which struck me as surprisingly high at the time, mainly as I've got used to paying in the low twenties for BPB over the past few years. On reflection, I've long thought BPB were under selling themselves, especially when you consider that wristbands were more expensive in 1999 than 2019. Admittedly that's comparing the 1999 on the day rate with the 2019 advance rate, though I suspect buying in advance online wasn't possible back then so it's arguably a fair comparison.

Merlin's pricing structure meanwhile seems almost entirely focussed on giving the perception of value by letting everyone in for "half price" of an artificially-inflated gate price and then trying to recoup the difference on secondary spend. This false value leaves very little scope for other UK parks to set entry prices that don't seem overpriced by comparison. Maybe the smaller UK parks would benefit from people in the UK having a more reliable top-end benchmark, somewhere like EP where the advertised entrance price is what the average guest actually has to pay to get in.
 
One of the problems with the pay one price model is your day out can vary a lot depending on other factors - number of guests is the biggest one, but also ride operations and availability.

£35 is great value if the wait times for rides are 10minutes, and everything is open.

But if you are waiting 2-3 hours for the headline coaster and it breaks down just as you get to the front of the queue then your £35 is looking a lot less VFM. And if there are 60+ minute queues for all the major rides, you are heading for a fairly miserable day out.

Other types of attractions don't really have the same wild fluctuations in experience that a day at a theme park can have.

So whats the answer.........

Pay per ride of course













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Why?
It seemed to work fine for a few hundred years!
Increased operational efficiency.
Great for those who don't do rides, but want to tag along.
Great for those who only want to do a couple of rides.
Great for grandparents, who might just start going back to the parks and spending money on the grandchildren again.
Having experienced both...give me pay per ride any day!
Half a dozen coasters in a couple of hours, even on the busy days...as it should be.
 
Times have changed, people have moved on, but old school BPB fans insist on clinging on to the past.

As has already been pointed out, people visit when they feel they’re getting a good deal, that’s why the market is flooded with offers and discounts. If people have to pay £5 or more per ride, they really won’t feel they’re getting a good deal, people will spend less time at the parks and go away feeling they’ve not had good value. That’s how I always feel when I leave Winter Wonderland and also how I felt when I left Vienna Prater.

Also the parks have limited capacities, especially now with covid restrictions which will probably be here for a while. Flooding the parks with non riders and people just wandering around takes away capacity from those actually wanting to ride the rides.

Without, at the very least, wristbands, it would be a total disaster. I know I wouldn’t visit if I had to cough up at every ride entrance. Plus it would require extra staffing, more issues of people trying to get on rides without valid tickets to complete. There’s no way it would make the parks more profitable or provide better value for customers.

Count me out.
 
I wasn't seriously suggesting that Alton towers go pay per ride although it would be interesting to see what happened if it did. The gardens may actually get some attention!

Please correct me if I am wrong on this, but I think before towers introduced Cork Screw in 1980, if you wanted to ride a coaster in the UK you would have had to pay separately to ride it. (unless you happened to be staying at Butlins)

There is still a place for pay per ride, especially at coastal parks. That system is very popular with families and sometimes cheaper.

Of the POP parks, Poultons are doing things better than most and they do seem to want to provide the best customer experience possible once they have your money (from my experience anyway). And it's free parking.

They do have a VIP queue jumping system but it is so expensive that very few will use it. They also have an interesting take on the disabled access pass which can only be used once per ride. I think that's a really good idea.











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I feel from reading this people want the parks to invest in new rides and experiences but aren't expecting to see the parks entrance fees to reflect that.

Europa Park just released a tease 'what's next' video highlighting their ridiculous level of investment back into the park over the last decade. If you're going to EP barring a few partner park and coaster club deals everyone is paying full price.

The four Merlin parks should really be premium priced experiences and because they've decided against that and flooded the market with cheap annual passes and 2 4 1 offers it makes the UKs smaller parks look too expensive by comparison. I've lost count at the amount of times friends have criticised Pleasure Beaches prices next to how it'll cost less than £30 each into Towers with a 2 4 1 voucher.
 
Also pay per ride vs pay one price depends a lot on how busy a park is.

Vist Alton Towers on a medium busy day and you should get every coaster in once plus a couple of other things, so at least 10 rides so thats £2.70 (on a bogof) to £3.40 (online price) per ride, seems pretty reasonable, especially for the big coasters. On a quiet day then you might get lots of re-rides and the price plummets.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the park adjusting the hours/price seasonally as long as you do get to do a reasonable number of rides, doing everything for your thrill level seems reasonable. So on a quiet day shorter hours is fine as you probably will get more done that on a busier day with an extra two hours.
 
John_P said:
The four Merlin parks should really be premium priced experiences and because they've decided against that and flooded the market with cheap annual passes and 2 4 1 offers it makes the UKs smaller parks look too expensive by comparison. I've lost count at the amount of times friends have criticised Pleasure Beaches prices next to how it'll cost less than £30 each into Towers with a 2 4 1 voucher.
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Yep even though the "saving" isn't that great with a 2for1, Its about £27 with the discount, so Blackpool is only a fiver more.

I do agree though that setting a realistic book in advance price and sticking to it helps with the value of the park.
 
rob666 said:
Why?
It seemed to work fine for a few hundred years!
Increased operational efficiency.
Great for those who don't do rides, but want to tag along.
Great for those who only want to do a couple of rides.
Great for grandparents, who might just start going back to the parks and spending money on the grandchildren again.
Having experienced both...give me pay per ride any day!
Half a dozen coasters in a couple of hours, even on the busy days...as it should be.
Click to expand...

Why? Even with the Covid restrictions i've managed 8 visits to Towers this year. My pass cost £75 with parking included.

I've done about 70 rides in those visits.

So about £1 a ride.

So pay per ride would be a real step backwards for me.
 
Personally, my record is about 20p per ride about a decade ago.
Cheap passes make longer queues in the race to the bottom sadly.
 
Mikw said:
Why? Even with the Covid restrictions i've managed 8 visits to Towers this year. My pass cost £75 with parking included.

I've done about 70 rides in those visits.

So about £1 a ride.

So pay per ride would be a real step backwards for me.
Click to expand...

But do you think those rides are actually worth more than £1?
 
Of course, inflation changes the figures but I would roughly say there are three price points.

£25 - £30 = Drayton Manor, Flamingo Land, Lightwater Valley, Oakwood, Parc Asterix

£35 - £40 = Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, PortAventura, (most) Six Flags parks, Dollywood, Knott's, Busch Gardens, (most) Cedar Fair parks

£50ish = Disney, Universal, Europa, Cedar Point, SFMM and SFGA

Phantasialand is a bit of an anomaly but I'd put it in the middle bracket at a push. I think to be in the top bracket you need serious theming and/or genuinely world class hardware so maybe phantasialand is edging into the top tier. It just seems too small to me...

The only comparison I can make is gigs. It's like you have 02 Academy, Wembley Arena/NIA/MEN, and Wembley Stadium/02 Arena/Stadiums generally. Phantasialand would need release extra arena dates sometimes but aren't quite at the stadium level.
 
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