Attraction Source Forum

According to here, the 2013 Fastrack Packages will be as follows:

Young Explorer - £6 (previously £5)
RMT, Rapids & Charlie

Adventurer - £12
RMT, Flume, Spinball & Thirteen

Scream - £12
Air, Nemesis & Oblivion Sub-Terra

Adrenaline - £12
Rita, Thirteen & Obivion

Silver - £21
Air, Nemesis, Oblivion, Rita & Thirteen

Gold - £50 (previously £45)
Air, Nemesis, Nemesis Sub-Terra, TH13TEEN, Rita, Ripsaw, Duel, Rapids, Hex, Sonic Spinball, Runaway Mine Train, Oblivion, The Flume, Charlie, Battle Galleons, Heave Ho & Marauders Mayhem

Platinum - £90 (previously £85)
UNLIMITED access to: Air, Nemesis, Nemesis Sub-Terra, TH13TEEN, Rita, Ripsaw, Duel, Rapids, Hex, Sonic Spinball, Runaway Mine Train, Oblivion, The Flume, Charlie, Battle Galleons, Heave Ho & Marauders Mayhem

No doubt Fastrack for SW7 will become available once it's passed it's opening teething phase...

Anyone tempted to give Merlin more money? It's getting rather sillily expensive now, to me Adventurer looks like the best value...

I'd prefer it to be more expensive, it means less people will buy it... 

Have to say i prefered last year with Dark Forest @ £10 and Thrill @ £10
Worked out at a fair price, but these are just silly,
the groupings haven't been done very well, and it just seems little thought has gone into it...
Adventurer is better but it should be NO MORE than £10!
Just checked these and Scream is actually Air, Nemesis & Nemesis Sub-Terra (instead of Oblivion)

Scream = Forbidden Valley attractions Only
Adrenaline = (what was Dark Forest last year) with added Oblivion as its removed from Scream

My Choice would be now to get the Silver package with Sonic Spinball Bolt on

If it was me id try to make it less confusing and have 3 main Choices..
Young Explorer: Fixed price of £6
Then you choose any 3 rides from.. RMT, Rapids, Charlie, Battle, Duel,

Adventurer: Fixed price £12
Choose any 4 rides from.. RMT, Flume, Th13teen, Hex, Sonic,

Thrill: Fixed price £12
Choose any 4 rides from... Nemesis, Air, Oblivion, Rita, Nemesis Sub-Terra, (SW7 in Future)

Bolt on options...
Young Explorer & Adventurer = £17
Adventurer & Thrill = £22

Then 2 top price choices still stand...
Gold: £50
All Fastrack Rides Once

Platinum: £90
Unlimited Access on Fastrack Rides

A lot easier to understand and gives guests bit more freedom to choose what they want.

Sorry if this is a little bit off topic, but could someone clear something up for me...

In 2000/2001 I went to Oakwood Theme Park in Pembrokeshire and back in around 2003 I went to Alton Towers for the first time.

In one of these parks, and for the life of me I can't remember which, they had a system where if you didn't want to queue you could get a fast track ticket for FREE and come back at a designated time without long queues.

Anyway... back on topic, £90 for a fast track ticket is day light robbery IMO, to be honest, the entry fee is expensive enough (totally worth it though) plus the cost of food and drink, photos and souvenirs, it's already an expensive day out.

I think I'll just pick a time when the park is likely to be quieter. I went at the end of July last year and there were hardly any queues - average around 5-10 minutes except Sonic Spinball which was about an hour!

The thing is you don't have to buy Fastrack, its a premium item, and so it should be priced at a premium rate.

And if its more expensive, less people will buy it, meaning the queues will move a lot faster for everyone else.

JoshC wrote: The thing is you don't have to buy Fasttrack, its a premium item, and so it should be priced at a premium rate.

And if its more expensive, less people will buy it, meaning the queues will move a lot faster for everyone else.

I can see what your saying, but it begins to get to a point where things do get too expensive and its just seen as another way to make money out of guests. Just think if guests were given a bit more freedom where they could choose what rides they wanted in there fastrack set it may make it seem more worth its money, than having to have the chosen set rides with others you may not want. (from a normal guest perspective)
But obviously less guests use fastrack the better  :P

We got to face the facts, fast tracks have always been about making money from guests. The more expensive the better that way the queue goes quicker for everybody.

Hmv wrote: We got to face the facts, fast tracks have always been about making money from guests. The more expensive the better that way the queue goes quicker for everybody.

They haven't -always- been about making money whatsoever though, have they? Indeed, the original fastrack systems which Disney, Universal and (briefly) Alton Towers themselves had in place were free and aimed at improving guest experience, not making a quick buck!

That being said - if they must charge for fastrack - the higher the price the better! It prevents too many sales being made a minimises disruption to the main queue that way.

In 2000/2001 I went to Oakwood Theme Park in Pembrokeshire and back in around 2003 I went to Alton Towers for the first time.

Towers. Oakwood have never had any form of Fastrack system - free or otherwise.

The way I see it, If you're going to pay £85 for Ultimate, you'll pay £90 for Ultimate. For those that can spend that much in the first place, I'm sure £5 won't make a detrimental difference to them.

I made the fatal mistake of buying 1 fast track last year as I didn't want a 90 min queue for Rita, well it broke down on us and we were stuck there for 20 mins to be given a priority pass.... which means I was no better off...

I have will never buy in to Fast Tracks, I see the misery it causes at Thorpe where they just sell them by the thousand and don't care about anything other than making money on top of making money. The problem is people feel they need to buy fast tracks to ensure they have a good time, this is not the case:

-Get to the park when it first opens, you can get a lot more done in your first hour
-Or stay right up until the end, it often is quieter towards the end of the day
-If you can take full advantage of ERT

Use common sense, it is cheaper to buy a MAP at £74 PP in the January sale and go multiple times to multiple parks/attractions than to buy the top fast track
Or stay over at a cheap hotel and buy a bounce back ticket, cheaper and you get more time to enjoy the park.
For £40 you can get a Sealife annual pass which includes entry to either Thorpe, Legoland, Chessington or Alton Towers, plus unlimited Sealife entry for cheaper than the gate price for AT....

Merlin can be very good value for money if you use your head and research and spend wisely, only idiots turn up on the day pay full gate price, then buy fast tracks before looking at the queues.

Merlin Fast track - such a depressing thought 

Not quite the same, but I bought ultimate fast-track at Thorpe last year (for the MoS day & the park was heaving and I was on my own while waiting for friends to arrive, who were VERY late). There wasn't a (decent) ride with less than a 2 hour queue. It was the best £75 I'd spent.. I worked out that I saved something ridiculous like 72 hours worth of queue time and absolutely abused it! Would I do it again? I really would...

daboywunda wrote: Not quite the same, but I bought ultimate fast-track at Thorpe last year (for the MoS day & the park was heaving and I was on my own while waiting for friends to arrive, who were VERY late). There wasn't a (decent) ride with less than a 2 hour queue. It was the best £75 I'd spent.. I worked out that I saved something ridiculous like 72 hours worth of queue time and absolutely abused it! Would I do it again? I really would...

You have more money than sense. Also, please bare in mind the impact that your repeat riding will have had upon those people waiting in the queues - their experience will have been made less pleasant, their wait times longer. This is why I object to paid fastrack systems, especially at places like Thorpe, where they aren't managed properly. I bet that without people 'abusing' their fastrack tickets queues would have been a more reasonable 45-60 minutes. Bare that in mind next time you give in to upselling.

The problem is and we are seeing this more and more and Merlin can't wait to profit from it, the following phrase summs it all up:
"I'm alright, sod everybody else"

I am sure you had a great day, but the more people who do this make the entire theme park experience less and less exciting. If Merlin don't sort it out, they will seriously damage their reputation and the the number of guests will fall.

I was having a good read through Tripadvisor earlier and there are so many people giving their experience a 1* due to the fact they are charged high entry prices,  car parking and they have a 90 min queue while hundreds of people "Queue jump" "Push in" with Fast Tracks.

bensaund wrote: The problem is and we are seeing this more and more and Merlin can't wait to profit from it, the following phrase summs it all up:
"I'm alright, sod everybody else"

I am sure you had a great day, but the more people who do this make the entire theme park experience less and less exciting. If Merlin don't sort it out, they will seriously damage their reputation and the the number of guests will fall.

I was having a good read through Tripadvisor earlier and there are so many people giving their experience a 1* due to the fact they are charged high entry prices,  car parking and they have a 90 min queue while hundreds of people "Queue jump" "Push in" with Fast Tracks.

In some sence i can understand what your saying but everytime me & friends go to alton or thorpe we always buy a fastpass because thats how we get the most out of the rides, entertainment and the overall park experience.(cant beat a walk through the gardens of alton after going on nemesis and air:lol:)

Call me selfish but i dont go to Alton or Thorpe and think to myself when im buying the fasspass....Oh i hope everyone else will still have a good day just because i paid £70+ more to get on the rides b4 them.
No chance. Thats what the fasspass and premium stuff is about.U get priority. (plus alton earns a bit more cash but hey thats business)

And for the people who gave 1* on trip adviser... There are so many offers around at the moment for free tickets and two4ones you would be stupid to just turn up at the park and pay full price and as for the "queue jumping" and "pushing in" by fastpass holders...there not pushing in. They paid money to get priority over normal paying customers...thats just the way it works.

Dont like it buy a passpast!!!

Why should I waste money on Fast tracks when it only goes into Merlins back pocket and making everyone elses day worse....

FYI if you paid £70 for your entry and fast tracks, I only paid £74 for my MAP for the entire year 

So unlimited entry into many attractions, if we go to Thorpe and its looking like a busy or rubbish day we go home.

Just seen someones comment in the construction part of the Smiler threads which states the queues were mental even though there were minimal people in the park due to a John Lewis special day....

I do hope Alton don't do this again this year, last year they kept the queues up to encourage people to buy fast track tickets, we went in the quietest times and even then most rides had almost an hour queue time. 

bensaund wrote: Why should I waste money on Fast tracks when it only goes into Merlins back pocket and making everyone elses day worse....

FYI if you paid £70 for your entry and fast tracks, I only paid £74 for my MAP for the entire year 

So unlimited entry into many attractions, if we go to Thorpe and its looking like a busy or rubbish day we go home.

When AT is a 4 hour drive away it is not that easy just to go home if it's looking like a bad day..

I choose the days we go to try to eliminate the need for fastrack. If you go on the right days of the year and plan your rides in that way, you can beat most queues - most I queued for last year was 45 mins for sub terra (the new addition)

I think that it you'd be better off buying the fast track gold than platinum, because you might think "Unlimited rides on pretty much everything all day!" when you'd probably only have time for one go on each, with all the walking around, eating etc.