July 10, 20187 yr comment_258901 Obviously just a revenue generating product, this officially announces they’ve lost the plot. It’s basically the parks version of a VIP pass in stealth mode, you need a separate pass for entry so add on a premium pass for £229 and you’ve now spent £629.
July 10, 20187 yr comment_258902 2 minutes ago, Coaster said: That is vile. Had a feeling you'd like it At a price point of £400 I can see it more appealing to those with a TP AP, with a PMAP + this you may aswell get a VIP MAP.
July 10, 20187 yr comment_258903 My best advice is to pay the £20 and fly to Phantasialand because Thorpe is just toast at this point. ?
July 10, 20187 yr comment_258904 9 minutes ago, Marc said: Had a feeling you'd like it At a price point of £400 I can see it more appealing to those with a TP AP, with a PMAP + this you may aswell get a VIP MAP. TOO MANY ACRONYMS.
July 10, 20187 yr comment_258905 Least they didn't do a Gardaland and have it actually affordable for everyone, just the idiots with more money than sense... When did MAP holders stop realising that missing out on a ride isn't the end because you can revisit?
July 10, 20187 yr comment_258906 1 hour ago, Marc said: Thorpe have released a new "Annual Fastrack Pass" - a years supply of fastrack for £400! I'll take 3! But in all seriousness, there's not much harm in selling this, if people with too much money want to buy them so be it, there won't be that many. The same people would just buy a VIP pass if they weren't limited availability.
July 10, 20187 yr comment_258910 59 minutes ago, Benin said: Least they didn't do a Gardaland and have it actually affordable for everyone, just the idiots with more money than sense... When did MAP holders stop realising that missing out on a ride isn't the end because you can revisit? How much was Gardaland's out of interest?
July 10, 20187 yr comment_258912 2 minutes ago, Marc said: How much was Gardaland's out of interest? Between 80-100 euros on top of the MAP price (which was/is cheaper than the UK one anyway)...
July 10, 20187 yr comment_258914 € 85 for the year for an annual pass with fasttrack https://www.gardaland.it/en/tickets/season-passes/#
July 10, 20187 yr comment_258915 Ah thanks, I assumed it was something historic - that’s insanely cheap!
July 10, 20187 yr comment_258916 Looks like they merged it together, clearly I did not complain hard enough... Future tip for anyone going to Gardaland, don't go on potentially heaving days...
July 10, 20187 yr comment_258918 3 hours ago, Marc said: you may aswell get a VIP MAP. If you make it past the 7 year waiting list ?
July 10, 20187 yr comment_258921 I can't for the life of me work out why someone would want to pay £400 to skip the queues for a year at a single theme park? Like, if you have a season pass you can visit as many times as you like anyway? Fastrack is already oversold and under catered for (not even bothering to open the dedicated queuelines because it requires an extra member of staff etc), this will only make things worse. Does anyone remember the days when the rides all had a member of staff stood outside them? Now they won't even run Fastrack properly despite being all too happy to upsell it to guests. Obscene.
July 10, 20187 yr comment_258922 That is disgusting. As if there aren't enough obnoxious VIP's now there will be even more probably from the waiting list wearing these passes like a badge of entitlement. If I was going to spend that sort of money, it would be on a trip to a better park in Europe that has fast moving queues without fastrack. Who knows, it may even start turf wars in fastrack queues between VIP's and Premium Thorpe FT's over who's more entitled to barge onto the next train first. If you go on a quiet day or a max capacity day, fastracks are worthless anyway.
July 10, 20187 yr comment_258923 Much like the VIP annual pass, the numbers of these which are sold will make virtually no difference to how long fastrack queues are, the price is nice and high which will make sure of this. Infact I’ve noticed fastrack is a lot better this year with the new higher pricing which hasn’t been introduced across all the packages.
July 12, 20187 yr comment_258945 I can't believe you're saying inflated, rip-off pricing for 100% profit queue jumping tickets rather than just restricting them with low prices is a good thing. Also, how long did we wait in the Platform 15 Fastrack queue last year? It was anything but short, I was glad I did not pay for that privilege unlike some poor guests probably did. I would have been more than pissed if I had put down £400 on a pass in that queue.
July 12, 20187 yr comment_258946 It’s not a rip off if people are happy to pay it, which they clearly are. What you class as a rip off for fastrack as a frequent visitor is totally different to what somone visiting once a year or less would. It’s pretty easy as a consumer to say something should be cheaper than it is! Thorpes fastrack pricing is probably at the levels it should be, it’s a premium product and should be priced as such. As for the platform 15 fastrack queue, was it long? yes was it significantly shorter than the main queue? Yes, Thorpe never promise instant access with fastrack, quite rightly too!
July 13, 20187 yr comment_258947 8 hours ago, Marc said: Thorpe never promise instant access with fastrack, Please don't give them ideas. There will be 2 tiers of fastrack before you know it. Fastrack and fastrack: the fast and the furious 8 or FTFTF8 as it will be called by the forum. Instant access to any ride all day for £1000. Oops now I've given them details for the idea...
July 13, 20187 yr comment_258948 43 minutes ago, Project LC said: Please don't give them ideas. There will be 2 tiers of fastrack before you know it. Fastrack and fastrack: the fast and the furious 8 or FTFTF8 as it will be called by the forum. Instant access to any ride all day for £1000. Oops now I've given them details for the idea... Haha don't worry, I think we are safe from that ? Don't get me wrong, i get why people dislike fastrack, but i dont think its as bad at the Merlin parks as made out, this new £400 fatrack pass, sure sounds alot of money on the face of it, but the equivalent on the day price is £50 or £90 depending when you visit, it wouldn't take many trips as an Annual Pass holder to start becoming worth it.
July 14, 20187 yr comment_258957 For someone who visits Thorpe twice a year, and someone who visits whenever they want, how is the Fastrack season pass anything but a rip-off? I really don’t know why Merlin don’t have Q-Bot at Thorpe & Towers? It’s a much fairer system and you can guarantee the value of the service being paid for unlike fastrack*. You can have a virtual queue with higher tiers that reduce the wait time. When the queue time is low, people can see it’s clear the higher tiers would not be value for money unless you can skip negative queue time! If you buy fastrack on the other hand and the queue ends up being short, you’ve basically paid for nothing. Equally when it’s busy, there’s no guarantee of a maximum waiting time limit whether you’re a VIP or one shot holder. TLDR - Fastrack does not offer a consistent value depending on who you are and how busy it is. That’s my main issue with it. (*Obviously this does not include unavoidable delays to operations.)
July 14, 20187 yr comment_258961 If you visit twice a year then of course it’s a bad deal -if your somone who visits 15/20 + a season it’s good value. Even if you visit often you still might not like queuing. I agree it’s hard for fastrack to offer consistent value, they have introduced off peak / peak prices what will obviously help with that, but that’s a problem any park who sells fastrack have.
July 14, 20187 yr comment_258969 As much as queuing is a pain, I think I'd get bored pretty quickly if I always had fast track and barely queued.
July 14, 20187 yr comment_258970 Thorpe are using their terrible operations to upsell terrible products like this, if their operations were anywhere near where they should be there would be no need for it... just one fast moving queue. If you don't visit very often you won't get value for money, and if you do visit often, why do you need fast pass for rides you will have already ridden numerous times? I have never seen ride staff look so disinterested, slow and generally careless at Thorpe than on my most recent visit; I don't think there was one instance where a train was dispatched before the other one was back, parked and waiting for at least a minute. Colossus's operations were outrageously bad, with dispatches taking around 7 minutes every single time... how can they have been allowed to slack that much?! They are neglecting their ride lineup, operations, park appearance; all in favour of IP's and quick cash-grabs such as the above. My advice? Use the money to go and ride Icon, which will most likely be running two/three trains with staff working quickly and professionally with a queue usually less than half an hour. You'll probably have a lot of money left over as well.
July 14, 20187 yr comment_258971 You must have gone on a bad day as my recent visits have been great. Swarm and Stealth regularly dispatching in less than a minute (40 seconds on Swarm in several instances) Nemesis Inferno admittedly has been slow for a couple of seasons now. Really shows how every day can differ.
July 14, 20187 yr comment_258972 1 minute ago, Coaster said: They're using their terrible operations to upsell terrible products like this, if Thorpe's operations where anywhere near where they should be then there would be no need for it, just one fast moving queue. If you don't visit very often you won't get value for money, and if you do visit often, why do you need fast pass for rides you will have already ridden numerous times? I have never seen ride staff look so disinterested, slow and generally careless at Thorpe than on my most recent visit; I don't think there was one instance where a train was dispatched before the other one was back, parked and waiting for at least a minute. Colossus's operations were outrageously bad, with dispatches taking around 7 minutes every single time... how can they have been allowed to slack that much?! They are neglecting their ride lineup, operations, park appearance; all in favour of IP's and quick cash-grabs such as the above. I get your point re if you visit frequently then why do you need fastrack but I guess it depends on what kind of visit you look for, personally I visit often and I’m fairly laid back, if I don’t get on something because the queues too long then I’ll just do it next time, but I can totally see others who are keen on doing as many rides as possible each visit. Operations and fastrack are 2 totally different things, they are not using poor ops to sell fastrack, again the IP’s are totally separate, the money for new things will be a complete differnt pot to the Money for staffing levels on rides.
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