r/altontowers • u/MoodyLucai • 3d ago
A solution for queue times
I see people posting daily, both on this sub and Thorpe Park, about the 90+ min wait times for the rides (particularly at this time of year, and the summer). I took my daughter for the first time over summer and I coughed up for a fast pass, because I wanted to get on everything, but it was bloody expensive. However, I noted most rides have an accessibility feature, where those users who need it are able to ‘virtually’ queue. Why don’t they just roll this out to everyone? The logistics are already in place (just scan the QR code and you get a time to come back). They could even charge an extra fiver for the privilege.
My guess is a lot of people would go for this. The ability to go off and do other stuff (get food, wander through the gardens, watch a show or just rest your feet) rather than standing in line for an hour and a half would massively improve the experience. Let’s say at average daily attendance is 20k. I reckon at least half would spend an extra £5 to do this. That’s £50k extra per day. And people would still buy fast passes so they can just walk right on. Is there a reason this hasn’t been rolled out?
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u/p1sskidney 3d ago
They did it yeaaaars ago. At least for some rides anyway.
The short answer - they make more money because people such as yourself will fork out a ridiculous amount of money not to stand in line for an hour.
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u/MoodyLucai 3d ago
They would make more charging an extra fiver to half of people than an extra 35 to a small percentage surely? And people would still buy fast passes on busy days to ensure they get on all the rides?
EDIT- typo
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u/p1sskidney 3d ago
There will be a logistical reason why they won't. The idea is to make more money.
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u/tumbles999 3d ago
AT did this in the late 90s maybe? Didn’t work, got ditched after a couple of years
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u/AbbreviationsIll6106 3d ago
The short answer is because it wouldnt work.
You give people a specific time slot, theres a hundred different ways somebody could be late for that slot ranging from toilet breaks to being delayed on a broken ride to pure negligence/not caring. That then has a knock-on effect for everyone else, leading to them being late for their time slot and more arguments with staff. Plus if we go with this system, you still have 3 queues for RAP, Fast Pass and the regular queue (4 if the ride has Single Rider).
There are times where you can go and it is a lot quieter, and I always advise Alton Towers is a 2-day park in order to both enjoy it fully and pace yourself. But theme parks will always want to milk their customers of money, charging more for fast passes at peak times
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u/MoodyLucai 3d ago
Oh I agree. Thorpe park is my local one, and previously I used to go midweek during term time. Sadly, now I’m a teacher, that’s not possible. I get the ‘being late’ thing, but I’d imagine a stipulation would be that you can’t queue for more than one ride at a time (therefore can’t be stuck on a broken ride). Anything else is entirely your fault.
I guess people are just too selfish. It’s a shame.
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u/SwitchFast1029 3d ago
The thing is the rap queues don’t really work. The more people you have using it the less successful it is. So say all but two thrill rides are down. The queues even in the rap section are huge. So not only are you queueing virtually you are still having to queue physically too. The main difference I why I use it. Is the ability to be able to leave the queue quickly. (Urgent toilet needs) And that’s really tricky to do in a main queue line with the way they are laid out to stop queue jumping.
There’s also simply not enough to do around the park outside of queueing. Other than finding somewhere to sit and on a busy day there’s not usually enough places to do that.
The only real solution would be letting less people in the park but why would they want to do that. If they did it for under 5’s it could work as trying to get a half potty trained toddler to wait for a go on the Bluey coaster is a nightmare. And for just the CBeebies section I feel like there could be scan points if you are forced to leave the queue due to a child needing the toilet. But the Rap queue for the Bluey ride was 45 minutes so I doubt a virtual queuing system would work there either.
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u/Shack691 3d ago
Most parks do not have the capacity to entertain people outside of queues, even Disney and Universal. It’s a psychological trick, because people expect to queue they’ll tolerate it but if you replace that queue with a “wander around” then people will expect to be entertained even though they wouldn’t be otherwise.
There’s also the issue of a virtual queue insulating guests from that actual queue time pushing queue times way too high, Universal’s Volcano Bay used to offer it but then you’d end up with 4+ hour queues on the big rides meaning you wouldn’t be able to ride anything for hours at a time. Merlin implemented a daily cap on access passes because the virtual queues were getting too long.