Most of you who visit theme parks will be familiar with it in its various guises – Fastrack, Speedy Pass, Q-Bot, etc – but paid forms of queue jumping only serve to make everyone else’s time in queues longer.
The parks that have queue jumping schemes may claim that they are there for those who want a special treat, but if that were correct then the process could be executed in a better way.
Limiting Fastracks to 100 per day, and making them available for pre-booking up to a year in advance would ensure that parents could book for their children’s birthdays etc.
Overselling
The fact is that queue jumping tickets at Thorpe Park, and to a lesser extent Alton Towers, are greatly oversold, and with reports of the latter beginning to step up their selling of Fastracks at ride entrances, it’s clear where Merlin are heading with their approach.
The more queue jumping that takes place, the slower the queue is for everyone else, and with some already pretty dismal loading times on rides such as Grand National at Blackpool, you can imagine people’s frustrations when they finally make it to the air gate, the train rolls up and someone has already been pre-loaded into their seat.
Alton Towers are holding a 25% off Fastrack sale throughout this month. September is a time when we see queues at the park ease off – and it’s one of the first rules of business to discount something that won’t sell much at the moment.
Immoral
Questions have also been raised over the accuracy of the live queue times reported around the park – which if proven to be justified, is quite concerning if advertised wait times are in excess of reality.
Unfortunately the sale of queue jumping is a great source of income to many parks which they are unlikely to simply give up. Indeed, we can likely expect an escalation of the in-your-face selling, as well as prices, for a while to come.
I’m sure many of you will already know much of what I have written. Most enthusiasts know when to visit parks on the quieter days and get more form their day, but parks make a killing on the less educated casuals paying for queue jumps, whilst increasing the wait time for everyone else in the park.
The Fastrack (or equivalent) is largely a privilege of the rich and uninitiated – but most of the groups that buy them will not be aware how detrimental they are to everyone else’s day.
What are your experiences of paid queue jumping? Do you buy it? Can it be justified? You can leave your comments in the form below.