We are doing it, we are dragging our butts off the sofa and going out into the world again shaking off the post winter feeling.
We thought since we all love theme parks and roller coasters and we have yet to be able to go back to Disney World we would do something we had been on about for years and purchase Merlin passes.
We are now proud owners of gold passes.
We decided these were the best passes for us as they gave us the most dates excluding a few, mostly school holidays, which we would avoid anyway. They included parking and since they were on sale at the time we got a good price on them. With hindsight we wish we had waited a little later as we purchased them in December in the sale and they went on sale again in March, meaning in reality we wasted several months of passes as we didn’t use them in this time with the main parks not being open and us hibernating.
We were a little dubious about getting the passes as when we last did the all parks in 2016 (not with Merlin passes), I was treated really badly as a disabled person. Although the RAP (although not called this at the time) was issued without problems the attitudes of the staff in all of the parks, apart from Thorpe park, was abysmal. I was treated as a lesser person, if I was spoken to, it was with disrespect and never in my life have I felt as disabled as I did in those parks. We then went to Walt Disney World at the end of 2016 and I was shown how you are meant to be treated as a person in a wheelchair and as a consequence we haven’t visited a Merlin attraction since. However we are firm believers in time, that people/places can change and in giving everyone a second chance. Therefore with a little trepidation here we go again.
We have 3 gold passes and two carer passes this totalled £507. For the carers passes we had to contact Merlin and send in proof of need for carers pass. The website states that it can take up to 10 working days for the passes to be processed but it was sorted by the next day for us. We then clicked on the link in the email, put in our unique code Merlin sent to us, then it was the same process for the normal passes, details, photos (of the person who needs the carer), etc. We then got the passes printed in the first park we visited, as for us having a printed card is easier.
For somebody who is a self confessed technophobe, I actually found the whole process really easy, the only thing I would say is have your photo already taken and saved to your device rather than trying to take a photo and get the lighting and all other requirements right at the time of application.
I am going to keep a running total of what we have saved, based on pre book prices, discount on food, merchandise, by having the passes and see if they have been worth it for us, so watch this space.
