Pop badges and rude staff
This Easter break, in addition to the theme parks (not even going to comment on the absolute state of Towers - Thorpe and Chessington were running well, though), we decided to visit some of Merlin’s “gateway attractions” in London as we are MAP holders and live in the southeast.
A common theme at all of them (excluding Madame Tussaud’s which we didn’t make it to) was rude, unhelpful staff. I’m not saying everyone at the theme parks exudes joy, but they at least respond when you greet them/speak to them and just have basic manners.
At London Dungeon, one of the two obnoxiously rude staff at the front entrance totally ignored us when we greeted them, and only spoke to complain about people “getting in free” when we produced our MAPs. I’m sorry, but as Passholders we quite literally pay (at no small cost) through our membership? This attraction had by far the rudest staff. The actors inside were great, though - credit where it’s due. The actual “tour” was much better than Edinburgh Dungeon.
Pop badges - forgive the rant but this really irked me, especially attending with children who were excited to get new badges for their lanyards. None of the attractions we visited had pop badges for Passholders, which was disappointing.
At the London Dungeon, Shrek’s Adventure and The London Eye, we found a mixture of some staff who said they were out of stock (a staff member at The London Eye said “permanently”), to many more who didn’t seem to have a clue about the pop badges at all, even after we explained what we were asking for. At The London Eye, another staff member told us to “just buy one on eBay” - this is literally what Merlin instructs Passholders *not* to do.
My personal favourite was the London Aquarium (now branded as a SEA Life) which claimed to no longer issue them “because of the plastic” (it’s a Merlin attraction and the badges are available to Passholders at all attractions).
I would get on board with the ‘let’s reduce plastic and save the oceans’ thing if it weren’t greenwashing (and cost cutting), because throughout the aquarium there were stands selling sweets and drinks all wrapped in plastic and vending machines at various points full of single use plastics (photo attached for lols) - not to mention the fact that they’re flogging a load of plastic tat in the gift shop. All of this is likely to end up in landfill (or the oceans), unlike the pop badges which are kept/reused.
Once they’ve sorted out the many other more pressing things, Merlin need to sort out the gateway attractions and retrain their staff (and get some pop badge stock in - we’ve missed out but others shouldn’t).
Honestly, I wonder what’s the point of being a MAP holder sometimes. I regret that I have to fund this shoddy company to access many theme parks.