COVID-19 Information

Update 24th February 2022

With all Covid restrictions due to end in England on Thursday (24th Feb 2022), our priority is to continue to offer the best possible experience to our guests whilst ensuring we also look after our staff. We continue to have hygiene and safety measures in place throughout our Resort/attraction, including enhanced cleaning, hand sanitiser and increased ventilation. In our indoor attractions, key walkways or busier areas, guests will still see signage stating “Face coverings recommended”, which is in line with Public Health guidance and will be displayed at entry points into these areas. Those staff who may wish to continue wearing a face covering whilst working, most notably when in indoor locations, will have the option to do so. At Merlin Entertainments our guests and staff safety remain of paramount importance and we’ll therefore continue to monitor and review this situation.

If you or any of your party display any symptoms of COVID-19 or have tested positive, we ask that you do not visit and contact us to rearrange your booking.

COVID Passports

No, you are not required to present your NHS Covid-19 vaccine pass to gain entry to our attractions.

Guests are still be required to wear a face mask in order to enter any of our indoor spaces including those rides or attractions which are indoors.* This advice is in line with current UK Government regulations, which came in to place in England from the 10th December (https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus), which we are monitoring closely.

We encourage all our guests to help protect themselves, our staff and each other.

* Exemptions apply.

The Government have given guidance that the following settings do not need to apply COVID-19 status checks as a condition of entry, unless they are holding an event that meets the criteria for venues or events requiring mandatory use of checks:

  • museums or art galleries
  • theme parks and fairgrounds
  • other tourist, heritage, or cultural sites (including zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens)
  • recreation and leisure facilities (such as bowling alleys, amusement arcades and bingo halls)
  • sport and physical activity facilities (such as gyms, swimming pools, and skating rinks)
  • play areas or centres
  • casinos
  • cinemas
  • transport hubs and public transport
  • retail, including markets, shops, shopping centres, and supermarkets

More information can be found here - Carrying out mandatory COVID-19 status checks at your venue or event - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

New Pre-Booking System

In order for us to continue to manage our attraction capacities to ensure we deliver the very best and most magical days out possible for our guests, including you our Passholders, everybody will continue to be required to pre-book a ticket to our attractions.

It’s really easy, just head to our Passholder Pre-Book Hub here and follow the instructions.

To ensure we deliver the very best and most magical days out possible for our guests, including you our Passholders, everybody will continue to be required to pre-book a ticket to our attractions.

For instance, you could have x3 THORPE PARK Resort, x3 Alton Towers, x3 SEA LIFE London, x3 Warwick Castle at one time. Once you’ve used one ticket, you can pre-book another.

Yes you can! Just add in all the pass numbers for your group when prompted and you can pre-book your tickets at the same time so you can visit together. Please note that only groups using the same pass type may book together, different passes must book separately.

Yes you can! If your plans change, simply log back in to the booking portal and select a new date to move your booking, or complete and submit this form if you need to cancel your booking. This means another Passholder will have the chance to use this ticket and nobody will miss out.

For Under-3s tickets, this depends on which attraction you are looking to visit:

  • For Alton Towers Resort, Warwick Castle and Midway attractions you can book a free ticket for Under-3s when prompted during your booking journey.
  • Thorpe Park Resort, Chessington World of Adventures and LEGOLAND Windsor Resort do not require Under-3s to pre-book Passholder tickets.

No, Passholders with a Resort hotel booking do not need to pre-book, entry is automatically guaranteed with your stay alongside a valid Merlin Annual Pass. However, this may differ for special or paid events, so please check with the attraction before booking.

COVID-19 Safety Measures

Our attractions will continue to provide an extensive range of safety measures, designed to ensure a happy, safe and healthy experience for all guests and staff.

At our attractions we have reviewed every part of our operations and have implemented an extensive range of safety measures to ensure we adhere to government and local authority guidelines to create a safe experience for all guests and staff, and this includes our rides.

Visitors may notice spatial separation markings and other similar operating adjustments around the attraction, including floor markings at our rides queue lines to ensure our rides adhere to the social distancing measures recommended by local governments and health authorities. On the rides, there may be reduced capacity and batching to maintain social distancing that can include empty seats or rows and where possible, grouping within household units.

Our staff will also be encouraged to observe social distancing where practical and we will be providing additional Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and clothing for our guest facing staff which will include ride operators where appropriate.

As part of our enhanced cleaning protocols, ride hand grips will be cleaned regularly and hand sanitiser will be available to guests throughout the queue line before and after rides and throughout the attractions.

We ask all those who visit our attraction to observe closely our strict guidelines on maintaining a safe distance between each other and to maintain good hygiene practices including utilising the hand sanitiser located around the attraction and if they or any family member displays any symptoms of COVD-19, that they postpone their visit.

We will continue to allow a fair allocation of Passholders into our attractions based on Passholder visitation trends from previous years. This has been working really well and currently there is good availability at the majority of attractions, including the ability to use your pass to visit on the same day if there is availability.

FAQs

Please head here and complete the form to cancel your Membership.

Yes, we have applied multiple extensions to account for time lost due to temporary attraction closures in accordance with Government advice throughout the past year, including the most recent period. This means that your new expiry date will be different to the one currently printed on your card.

The length of the extension applied to your pass depends on what your original expiry date was, and therefore how much time you missed out on due to temporary attraction closures. These have been applied automatically, and you do not need to do anything to activate these.

As there have now been various extensions applied to passes at multiple times throughout the past year, we recommend using our New Expiry Date calculator to check what your new expiry date is.

Sit back and relax! We will deliver your brand new renewed Merlin Annual Pass to you by post. It will be with you really soon! In the meantime, you also have your digital Annual Pass which you can use instantly.

Picsolve is now owned by PomVom UK who will operate Merlin’s photography services at Chessington World of Adventures Resort, Alton Towers Resort, LEGOLAND Windsor Resort and Thorpe Park Resort from the 4th of July 2020.

If you have any questions or queries about digipasses (which are now discontinued), please contact Picsolve directly to discuss.