I think the weather definitely played a part in the low crowds! We didn't get Merlin Passes this year so did pay full price and definitely the felt the pressure to make the most of the entire day; more so than we ever did in the 5 years we had passes where we'd be at a theme park 2/3 times a month.

I really want to do Chessington in half term but the reports I've read from there at peak times aren't filling me with much hope that it will be as successful as our Legoland trip.

Yeah I bet ☹️
This is definitely our last year of being passholders , think we have had them for about 8 years so it’s sad but the parks are just shabby now and I don’t feel like there is enough new stuff to warrant the price of passes .
I think I mentioned Chessington on either this thread or another one on here as it was terrible !
We have been twice since they opened up and both times I left a nervous wreck.
First time was when they just reopened so assumed the bad experience was because they were getting used to the new way of doing things .. this was not the case !
Social distancing is non existent in queue lines and around most areas of the park .
So many other guests just seem to be clueless and stood right up to us in nearly every queue line until I snapped in the Vampire line and had to ask them to move back .
I was so cross about how lax they were with enforcing guidelines that I emailed them when I got home (and I’m pretty “meh” about things so I must’ve been really annoyed to bother) 😆
They emailed back and said
“we are sorry, have a fast track for one ride at the park ”..
yeah ..no thanks !
I would say if you can try and go when the weather isn’t good like you did with Legoland then you might have better luck than us .

We havent been to any theme parks this year but we were thinking of buying merlin passes next year. However, I've read so many things about pass holders not being able to get weekend slots, and that the parks were crowded, we have been put off so will wait until 2022 i think.
We have had longleat annual passes for about 5yrs now and have decided not to renew those, I cant say we've had a particularly positive experience with them, providing we can even get a space to go - pretty pointless having passes if you can't go during the school holidays, I like the flexibility of being able to go when you want to - and the booking fee puts me off aswell!

We are definitely wet weather theme park fans! I'd rather be wet and cold than stand in a queue for an hour :d:

Yes we struggled with passholder slots and then they ‘kindly’ added slots for us pass holders but we couldn’t enter till after 2pm!
I think they were testing the waters with this as we had a survey from them recently and this was on most of the new pass options they were thinking of offering .. not much cheaper than our premium passes but we get the honour of only being allowed in after 2pm and no school holidays .. the cheek !

Well worth paying all that money for then 🙄🤣

Yep, I think the days of the merlin pass as we know it are numbered. I actually think this was on the cards already (I did a survey at Chessington about different types of passes at the end of last year) but covid will have forced their hand to make changes to the offering to maximise profits.