My favourite ‘hack stacking’ trick for getting mega cheap theme park tickets this autumn
AUTUMN is theme park season in my house, as the time between summer season and October half-term is quiet with no queues – and I know how to get great deals.
The key to keeping costs down is using a technique I call ‘hack stacking’, and it’s really easy for everyone to do.
The way it works it to combine different deals to get entry for the individuals in your party and maximise the benefits that come with each.
We’ve already enjoyed cheap trips to Warwick Castle and have already lined up visits to Drayton Manor, Alton Towers and Legoland Discovery Centre.
One deal to take advantage of is with Merlin which is currently running an annual pass deal that includes the rest of this year if you pay for 2027.
A gold pass includes car parking, so the £239 cost of one pass could be well worth it just for that if you go once a month plus a couple of extra visits in the summer as lots of the theme parks charge £13 a day for parking.
The key to hack stacking is that not everyone uses the same deal to get in.
So someone else could use Tesco Clubcard vouchers or Nectar points to pay for individual entry and others could get parent and toddler tickets if you’ve got children the right age.
It’s also important to keep an eye out for deals over the course of the year and work out how they could be combined to get the most bang for your buck.
In the spring, Merlin ran a stay and play deal that included annual passes if you booked an overnight stay at one of its parks.
That’s an amazing base for building your hack stacking on. I took two of my sons to stay overnight at Legoland Windsor in June for £270 and now the three of us can get free entry into multiple Merlin attractions until next summer.
If I add on a gold pass for my husband under the current 15 months for the price of 12 deal, I only have to find a final hack to get my third son a ticket to whichever attraction we plan to visit.
So for £510, split over two payments made six months apart, not only have I got annual passes plus car parking for four people, I’ve also enjoyed an overnight theme park stay and even got a little bit of cashback through Quidco.
I did much the same at Drayton Manor, starting with the tickets I claimed through the Sun Club earlier in the year and then using a Blue Light Card discount to buy more.
I could prebook two free tickets through my Sun Club membership over the summer and then buy two more for £20 each.
My final ticket to cover my family of five was £26 using our Blue Light Card and what’s great about this offer is that you can even book it on the day, saving almost £20 on the gate price.
Normally, Drayton Manor pricing is dynamic so it goes up the closer you get to the day of your visit, even if you’re booking online, whereas the Blue Light price is a flat rate.
We paid £66 for the five of us to visit Drayton Manor on a September weekend instead of £200 if we’d turned up and paid on the day.
You can even shave a couple of quid off the parking by prebooking that online too.
And if you visit during September, you get a return visit until the end of October included.
Teachers can get in free on October 3-4, so that’s something to consider if you work in a school.
My hack-stacking trick works at most theme parks as long as you take a bit of time to look at who you’re buying entry for and then work out how to combine deals.
We visited Pleasurewood Hills near Lowestoft, which has just been named theme park of the year, in April and there’s some great deals to be had for tickets there.
You can get a Blue Light discount, but it actually makes better financial sense to use a family ticket for four people for £70 or to buy early bird tickets at £16 each a month in advance.
People with local postcodes could get a reduced price ticket at the start of the season, so it’s worth keeping an eye out to see if that pops up again.
My final tip if you fancy giving hack stacking a go is to keep an eye on discount sites like Planet Offers, Groupon or Wowcher as you can make some great savings, as long as you read the small print to make sure what you’re buying is valid on the date you want to visit.
A family ticket on the Flamingo Land website costs £168 for four people, whereas it’s £98 for the same ticket on one of the discount sites.
And make sure you check rival sites too as there can be a big difference in what they are offering.
