It’s well known that buying a Merlin Annual Pass isn’t cheap, especially when there are several tiers offering differing perks like free parking or fastracks. At the time of writing, the lowest tier of Merlin Annual Pass you can buy is from £139 so buying the pass depends on how often you visit and what you would normally pay for individual tickets. However, I found a promotion that Merlin were running last year where you could buy an Essential pass for only £54 for the whole year which works out to only £1.04 per week! Even one or two visits can make buying this worthwhile!

Your first thought may be that the essential pass has a huge number of restrictions or blockout days but in fact there’s not many at all being 25 a year which includes some peak summer and Halloween dates. However, the pass still lets you visit on most dates including the majority of Thorpe Park’s Fright Nights and Alton Towers’ Scarefest dates! Upcharges like scare mazes will still of course cost extra.

This means that you can have unlimited visits to all of these properties in a year for just £54!!–

Alton Towers
Thorpe Park
Chessington World of Adventures
LEGOLAND Windsor Resort
Madame Tussauds London
The London Eye
SEA LIFE London
The London Dungeon
Shrek’s Adventure! London
Warwick Castle
Cadbury World
LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Birmingham
LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Manchester
The York Dungeon
The Edinburgh Dungeon
SEA LIFE Birmingham
SEA LIFE Blackpool
SEA LIFE Manchester
SEA LIFE Brighton
SEA LIFE Weymouth
SEA LIFE Great Yarmouth
SEA LIFE Hunstanton
SEA LIFE Scarborough
SEA LIFE Loch Lomond

How To Get It-

There surprisingly isn’t a standout catch with this deal but the main limitation is that it’s a promotion they ran over Black Friday and the Christmas period in 2025.

It was discovered through some existing passholders receiving an email around Black Friday offering a renewal price of £54 to try and retain them for longer.

Merlin also happened to email out codes to people who purchased day tickets to LEGOLAND Windsor Resort and The London Eye between November-December 2025 to be able to purchase a new Essential pass for £54.

How I Got Mine-

Before purchasing this deal, I wasn’t a Merlin Annual Pass holder so I couldn’t have expected an email with a code or renewal price as I hadn’t visited LEGOLAND Windsor or The London Eye that year. From doing a bit of research I discovered that during that period, LEGOLAND Windsor were giving out flyers at Guest Services and around the gift shops on park that had a code on them to access this offer. And the even better part is that you could buy up to 4 Essential passes with just 1 code!

I happened to find someone I knew who was visiting LEGOLAND that day and I asked if they could pick me up a flyer and now I am eternally grateful for it as it means throughout 2026 I have saved so SO much money now on days out for a ridiculously good price! I had to purchase it through the LEGOLAND Windsor Resort website so the pass shows up as a LEGOLAND ticket confirmation and on my Apple Wallet as a LEGOLAND digital ticket which feels weird but it still scans you in fine to the other attractions (hopefully one day Merlin can fix this!).

In 2026 so far, I have already visited-

Alton Towers 1x
Thorpe Park 3x
LEGOLAND Windsor Resort 1x
Madame Tussauds London 1x
SEA LIFE London 1x
Shrek’s Adventure 1x
The London Dungeon 1x
The London Eye 2x
SEA LIFE Centre Birmingham 2x
Cadbury World 3x
Warwick Castle 1x

All for the cost of just £54! You can likely work out how much I’ve saved from this (basically an awful lot of money!)

Conclusion

With only 25 restriction dates throughout 2026 and full entry to these Merlin attractions, this is a cracking deal worth purchasing. Even if you only plan to visit two of those parks in a year then you’ve already made a huge saving!

Merlin does require you to pre-book your visit so make sure you do this in good time so they don’t run out of availability on the day but it’s fairly easy through their own booking portal.

There’s even a selection of perks you can get with it such as 10% off fastracks as well as the ability to visit on restriction dates for an upcharge. You can even get 10% off in any Haribo outlet stores across the UK!

There’s even the option to get up to 50% off entry to Merlin’s other parks and attractions across the world such as Gardaland in Italy or Heide Park in Germany which are some fantastic European parks worth visiting.

My guess is that this promotion is to retain existing passholders and attract as many new ones for repeat visits before the inevitable competition of Universal United Kingdom Resort arrives in a few years. Repeat visits give guests more opportunities to spend on food, drink and merchandise, and may encourage them to upgrade to a higher tier in the future.

If you’re not bothered by getting free parking or discounts in shops and restaurants then this pass makes for a fantastic deal worth purchasing. It’s not been confirmed yet if this deal is going to run in 2026 but we’ll just have to wait and see if it does…

Dan