Starter package at Monza a disappointment from Start to Finish.
We booked the “Starter” package at Monza, which is the cheapest package they do, and it is clear that F1 Experiences don’t care about the customers on this package. The whole experience was a disappointment from start to finish. After previously being advised we would get tickets 6-8 weeks before the event, and then 10 days, then 7 days, we eventually received them the Saturday before, when we were flying to Milan on the Sunday. These tickets needed printing, but with no printer, I had to make a trip into work on the Sunday morning to print the tickets - adding more stress to our journey. Our seats were in Grandstand 22, which was the only really highlight of our experience. The meeting point for experience however was on the start/finish straight after all of the on track activity had finished, meaning that everyone else was exiting the circuit and stewards had closed the accesses to facilitate the egress of everyone on the track. This meant that we had to walk for over an hour, battling against crowds and being turned around at various checkpoints, which was incredibly dangerous in hindsight - having to battle against the crowd going over one of the pedestrian bridges, one slip and we could have been crushed! Given the amount of people in our grandstand on the Starter package, a representative of F1 Experiences should have met us at GS22 and escorted us through. We eventually arrived stressed and hot, and had no time for dinner (as most vendors had closed) and no food was provided by F1 Experiences. We had to walk for over an hour, and clocked up nearly 4km just to get from our grandstand to the meeting point. We are relatively fit people so could just about manage it (we clocked up 32,000 steps this day), if anyone had been disabled or elderly, I don’t think they could have managed this and there appeared to be no plan from F1 Experiences. The track tour took place as the sun was setting, and the pit lane visit took place afterwards. We were advised we would have until 9.30pm to see all we wanted to, so we took our time taking photos and enjoying the experience, but were then asked to leave at 9.20pm, meaning we missed seeing the top 3 garages, which was hugely disappointing. The whole reason we picked this package was for the pit lane, but didn’t get to see the garages of the teams we support (Ferrari and McLaren). At this point the staff were rude, particularly a female member of staff. We also expressed our stress and disappointment of getting to the Experience (as set out above) but the staff member didn’t care and was dismissive as “they had the same experience getting in” like that’s meant to be okay?! The finishing time of the event also meant that the shuttle buses provided by the circuit had finished for the day so had no way to get back to the train station (which was over a hours walk away). We found a public bus that went to the station, but f1 experiences representative could not tell us the best way to get there, or even what gates to the circuit were still open at that point, they just wanted us to leave. We paid a significant amount of money for this package, much more than regular grandstand tickets, and whilst we did experience the additional packages, the actual experience fell far short of expectations, from receiving the tickets late and having to make a special trip into work to print them, to the attitude of the staff on the evening, and the stress of getting to the meeting point, and having to leave earlier than advised. Finally, the choices of “free gift” available from F1 Authentics was again, a disappointment, a choice of 2 red bull caps or a Williams key ring, really?! For the Italian GP? It feels like a joke at this point!! We will not be using F1 Experiences again, and nor will we be recommending you to our friends, who regularly attend F1 events. This was our 5th GP, and already have 2 booked for next year - not through F1 Experiences, so you have lost potential customers for years to come, but hey; we only booked the cheapest package so why would they care?! I have raised these concerns with F1 Experiences already and was offered a hollow apology and told we should have raised our concerns with them on the night?! Given that there was no guest services presence at our grandstand, nor at the various checkpoints we were turned around at, I’m not sure how we could have?! When we eventually got there was did raise it with a tall English male representative who just dismissed our concerns like they were nothing.