Theme park visitors who say they lost out on a free flights summer promotion had misunderstood the offer, the park has claimed.

IMG Worlds of Adventure ran a deal that allowed customers who purchased an admission ticket for Dh299 to receive a guaranteed, free round-trip flight for a number of destinations.

Hundreds signed up to the promotion, but not everyone was able to cash-in their free flight, after struggling to navigate complicated terms in the offer.

The park has now said customers failed to follow instructions, or read the deal’s terms to receive a voucher to exchange for an airline ticket.

“There are a number of terms and conditions that must strictly be followed in order to redeem a flight ticket,” said Lennard Otto, chief executive of IMG Worlds of Adventure.

“Where a customer does not follow the correct processes, issues can arise.

“Our third-party partner and our own team at IMG are working hard to help guide any customers where needed and resolve any issues.”Some of the terms and conditions included travellers being unable to choose their specific destination, the flight time or the airline. Instead, they were sent a link where they had to choose three possible destinations from 21 options.

The offer could only be redeemed once the buyer had indicated their preferred dates and they had to have done this within 48 hours of being sent the registration link.

Free economy flights were capped at two per customer, but if four tickets were purchased a discount of 50 per cent applied.

And airport fees and taxes still had to be paid, but were capped at Dh99 and no changes could be made after an offer had been accepted.

One disgruntled customer spent almost Dh600 on tickets, but after following the offer’s detailed online instructions said his flight deal had expired.

Others found similar problems, although IMG said it had contacted each customer experiencing difficulties to solve their issues.

“My friends said it was too good to be true, and guess what, it was,” one customer said on Facebook.

“I was told I had 48 hours to accept [the flight] and book after receiving the email.

“I opened the message 12-hours after receiving the flight offer, clicked the link provided but the offer had expired.”

The offer was heavily promoted online, on billboards in Dubai and local radio from July 14 throughout August.

Destinations including Beirut, Manila, Kiev and Cairo were made available under the offer.

The most popular free flight tickets requested were to Athens, Istanbul, Baku, Colombo and Mumbai, IMG said.

The company said ‘hundreds’ of customers had already booked free fights, and those experiencing problems were in the minority.

After purchasing a theme park season-pass, buyers were directed towards a four-step process to redeem an airline voucher.

Qualifying criteria said flights were confirmed and guaranteed on the purchase of the admission ticket, with departure airports including Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Athens, Delhi and Mumbai.

The promotion was offered by a European third party firm specialising in airline deals, that laid-out the online instructions for ticket buyers.

“Our partner has done similar programmes successfully with some of the top companies in the UAE, Europe and other parts of the world,” said Mr Otto.

“As specified on the IMG website, the offer is provided by the service provider who has the requisite processes to service the redemption of tickets.

“There have been many successful redemption of flight tickets.”

IMG Worlds of Adventure, on Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road near Arabian Ranches, opened in 2016.

It has five themed worlds, including Marvel superheroes and characters from the Cartoon Network.