You will get Beta and everything in the Thrillseeker Edition. My point though was that I paid an extra £30 to buy the Early Bird access which promised access to the alpha and the beta which I wouldn't get if I paid the cheaper version. I have hardly played the alpha because it's just not got enough there for me yet but the part I was most excited for was the beta, since most of the content and gameplay should be there by then. But now everyone else who paid the cheaper price is getting that as well...
If they had said back at the start that pre-orders would get Beta as well then I would have bought that instead of Early Bird as I'm not really bothered about Alpha. The money I paid for CHC is fine, it's not great at the moment but I've been told by the support team that it will get more involved so I have to trust them on that. What I don't trust though is the VIP passes. When are we going to find out anything about that? Someone asked in CHC and the answer was that they can't tell us anything yet. I feel sorry for all the people who paid £500 for a silly foundation stone thing that's probably never going to happen.
You made a set of assumptions about Beta. It was never stated that the only way to get Beta was to get the Early Bird edition. It has not yet been stated what the Beta entails, and given Bo's original "weekend" text it's entirely possible that it's going to be extremely limited.
My original assumption was that after Alpha ended, Frontier would open up Beta but at a slightly lower entry price. It appears that's close to the truth but not quite it. If you weren't interested in Alpha, it would have made sense to wait until closer to release to find out what Frontier's plans were for Beta.
I'd like more information about the guest designer (e.g. if it's just a case of picking from a preset face type, hair type, clothing type and giving your guests names, I'm not sure if it's worth the money; if it allows me to recreate my likeness or the likeness of a loved one, I'd be more inclined to think it would be value for money). At this point given all we've seen about guests is that their general face and body shape is hand-crafted with some variety in hairstyle/colour and clothing, so I think it's more likely to be toward the simple end. Having said that, Frontier have been working hard on a complex avatar creation system for Elite, so it's possible that might influence what we get.
As for the foundation stone, if it doesn't appear in game Frontier will refund it.
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is there an upgrade from the Early Bird to the VIP, I could not find one?
The VIP passes are bought separately. For the VIP pass to work you will need any copy of Planet Coaster (Early Bird, Preorder, Standard or Thrillseeker).