At least Nick was honest about turning a couple of the Swarm's rows backwards, though! And agreed - the cake was very good.
It was a good event, and I really enjoyed it. It was nice to hear from Andy Hine, too. Having not met him before, I was a bit apprehensive as to what he was like (having heard a few things about him), but he came across as a really nice guy, and I think all of us there learned a few things about what he knew of Nemesis while it was being developed and constructed.
Nick Varney. What's to say about him? Well, I got the impression that he does have a lot of passion for the parks, having worked at Alton Towers in the 1990s and then building up the Merlin empire since the mid-2000s. There were several things he said that I didn't necessarily agree with, but you're bound to get that with anyone. While we were having a chat with him in Dragon Bar after the extra rides on Nemesis, he did make comments about the later openings of some areas of the park - namely that he thought it better to have some areas opening late and the park closing early as a whole rather than having the whole park open for longer hours and then having some days when it was shut (like Legoland). Despite my misgivings about it, I do think what Nick said makes sense, though. Legoland's target market is families with children in a much younger age bracket than those in Towers' target market. As a lot of people who would go to Legoland are in school during the week, the park is very quiet, and it's not economically viable to open it on all those days, which is why there are midweek closures at the park. The target market for Towers, however, is those of an older demographic who may have days off from work/education during the week, and can afford the time to go to Towers when they have these days off. The total visitor count for these midweek days is obviously going to be lower than at weekends. Nick said that even if opening hours were 10am-5:30pm (for example) across the whole park for a whole quiet day as opposed to opening some rides an hour later or closing the park a bit earlier, then the park would be worse off financially than if they did have later ride openings or earlier park closures. Note that I am not necessarily saying that I agree with what Nick was saying about all this - just that I can understand what he's saying and explain why I think it makes sense.
One more thing. Nick did say to us in the bar that Thorpe will be getting a dark ride next year (no surprise), and that it'll be a game-changer for the UK, but gave no more information than that. I did jokingly offer to bribe him with a bottle of Southern Comfort in exchange for more information, but he politely declined.