Existential Crisis? Towers and it's future

[HalfwayCorrected]

Single biggest thing AT could do to improve right now would be better staff wages.

After working in Rides for 4 seasons since I was 17 the single biggest issue staffing wise will always be pay. For under 21s it's still £6.83ph (£6.60 when I was there). The pay balances itself out in terms of value when it's summer or Scarefest when you are working 40+ every week but it's really not sustainable. Considering the cost of travel it works out at around 1 days work for a weeks worth of petrol give or take.

There's no doubt that people join with a passion and love for the place and the desire to deliver the best but the days are long and hard work, there's always conflict over something or another whether it be downtime, Parent Swaps anything like that. I joined with that passion but after 4 seasons of a job that becomes your life for very little pay and no permanent job you do wonder why and just generally start to let things slide.

Every season you'll start fully staffed but give it a few weeks particularly over Easter where unexpected ride close extensions happen and people will leave meaning by the time Scarefest rolls around and your on 14+ hour shifts your severely understaffed which makes everything so much harder.

I think a large amount of current issues can be traced back to underpaid staff

Long story short, if they offered a living wage with a contract that was permanent (yes you can do Christmas rides but that's gold dust) then you'd get people staying that retain the knowledge and understanding of the product. HR know this, past 2 seasons you'd get a bonus £1pph over Scarefest and fireworks if you didn't call in sick but that was only down to the masses leaving and then struggling to staff rides.

Better pay is definitely the way to improve the future imo

 

[Benjsh]

The minimum wage rise in April is going to be a killer for the Leisure industry. I work in retail (head office) and I'm going through a redundancy process right now due to the costs involved that are soon coming. It's estimated that the NMW wage rise alone is going to cost our company close to 800,000 this financial year.

I do fear for a lot of the smaller parks this year. How they can afford those rises and stay open is anyone's guess.

 

[Matt.GC]

That’s a fair argument, but one thing I would say is that I feel that the circumstances are very different now for multiple reasons.

The first is that from about 2010 onwards, I gather that Merlin were positioning the company to be floated on the stock market. Even though Merlin wasn’t floated on the stock market until late 2013, Nick Varney expressed very clear intentions of making the company a PLC from about 2010 onwards. This would naturally have affected the way in which the company invested and managed its business; Merlin would probably have tried to resort to some of the ways of a PLC from that point to try to make themselves attractive on the stock market in the coming years. Looking at the history of Merlin, I think that there is a correlation between when the “decline” is perceived to have begun (based on the hearsay of those who were around at the time, I’d pinpoint this to be somewhere around 2011… I don’t know if you’d agree) and when the company started making noises about being floated on the stock market (also in around 2010-2011, to my knowledge). This time, the company has gone private following a 6 year stint on the stock market that was deemed counterintuitive to the company’s prosperity, so I highly doubt that Merlin will be positioning to go public again any time soon.

The second thing I would say is that there is one major catalyst that massively amplified things and caused decline from the middle of the last decade… the Smiler crash. You can say what you want, but that crash had a truly catastrophic effect; the Merlin attendance graph suggests that in 2016 (the nadir of the post-crash years, and the first full season post-crash), attendance was around 25% lower than it had been in 2014, and it should be noted that 2014 was not an overly high year in itself according to the same graph (~2.3 million, which was actually the lowest post-Merlin year prior to the Smiler crash). When you sustain a massive attendance drop like that in such a short amount of time, you’re never going to escape without severe measures being taken. 2016’s attendance figure was 1.75 million according to the graph, which, 2020 aside, is the lowest year since at least 1984… that’s really quite a remarkable stat when you put it like that, and I think it shows that the park came closer to total disaster than many realise in the years post-Smiler. With this in mind, I think the cuts that happened were inescapable.

Had the Smiler crash not happened, I certainly think that we would not have seen rides like CATCF, Ripsaw and possibly even The Flume close, I think that we would not have seen shows like The Pirates of Mutiny Bay and Ice Age 4D mothballed, and I think that we would not have seen things like 4pm closes and midweek closed days.

Also, I’d be intrigued to know; why do you feel that the post-Smiler years were so vastly worse than any other time in the park’s history? I admittedly wasn’t there for this era, so my this is entirely based on the hearsay of others, but from what I’ve heard, the Charterhouse/DIC Tussauds years don’t sound any better. In 2004 in particular, Charterhouse culled rides at a rate beyond the rate at which Merlin culled them in 2016, and I also gather that events like Scarefest were unceremoniously cancelled in 2004, which never happened under Merlin. I admit that I could be wrong there, as I do not have first hand experience of this era, but that’s just my opinion based on what people have previously said about the mid-2000s at Alton Towers.

I believed I've mostly answered why I thought 2016 onwards was a worse period for the park in a previous thread where you asked me a similar question. I was there for late Broome, DIC and late PLC Merlin, although I accept I was only there for the latter 2 as an adult who paid for trips myself and I have very little experience of the park in the 80's. But mostly, my experience would be based on the fact that in the DIC years there was flesh to cut from the bone and in the post Smiler era the bone was already being scraped somewhat before they then went at it further with a nail file. Which leads us to where I see the park now - the last few year's have been so bad that we're grateful that some sort of return to an investment cycle is seen as a win.

Regarding the Smiler crash, it often gets characterised as an unavoidable event that was the absolute cause of decisions that were made after it. But the fact of the matter is, it was Merlin's internal culture and processes that allowed it to happen. They failed to protect the safety of the public, broke the law at a corporate level and (rightly) pled guilty to such charges. It wasn't an act of god. Neither was the choices they made afterwards. The Smiler accident was their fault, the decisions made afterwards were choices they decided to make as a result of breaking the law and I don't think they can completely be let of the hook for that any more than Rushi Sunak blaming public sector pay cuts or a crises in the health service on Vladimir Putin and Covid.

If I sell the roof of my house bit by bit, it's not the fault of the rain that my head is now wet. They decided that rushing to go public was a suitable business model, even though they were asset poor and operating in an industry that requires high levels of risky investment to generate returns. They decided that their processes were good enough to prevent accidents. They decided that the only way they could generate a return for shareholders was to implement the decisions they did after they made the above aforementioned decisions.

How can you be sure that Charlie, Ripsaw and the Flume would not have closed? Charlie's IP contract was running out, no plans were made to do anything about it. Ripsaw and the Flume were nearing the end of their lives, no plans were put in place to replace them. They may have limped on beyond 2015, but for how long? The crash probably hastened their closure and kicked replacement plans into the long grass. But again, the crash itself and it's response to it weren't acts of god were they?

Besides, although Wickerman replaced the Flume (a year or so later than it should have done), it's now a full 5 years since the other 2 closed, 3 of those years have been under private ownership and there's not a suitable replacement in sight. Maybe there are suitable replacements on there way, but the whole point in this thread is that I'm trying to debate whether or not we're confident in that happening. Since both are quicker wins than something like the new indoor coaster, I have my doubts. I'll of course happily eat my hat if a new family dark ride in the Charlie building and 3 permanent themed flats open within the next 2 years, but does anyone think there's any realistic prospect of that happening? Because if we don't, then is a corner really being turned or we just becoming greatful that it's not as bleak as it may have looked 3 or 4 years ago?

Which leads me on nicely to the subject of your first point. I won't be the only one on this forum who's either worked for a business which is public but is effectively up for sale (which happened with an employer I worked for recently) or for a business that is private but looking to float or flog on. Both behave similar as they have a tendency to make short term decisions that often involve shiny new expensive pieces of kit, measures that immediately inflate patronage and operational revenue and anything else that makes the business look sexy to potential buyers. To hell with the consequences as the buyers will assume the dept, pay the operational bills going forward and deal with the consequences. I think we all knew that the football that is Alton Towers was going to be kicked around the market yet again after Merlin were taken private like it has so many times already in its history. But it's seems to me like this is going to be a really short term flog on this time maybe? They've put a cheap paint brush around and have big promises of long term investment projects, they've demonstrated a need to pull in punters short term by providing money for events and quick fix fun fair flats and they've paid for it all (it seems) by squeezing the the dish cloths of food and hotels until they run dry.

Does anyone else find the excitement of promises of big new investments is overshadowed by what's happening with the food offering, the hotels and lack of progress on the basics in the park itself right now? I'm a sucker for super duper new coasters as the next person. But 3 years of fun fair flats, crap food getting even crappier whilst having the prices jacked up significantly and £700 per night hotel rooms where you have to check yourself in on a tablet and are provided with an inedible breakfast the next morning to visit a park that is pretty much the same as it was 2 years ago, if not worse?

 

[Zeock]

Does anyone else find the excitement of promises of big new investments is overshadowed by what's happening with the food offering, the hotels and lack of progress on the basics in the park itself right now? I'm a sucker for super duper new coasters as the next person. But 3 years of fun fair flats, crap food getting even crappier whilst having the prices jacked up significantly and £700 per night hotel rooms where you have to check yourself in on a tablet and are provided with an inedible breakfast the next morning to visit a park that is pretty much the same as it was 2 years ago, if not worse?

I do feel that the food offering, hotels and lack of basics do slightly overshadow the big new investments, but these investments seem to show Merlin turning a corner and perhaps the rest will be fixed after these high CAPEX projects are finished.

 

[Benjsh]

I think Towers are expecting another crazy busy season tbh. Due to the cost of living crisis there will be lots of families not going abroad this year I imagine. Probably means there will be some who decide or taking some staycations and days out instead.

 

[Matt N]

Given that Alton got approximately 2.35 million guests in 2021’s marginally shorter and partially restricted season (according to the Merlin attendance graph), and that Chessington (the one park to report 2022 figures in the last iteration of the graph) increased by a good 200,000 again in 2022, I absolutely think that we could be looking at 2.5 million or more in 2023 (and could quite possibly have breached 2.5 million in 2022).

For some idea, the park got 2.5 million in 2019, and 2.5 million would put them higher than some pre-Smiler crash years such as 2012 and 2014. If Alton Towers grew by 200k in 2022 as Chessington did, that would put their 2022 attendance roughly on par with that of 2013 (2.5-2.6 million, as per the graph).

 

[Zeock]

Given that Alton got approximately 2.35 million guests in 2021’s marginally shorter and partially restricted season (according to the Merlin attendance graph), and that Chessington (the one park to report 2022 figures in the last iteration of the graph) increased by a good 200,000 again in 2022, I absolutely think that we could be looking at 2.5 million or more in 2023 (and could quite possibly have breached 2.5 million in 2022).

For some idea, the park got 2.5 million in 2019, and 2.5 million would put them higher than some pre-Smiler crash years such as 2012 and 2014. If Alton Towers grew by 200k in 2022 as Chessington did, that would put their 2022 attendance roughly on par with that of 2013 (2.5-2.6 million, as per the graph).

Not surprised because the Smiler incident seems to have largely been forgotten by the GP, and where it hasn't, it has created notoriety, which entices people to visit. Only a very, very small group of people in 2023 are avoiding Towers due to that incident.

 

[Matt N]

Not surprised because the Smiler incident seems to have largely been forgotten by the GP, and where it hasn't, it has created notoriety, which entices people to visit. Only a very, very small group of people in 2023 are avoiding Towers due to that incident.

To be honest, I think Wicker Man made the crash a near complete irrelevance for most. While correlation of course doesn’t equal causation, you only have to look at the fact that numbers shot up by over 300,000 in 2018 (~2,187,500 in 2018 vs ~1,875,000 in 2017) to argue that it was a very successful investment that really zapped the momentum back into the park after a huge shock to the system in 2015 and a couple of dark years afterwards.

That only continued further in 2019, which, perhaps surprisingly, produced yet another increase of similar magnitude (~2,500,000 in 2019 vs ~2,187,500 in 2018). Whether this would have continued into 2020 is anyone’s guess (and we’ll never know given that COVID messed everything up again), but I think that you could certainly argue that the park had fully recovered from the Smiler crash (through an attendance lens, at least) by 2019.

 

[RyanUK]

Having read this topic and remembering about Merlin becoming a private company, I do feel that we are being a little harsh and looking for park problems.

@Matt N raises some good points about The Smiler incident and the park having to ditch things like The Pirates of Mutiny Bay and Ice Age 4D. When it comes to Ripsaw and The Flume, to my knowledge this was planned regardless of the incident. The massive fine led to falling visitor numbers, only for the pandemic to hit less than 4 years after the fine was handed out - something nobody saw coming. But I think people are forgetting about the cost of it. £5 million. Not a small sum, especially when you have to make cutbacks and Merlin pretty much told Towers management that it would be them and no other attraction that would have to make the cutbacks. Crikey, we should think ourselves lucky the Nemesis retrack is happening. The fine was handed out in 2016 - 6 and a bit years later we are still massively feeling the reverberations of that, and I’m sorry to say we probably still well, even for a few years now.

All is not squeaky clean within any theme park. I’m a southerner, Chessington and Thorpe are less than an hour away from me. They have the same problems. Towers isn’t alone. It’s great to see Chessington getting some decent investment in the last few years, as for Thorpe as much as I welcome them finally demolishing Old Town, I do feel they don’t need this big coaster and they reached their peak a few years ago.

I’m not massive regular visitor like others here. I used to be - life got busy. I have a keen eye for detail but what I do know is that little problems like flaking paint, ageing toilets and cheap food outlets at silly prices are found throughout Merlin’s attractions. Rich people are known to be tight sometimes - the same could be said with some companies and their assets…they’re just interested in bringing in the money.

 

[QTXAdsy]

I do feel the Smiler crash is a real turning point and I'm surprised no one has asked the question what if it never happened, would all the bad things we've seen happen with the park still have happened or maybe would have been delayed for another few years before a similar if not worst accident happened either at Towers or any other Merlin park? This likely will have to be a separate topic in the Talbot thread of what might have happened for the park if the crash never happened.

I do agree that the likes of Ripsaw would have limped on, Charlie might have still been SBNO with not even the Dungeons there or maybe there would have been something there by now? I try to be optimistic but not too much of happy clapper but when you see the recent state of the hotels and F&B, it is complicated to say if things can only get better. Maybe yes for the park but certainly not for the resort but even if the park is on the up, the many years of decline will take years to get it back to anyone near it's mid 90s height for if it isn't a lack of dark rides, its the lack of flat rides, if not them then lack of water rides, then even without them it's the F&B, even if not them its the hotels and that is just scratching the surface of the task that Merlin has to rebuild the park which is no small feat to attempt. It's just one thing after the other to try and fix though you could say that this is not just exclusive for the Merlin parks but rather many parks in the country but that is up to anyone's opinion.

I do feel the real problem is a lack of long term planning and many short terms fixes that I'd say has been with the park since the latter Tussauds days in which TWODW is the perfect poster child for this trend still being with us.

 

[Matt N]

@Matt N raises some good points about The Smiler incident and the park having to ditch things like The Pirates of Mutiny Bay and Ice Age 4D. When it comes to Ripsaw and The Flume, to my knowledge this was planned regardless of the incident. The massive fine led to falling visitor numbers, only for the pandemic to hit less than 4 years after the fine was handed out - something nobody saw coming. But I think people are forgetting about the cost of it. £5 million. Not a small sum, especially when you have to make cutbacks and Merlin pretty much told Towers management that it would be them and no other attraction that would have to make the cutbacks. Crikey, we should think ourselves lucky the Nemesis retrack is happening. The fine was handed out in 2016 - 6 and a bit years later we are still massively feeling the reverberations of that, and I’m sorry to say we probably still well, even for a few years now.

I don't deny that the incident overall had a huge, huge impact, but I wouldn't consider the fine itself to be a factor. If I'm remembering correctly, the fine was for Merlin Entertainments rather than Alton Towers as a standalone entity, and that fine wouldn't even register on Merlin's radar; in 2018, Merlin made £1,688million in revenue, £327m in operating income and £230million in net income (sourced from Wikipedia, which cites Merlin's own financial results). I gather that corporate fines are proportional to company profits, and £5m is a drop in the ocean for a corporation as huge as Merlin.

When I talk about the incident having had an impact, I'd wager that the financial impact of the roughly 550,000 lost visitors since 2014 (visitation was ~2,312,500 in 2014, and it hit a nadir of ~1,750,000 in 2016.), who didn't all return until 2019 (visitation returned to ~2,500,000 in 2019), would have been immeasurably greater than any financial impact incurred by paying the fine. I'd bet that the fine didn't even register on Merlin's radar; relative to the huge loss in profits as a result of the incident (profits within the RTP division were said to have gone down by £47m in 2015 as a result of the Smiler incident), the financial impact of the fine was likely to be miniscule.

I'd certainly be surprised if we were still "feeling the reverberations" of the fine itself now. The huge loss in visitor numbers and profits as a result of the accident? Perhaps so. But the fine itself? I doubt it, personally. I'm not saying you're wrong by any means, but I'd guess that the financial impact from the lost guests was far, far greater than the financial impact of the fine.

 

[Matt.GC]

If Sainsbury's don't mop a spillage up and an old lady slips, is seriously injured and the company faces a multi £million fine as a result, you're not being too harsh on the company if you go in and do your shopping a few years later expecting milk and bread to be on sale.

But the Smiler crash is besides the point, this is about the future direction of the park. The discussion is around whether the corner is being turned and the park is facing a bright future or not. It's a response to the glimmer of positivity some regularly seem to have and why they feel that way. Likewise, if you're like me and feel that the glimmer of hope you had at the beginning of 2021 is disappearing, and discussing why you think that's the case. As a bit of a glass half empty miser, I'd love it if my posts were thrown straight back in my face in a few years time.

It just feels like any progress they're making is 3 steps forward and about the same amount backwards to me at the moment. There's examples of new coaster hardware and Duel being kitted out being mentioned a lot.

But Alton Towers isn't just about 3/4 rides is it? Why is food getting worse? Why are the hotels now extortionate and shambolic? There's no progress on closed outlets. After Retrosquad were dumped in, there's zero progress on permanent flats. There's very little progress with upkeep and theming maintenance and what does happen is pretty poor. I'm no gardener, but some parts of the gardens looked like a jungle last season. The Rapids are an embarrassment. Walliams World is an embarrassment. Granted some of these need some serious long term planning. But some are quick wins and some are being made worse by conscious decisions some of which are being made right now, here in the present. Yet Horizon, as excited as we all for it, is going through planning first? My main concern is that the park will continue down the road of chucking something new and shiny up to draw them in every few years and the rest of the place can go to hell. That's what's happened for the last 2 decades as we've seen the park slowly but surely downgraded over time.

That's what happening now isn't it? Or am I wrong to think that?

 

[Matt N]

If Sainsbury's don't mop a spillage up and an old lady slips, is seriously injured and the company faces a multi £million fine as a result, you're not being too harsh on the company if you go in and do your shopping a few years later expecting milk and bread to be on sale.

But the Smiler crash is besides the point, this is about the future direction of the park. The discussion is around whether the corner is being turned and the park is facing a bright future or not. It's a response to the glimmer of positivity some regularly seem to have and why they feel that way. Likewise, if you're like me and feel that the glimmer of hope you had at the beginning of 2021 is disappearing, and discussing why you think that's the case. As a bit of a glass half empty miser, I'd love it if my posts were thrown straight back in my face in a few years time.

It just feels like any progress they're making is 3 steps forward and about the same amount backwards to me at the moment. There's examples of new coaster hardware and Duel being kitted out being mentioned a lot.

But Alton Towers isn't just about 3/4 rides is it? Why is food getting worse? Why are the hotels now extortionate and shambolic? There's no progress on closed outlets. After Retrosquad were dumped in, there's zero progress on permanent flats. There's very little progress with upkeep and theming maintenance and what does happen is pretty poor. I'm no gardener, but some parts of the gardens looked like a jungle last season. The Rapids are an embarrassment. Walliams World is an embarrassment. Granted some of these need some serious long term planning. But some are quick wins and some are being made worse by conscious decisions some of which are being made right now, here in the present. Yet Horizon, as excited as we all for it, is going through planning first? My main concern is that the park will continue down the road of chucking something new and shiny up to draw them in every few years and the rest of the place can go to hell. That's what's happened for the last 2 decades as we've seen the park slowly but surely downgraded over time.

That's what happening now isn't it? Or am I wrong to think that?

I think it depends on whether you view CAPEX investments into the ride lineup itself as more important or the other things on the side as more important.

Personally, the way I see it is that rides are ultimately Alton Towers' bread and butter, so my excitement about the CAPEX investments outweighs my disappointment with some of the not-so-good things that have happened.

Besides, you say about these CAPEX investments being the park "chucking up something new and shiny every few years to draw people in", but in my view, it is worth noting that two of the upcoming CAPEX investments are large-scale refurbishments/rethemes of existing rides rather than new major CAPEX investments; only Horizon fills that particular role.

The Curse at Alton Manor is a long-requested refurbishment of Duel that appears to harken back to the ride's roots somewhat while also presenting its own unique take on the concept designed bespokely for the 21st century guest. While it is being marketed as a "new" attraction to ensure that it draws people in, it is a significant investment into an existing attraction that appears to simply adjust the original concept for the modern day without any obvious "gimmick" or USP. It is also a significant investment into a non-coaster attraction, which many have been yearning for; while The Curse at Alton Manor is a retheme of an existing dark ride rather than a brand new one, it is still a significant dark ride investment, and if it is done well, it could provide a very valuable asset to Alton Towers' non-coaster ride lineup.

The Nemesis retrack is another instance of this. Rather than being a flashy new attraction, it's a case of the park rejuvenating a much-loved headline coaster and making sure that it's fit to thrill generations to come. As with The Curse of Alton Manor above, I would say that while it will likely be marketed as a "new" attraction to draw people in, it is a significant investment into an existing attraction that is likely to simply adjust the original concept for the modern day without any obvious "gimmick" or USP.

I do think that the Duel and Nemesis projects are not to be sniffed at. Both projects are substantial renovations of existing attractions without an obvious USP behind them, which I'd argue is a good sign. I can imagine that that would have been a very tough sell for Merlin a few years back.

While Project Horizon is a new, shiny attraction, I do think that it is an understandable investment, and it appears to be filling a long-unfilled void within Alton Towers' lineup. An indoor coaster should be a really valuable addition to the park to help bolster its all-weather lineup, and it would offer something very different to anything else currently at the park. Also, I do understand the timing behind it; by 2025, 7 years will have passed since Wicker Man opened. That's a long time to go without a new major draw.

In terms of the ride-related things that haven't currently been covered that you mention, such as flat rides and the Congo River Rapids, I think that these will all be covered in good time. You were never going to get an instantaneous solution to the flat ride issue, and with the upcoming CAPEX, the park currently has its hands very full up to 2025.

I'd argue that the projects being built now were of high priority and needed to happen now for various reasons. Duel was widely seen as problematic, and I'd argue that it was an easier nut to crack for a refurbishment than something like the Congo River Rapids. Nemesis likely couldn't last much longer without a retrack, so the refurbishment needed to happen now. 7 years is a long time to go without a major new draw, so kicking Project Horizon down the road for too much longer could have caused issues.

Besides, I'd argue that things are happening to help solve the problems caused by the flat ride issue. Sub-Terra reopening could well have a similar effect to the installation of a new flat ride; it is a new filler attraction, after all!

I also see the events as a real positive. While they're not really my thing, the park have expanded the events lineup immeasurably and also increased opening hours, which I'd argue to be a really good sign.

 

[rob666]

If Sainsbury's don't mop a spillage up and an old lady slips, is seriously injured and the company faces a multi £million fine as a result, you're not being too harsh on the company if you go in and do your shopping a few years later expecting milk and bread to be on sale.

But the Smiler crash is besides the point, this is about the future direction of the park. The discussion is around whether the corner is being turned and the park is facing a bright future or not. It's a response to the glimmer of positivity some regularly seem to have and why they feel that way. Likewise, if you're like me and feel that the glimmer of hope you had at the beginning of 2021 is disappearing, and discussing why you think that's the case. As a bit of a glass half empty miser, I'd love it if my posts were thrown straight back in my face in a few years time.

It just feels like any progress they're making is 3 steps forward and about the same amount backwards to me at the moment. There's examples of new coaster hardware and Duel being kitted out being mentioned a lot.

But Alton Towers isn't just about 3/4 rides is it? Why is food getting worse? Why are the hotels now extortionate and shambolic? There's no progress on closed outlets. After Retrosquad were dumped in, there's zero progress on permanent flats. There's very little progress with upkeep and theming maintenance and what does happen is pretty poor. I'm no gardener, but some parts of the gardens looked like a jungle last season. The Rapids are an embarrassment. Walliams World is an embarrassment. Granted some of these need some serious long term planning. But some are quick wins and some are being made worse by conscious decisions some of which are being made right now, here in the present. Yet Horizon, as excited as we all for it, is going through planning first? My main concern is that the park will continue down the road of chucking something new and shiny up to draw them in every few years and the rest of the place can go to hell. That's what's happened for the last 2 decades as we've seen the park slowly but surely downgraded over time.

That's what happening now isn't it? Or am I wrong to think that?

Firstly...
Is there a single example of Sainsburys, or any other supermarket, ever being fined multi million pounds for a single floor spillage that somebody slips on?
Ever?
Poor comparison.
The park has turned a corner, the resort hasn't, simplest of answers.

 

[Jb85]

Could this be down the way the parks are managed? The park request capex budgets, which seem to be a approved but operational budgets are set by head office and are frankly crap?

 

[Matt.GC]

Firstly...
Is there a single example of Sainsburys, or any other supermarket, ever being fined multi million pounds for a single floor spillage that somebody slips on?
Ever?
Poor comparison.
The park has turned a corner, the resort hasn't, simplest of answers.

£multli millions for numerous things such as price fixing, safety and selling out of codes. But it was a completely hypothetical scenario to make the point. If you pay for goods and services in any industry as a consumer, you don't "let them off" or level "be fair on them" arguments to excuse poor standards. You may cite that as a large contributing factor if this was a discussion about business, but not an excuse. It's still a faceless business, out to make money who we enter in to a contract with every time they we pay them for something in return. But as I stated above, that's neither here nor there as it's about whether the park is moving on up as others suggest it is which I find interesting discussion, rather than an autopsy of the law breaking this company has partaken in in the past.

 

[RyanUK]

I don't deny that the incident overall had a huge, huge impact, but I wouldn't consider the fine itself to be a factor. If I'm remembering correctly, the fine was for Merlin Entertainments rather than Alton Towers as a standalone entity, and that fine wouldn't even register on Merlin's radar; in 2018, Merlin made £1,688million in revenue, £327m in operating income and £230million in net income (sourced from Wikipedia, which cites Merlin's own financial results). I gather that corporate fines are proportional to company profits, and £5m is a drop in the ocean for a corporation as huge as Merlin.

When I talk about the incident having had an impact, I'd wager that the financial impact of the roughly 550,000 lost visitors since 2014 (visitation was ~2,312,500 in 2014, and it hit a nadir of ~1,750,000 in 2016.), who didn't all return until 2019 (visitation returned to ~2,500,000 in 2019), would have been immeasurably greater than any financial impact incurred by paying the fine. I'd bet that the fine didn't even register on Merlin's radar; relative to the huge loss in profits as a result of the incident (profits within the RTP division were said to have gone down by £47m in 2015 as a result of the Smiler incident), the financial impact of the fine was likely to be miniscule.

I'd certainly be surprised if we were still "feeling the reverberations" of the fine itself now. The huge loss in visitor numbers and profits as a result of the accident? Perhaps so. But the fine itself? I doubt it, personally. I'm not saying you're wrong by any means, but I'd guess that the financial impact from the lost guests was far, far greater than the financial impact of the fine.

Some rather good number crunching you’ve done there. As you say, a £5m fine is a drop in the ocean to their revenue and income.

I’m still going to bang the drum about the past though. Not just The Smiler crash, but the pandemic which majorly impacted the resort. They’re affecting the future of the park to a certain degree, hence why temporary rides from the Retro Squad are still hanging around. If none of the above had happened, flat rides might still have been removed with temporary ones bought in. Ripsaw’s removal is a classic example, it happened before the crash and the pandemic - and to my knowledge it was the parks plan not to put something in its place. Had the events not followed and all went tickety-boo until today, the Retro Squad might still have landed. Why? Cost savings. Out goes an old expensive ride to run like Ripsaw, and in comes something cheaper.

It’s clear to see @Matt.GC is interested in the future and that’s fine. And I agree totally that flat ride investment has lacked. But we need to remember the past and act on it from there. Some might say it’s gone full circle. All of Merlin’s parks have had dark times, unfortunately some now form the opinion that it’s Alton Towers’ time.

For me, Wicker Man was a completely awful investment. The obsession with a woodie in this country drives me mad. It looks good, sounds alright and walking underneath it on that new path is the closest I’m ever getting to it. Many miss The Flume but hey it’s gone now.

 

[Zeock]

For me, Wicker Man was a completely awful investment. The obsession with a woodie in this country drives me mad. It looks good, sounds alright and walking underneath it on that new path is the closest I’m ever getting to it. Many miss The Flume but hey it’s gone now.

Why do you think that it was an 'awful investment'? You could argue that the £16 million pounds spent on it was too much, but I would say that the fact it is so popular validates the ride as a successful investment.

 

[RyanUK]

Why do you think that it was an 'awful investment'? You could argue that the £16 million pounds spent on it was too much, but I would say that the fact it is so popular validates the ride as a successful investment.

It doesn’t fit in with the park and its surroundings. I’ve never seen it at full capacity or near that.

 

[Danscott22]

I know everyone has their own opinions, but saying Wicker Man was an awful investment is flat out bizarre. It’s gone down really well with the public, it’s a great ride, it’s well themed. Interesting take.