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2025: General Discussion

Jb85 said:
To be a one ride area that ride would have to be stand out in any park to keep the area busy

Whilst Curse is in my opinion a great ride I can’t help but feel it needs some support

A flat or a coaster (broomstick coaster comeback - and yes I know it was fake!

But something ….. otherwise i think we’re already at the beginning of the end for Curse and Gloomy Wood
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Thirteen should have been built in GW, will die on the hill saying this. Curse would have made a brilliant support ride for Thirteen and it is a curious 'what if' moment.
 
QTXAdsy said:
Thirteen should have been built in GW, will die on the hill saying this. Curse would have made a brilliant support ride for Thirteen and it is a curious 'what if' moment.
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Agreed, along with wickerman in dark forest.

It could of looked fantastic in place of Rita set against the forest

Wickerman will always feel wrong for me in between a pirate and African themed area.

Would have been much better served as a water coaster type attraction.
 
Ash said:
Agreed, along with wickerman in dark forest.

It could of looked fantastic in place of Rita set against the forest

Wickerman will always feel wrong for me in between a pirate and African themed area.

Would have been much better served as a water coaster type attraction.
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IIRC, there was a consideration of having Wicker Man have a Jumanji theme at that time which honestly might have not been bad IF it had the entrance in Katanga Canyon and not Mutiny Bay then it might have blended in a bit better with a matching jungle theme. But yeah, Wicker Man in Dark Forest is a good shout though something different from a forest theme would be better, maybe honestly keeping the Ug Land theme to have it themed around a excavation of a fossil with the wood supports being scaffolding let's say.

Also regarding Thirteen in GW, had that been built in GW which would have likely seen a Duel refurb as what happens to other attractions in a area when a new ride opens, makes you question if a Curse revamp would either happen at all, certainly that attraction would also have a queue and it's high capacity would have been extremely useful to cover for Thirteen should that ride suffer downtime.

Honestly the dynamics and butterfly effects are always fascinating to me.
 
Hearing from quite a few friends who have been on park over the past few days that attendance is severely down this summer holiday, and the queue times do seem to reflect this. A couple have even said it’s akin to those quiet mid September days almost.

I do wonder if now is the time to announce a new headliner. I know we all know that other stuff needs fixing more, but perhaps both could be done at the same time.

Perhaps word of mouth on historically bad operations, awful queue times, shocking ride availability and rip off crap food is starting to bite. It is clear though that the park have been mostly smashing availability and operations over the past few weeks though.
 
s_g_k said:
Hearing from quite a few friends who have been on park over the past few days that attendance is severely down this summer holiday, and the queue times do seem to reflect this. A couple have even said it’s akin to those quiet mid September days almost.

I do wonder if now is the time to announce a new headliner. I know we all know that other stuff needs fixing more, but perhaps both could be done at the same time.

Perhaps word of mouth on historically bad operations, awful queue times, shocking ride availability and rip off crap food is starting to bite. It is clear though that the park have been mostly smashing availability and operations over the past few weeks though.
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The thing is, they can't announce a new headliner if they have nothing in the works. Even that would have limited results because A, it would just be an announcement and B, it would do little to nothing in changing peoples overarching opinions that you mention.
 
DistortAMG said:
The thing is, they can't announce a new headliner if they have nothing in the works. Even that would have limited results because A, it would just be an announcement and B, it would do little to nothing in changing peoples overarching opinions that you mention.
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Sorry, poor word choices on my part! Rather than announce, which would not cause an uplift in visitor numbers as you said, the park just needs one now.
 
s_g_k said:
Hearing from quite a few friends who have been on park over the past few days that attendance is severely down this summer holiday, and the queue times do seem to reflect this. A couple have even said it’s akin to those quiet mid September days almost.

I do wonder if now is the time to announce a new headliner. I know we all know that other stuff needs fixing more, but perhaps both could be done at the same time.

Perhaps word of mouth on historically bad operations, awful queue times, shocking ride availability and rip off crap food is starting to bite. It is clear though that the park have been mostly smashing availability and operations over the past few weeks though.
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What got me about my visit at the weekend was the lack of entertainment. We’d done the big rides and a few fillers, got to a point where it was nice weather and we’re longing for a show on the lawns. I really missed that summer of fun show they’ve done the past couple of years. I generally think I would’ve spent more money sitting with a show on than leaving early when we did! Perhaps a bit of a buzz and word of mouth might improve attendance?
 
s_g_k said:
Hearing from quite a few friends who have been on park over the past few days that attendance is severely down this summer holiday, and the queue times do seem to reflect this. A couple have even said it’s akin to those quiet mid September days almost.

I do wonder if now is the time to announce a new headliner. I know we all know that other stuff needs fixing more, but perhaps both could be done at the same time.

Perhaps word of mouth on historically bad operations, awful queue times, shocking ride availability and rip off crap food is starting to bite. It is clear though that the park have been mostly smashing availability and operations over the past few weeks though.
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Great news if this is the case.

People voting with their feet in significant numbers is the only hope for a real change in direction
 
D4n said:
Great news if this is the case.

People voting with their feet in significant numbers is the only hope for a real change in direction
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The problem there, though, is that the last time a significant amount of people voted with their feet in 2015, Merlin only doubled down further on the bad stuff.

Admittedly, it might be different now Merlin are both private and under different management, but the substantial attendance decline in 2015 only led to an accelerated timetable of cuts, so I wouldn’t be so sure that reduced attendance will necessarily lead to a positive change in direction.
 
DistortAMG said:
I like Gloomy Wood having one ride in it. It helps to sell the illusion of a haunted house in the woods. This would be completely lost if there was another ride, let alone a major one in the same area.
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I understand but you cam say this is a negative of GW as it pretty much to many only exists of you are heading to FV so having another attraction in that area that would blend in well to the area without running the theme as Thirteen in its current theme with say a few tweaks would fit well in GW.
D4n said:
Great news if this is the case.

People voting with their feet in significant numbers is the only hope for a real change in direction
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Ninja'd by @Matt N but I share the same feeling, this is Merlin who were talking about who's first response is cuts, if anything IMO this idea of voting with your feet makes things worse as Merlin will likely find a scapegoat for their own blundering issues which likely is why we have a rotating door of managers coming and going. That said for 2015 admittedly it was just after a certain accident that saw cuts across the board.

Honestly all of Merlin's woes seem to lead back to the Smiler accident.
 
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The early part of the school holidays is always the quietest. I’d say at least see what happens mid/late Aug visitor wise before jumping any conclusions.

The usual behaviour of a Merlin park that isn’t hitting budget is to pull back on opening hours and staff costs through staggered openings etc. We aren’t seeing that at Towers so far this year - the 7pm closes for Aug are still there and they are opening Walliams at 10am as opposed to 11am so actually some improvements in operating hours (and therefore increases in staffing costs for the park).

Jury is still out for me as to if there is any material issue with visitor numbers.
 
It’s worth remembering that people also said there were drastically fewer visitors in 2023 and 2024, yet any official figure we had regarding these suggested that visitor figures were higher than ever.

The last iteration of the Merlin graph suggested that 2023 had the highest attendance since at least 2010, and Bianca suggested that attendance grew again in 2024. Yet at the time, you’d have thought that attendance was through the floor based on online correspondence.
 
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