2026: General Discussion

[NuttySquirrel]

Also leaves the door open for the return of such events if Towers can move the cultural expectation for a significant enough proportion of guests away from the “home for teatime” culture.

If they're going to do that they need to provide better quality "teatime" options than what's currently on offer, and keep table-service eateries open until park close. If people have to eat twice during their visit they won't be happy with home-made sandwiches on a bench.

It's great that this event is returning though, I hope they can sort the reliability issues that have plagued the start of the event for the last couple of years though.

 

[Bowser]

TPWW have released a video titled "The Sad Decline of Alton Towers".

Obviously it's just one person's opinion but i think a lot of it tallies with the general feel many people have of the park... the 90s Golden Era, still good 00s to mid 10's and then subsequent downfall to where we are today.

He still places a lot of the blame on The Smiler incident and the subsequent removal of many of the high throughput rides the following season, closed days and entertainment cutbacks.

Covid isn't cited as much of an impact which i agree with because all parks around the world suffered the same and bounced back.

WickerMan stands out as the lone positive major choice they've made in the past 10 years. Otherwise we had the awful temporary retro squad, the ridiculous up-charge of The Dungeons, ongoing lack of flat rides, continuous poor capacity, reduced opening hours, reduced staff, lack of upkeep, Aramark, reduced entertainment, reduced events, decline of heritage, lack of reliability... what a list!

Fixing and refreshing rides shouldn't be an opportunity to advertise "new" attractions, it should be the bare minimum but i accept people will also cite them as good decisions.

Do people think that we're still seeing the consequences of The Smiler incident? I'm not sure i do, i think it's more down to the parks continuous poor decisions and reduced investment following it. There have been other incidents at theme parks in both the UK and Europe of a similar scale (if not worse as they've resulted in fatalities) yet those parks outcomes don't seem to get attributed to their respective accidents. Arguably Gronalund would be the closest comparison point in recent memory, has the park been as affected in terms of attendance? They seem to have adopted the opposite approach by immediately investing heavily in new attractions.

If the investment trajectory had continued following WickerMan i think the park could have been seeing another boom but the reality is there have been no major new VISIBLE investments in 8 years but plenty of visible cutbacks.


From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77s-usDTWIc

 

[Hid]

Do people think that we're still seeing the consequences of The Smiler incident? I'm not sure i do, i think it's more down to the parks continuous poor decisions and reduced investment following it. There have been other incidents at theme parks in both the UK and Europe of a similar scale (if not worse as they've resulted in fatalities) yet those parks outcomes don't seem to get attributed to their respective accidents. Arguably Gronalund would be the closest comparison point in recent memory, has the park been as affected in terms of attendance? They seem to have adopted the opposite approach by immediately investing heavily in new attractions.

I think much of the current consequences are still because of The Smiler incident remember during 2016 and 2017 had a sharp decline in visitor numbers compared to previous years and on top of this people lost trust. In addition the filler ride line-up was decimated during that time. Hex, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Ripsaw, The Flume, Ice Age, Twirling Toadstool, Nemesis Sub Terra, Driving School. (Only 1992 had more attractions close in one season) That is going to have major knock on effect we have seen 4 of this rides that were closed either reopened or replaced.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Ice Age, Twirling Toadstool are still yet to be replaced not to mention before the Smiler incident there were empty plots where Submission and Ug Swinger used to be.

3 Main things from my perspective hurting Alton Towers food, quality, ride availability and ride and park general up keep.

. Food is the big one for me as I know improperly cooked food can kill you if not done right especially chicken.

. Ride Availability has seen an improvement upon a few years ago but still requires more improvement.

. General park up keep they don't seem to clean or paint areas up on the regular you have to do that consistently to keep park looking good. Most of it just needs jet washing to get rid of the grime some do need repainting

In my opinion I think Alton Towers budget is not big enough for the size of the park it is, clearly crying out for new owners with fresh ideas.

 

[Islander]

. Food is the big one for me as I know improperly cooked food can kill you if not done right especially chicken.

I feel that for all the many valid criticisms we can throw at Aramark, killing people is not really one of them...

 

[AltonLover123]

TPWW have released a video titled "The Sad Decline of Alton Towers".

Obviously it's just one person's opinion but i think a lot of it tallies with the general feel many people have of the park... the 90s Golden Era, still good 00s to mid 10's and then subsequent downfall to where we are today.

He still places a lot of the blame on The Smiler incident and the subsequent removal of many of the high throughput rides the following season, closed days and entertainment cutbacks.

Covid isn't cited as much of an impact which i agree with because all parks around the world suffered the same and bounced back.

WickerMan stands out as the lone positive major choice they've made in the past 10 years. Otherwise we had the awful temporary retro squad, the ridiculous up-charge of The Dungeons, ongoing lack of flat rides, continuous poor capacity, reduced opening hours, reduced staff, lack of upkeep, Aramark, reduced entertainment, reduced events, decline of heritage, lack of reliability... what a list!

Fixing and refreshing rides shouldn't be an opportunity to advertise "new" attractions, it should be the bare minimum but i accept people will also cite them as good decisions.

Do people think that we're still seeing the consequences of The Smiler incident? I'm not sure i do, i think it's more down to the parks continuous poor decisions and reduced investment following it. There have been other incidents at theme parks in both the UK and Europe of a similar scale (if not worse as they've resulted in fatalities) yet those parks outcomes don't seem to get attributed to their respective accidents. Arguably Gronalund would be the closest comparison point in recent memory, has the park been as affected in terms of attendance? They seem to have adopted the opposite approach by immediately investing heavily in new attractions.

If the investment trajectory had continued following WickerMan i think the park could have been seeing another boom but the reality is there have been no major new VISIBLE investments in 8 years but plenty of visible cutbacks.


From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77s-usDTWIc

I don’t think we should be giving him the platform. Whilst other parks may have “bounced back” after Covid, it’s clear to see that the combination of Covid following the years of dwindling gate figures and profit since 2015 was a combo that ultimately they’re still paying the price for now. Had Covid not happened, I would wager we’d have seen further big investments (not that they haven’t invested, but newer, more frequent and original ones).

Wickerman may have given them a much needed cash injection, but COVID put that back (and arguably in worse) position than post Smiler).

He also says he doesn’t beleive that the vandalism in the Towers was caused by the public, he outright blames the Ents team for it.

He’s clickbaiting.

Yes, Towers is in a sorry state, yes Merlin have contributed to that as much as Smiler did.

But to argue as he has that Covid had little to no impact is silly.

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

Covid isn't cited as much of an impact which i agree with because all parks around the world suffered the same and bounced back.

Suggesting that COVID isn't a valid factor because "everyone else bounced back" is, quite frankly, economically illiterate. It assumes that every economy, and every business model, operates in a vacuum where external factors are identical. They are not.

The UK economy did not "bounce back" in the same way the US or parts of the Eurozone did. We have suffered from stickier, higher inflation and a far more severe energy price shock than the US. When your operating costs (electricity to run coasters, gas to heat hotels, food ingredients) skyrocket, and your customers' disposable income plummets, you get squeezed at both ends.

The US printed money to stimulate their economy. We printed money to pay for furloughs and then got hit with a cost of living crisis compounded by Brexit (which increased import costs and decimated the seasonal labour market that parks rely on). Comparing Alton Towers' recovery to Universal Orlando's is comparing apples to monster trucks.

Merlin is a highly leveraged, private equity owned business. It carries a massive amount of debt. Post COVID, interest rates shot up to combat inflation. This means the cost of servicing that debt increased drastically. Millions of pounds that could have been spent on a flat ride or a 4D cinema refresh are now being spent just to pay the interest on the loans used to buy the company in the first place.

Independents, or family owned entities like Europa Park, do not necessarily have that same debt structure. They can reinvest profits directly. Merlin has to feed the debt monster first.

Yes, the virus itself is gone, but the economic long COVID (high interest rates, high material costs, expensive labour, and a skint domestic customer base) is very much still dictating the budget. Mr Sanbrooke might not see that on a front of ride POV, but it is writ large on the balance sheet.

WickerMan stands out as the lone positive major choice they've made in the past 10 years. Otherwise we had the awful temporary retro squad, the ridiculous up-charge of The Dungeons, ongoing lack of flat rides, continuous poor capacity, reduced opening hours, reduced staff, lack of upkeep, Aramark, reduced entertainment, reduced events, decline of heritage, lack of reliability... what a list!

Fixing and refreshing rides shouldn't be an opportunity to advertise "new" attractions, it should be the bare minimum but i accept people will also cite them as good decisions.

In an ideal world, you are correct. Maintenance should be OpEx and new rides should be CapEx. However, when you are looking at a project the size of the Nemesis retrack, or the Hex and Curse refurbishments, you are talking about tens of millions of pounds. That isn't "bare minimum maintenance" money found down the back of the sofa, it's a significant capital investment. To dismiss a £10 million project as "just fixing a ride" is enthusiast semantics. If they hadn't spent that money, we wouldn't have a "fixed" ride, we'd have a scrap pile and an empty pit.

That money has to come from somewhere. In the current economic climate, you cannot spend £15m rebuilding a coaster and £15m building a new dark ride in the same cycle. You have to choose.

I would argue that securing the future of Nemesis for another 30 years is a far better use of that budget than building a generic shiny new flat ride that will be broken in three years. We can lament that they let it get into that state in the first place (and we should), but fixing it is an investment. You cannot have your cake and eat it.

Do people think that we're still seeing the consequences of The Smiler incident? I'm not sure i do, i think it's more down to the parks continuous poor decisions and reduced investment following it. There have been other incidents at theme parks in both the UK and Europe of a similar scale (if not worse as they've resulted in fatalities) yet those parks outcomes don't seem to get attributed to their respective accidents. Arguably Gronalund would be the closest comparison point in recent memory, has the park been as affected in terms of attendance? They seem to have adopted the opposite approach by immediately investing heavily in new attractions.

Saying "we aren't still seeing the consequences" is to misunderstand how corporate trauma works. No, the park isn't empty because of the crash anymore. However, the crash fundamentally altered the risk appetite of the entire organisation. It turned a company that was willing to push boundaries into one which is paralysed by protocol and risk mitigation. It moved the decision making power away from creatives and handed it firmly to health and safety officers and accountants. That culture doesn't vanish overnight, unfortunately it is baked into the walls now.

If the investment trajectory had continued following WickerMan i think the park could have been seeing another boom but the reality is there have been no major new VISIBLE investments in 8 years but plenty of visible cutbacks.
From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77s-usDTWIc

Claiming there have been no "visible" investments requires a level of selective blindness.

You are discounting Nemesis Reborn presumably because it is a "refurbishment". To the casual visitor, the demographic that actually pays the bills, a ride that was closed for a year and has now reopened with completely different coloured track, a rebuilt station, extensive landscaping and a giant animated eye is, for all intents and purposes, a new attraction. It is visibly different. It is visibly new. It also had a significant marketing campaign behind it, making it extremely visible (as did The Curse at Alton Manor).

You presumably appear to be discounting Toxicator as "just Ripsaw 2.0" and therefore not a new investment.

Ripsaw was removed in 2015, when Toxicator opened in 2025, there had been a ten year gap. A decade. There is an entire generation of target demographic visitors who have never seen a Top Spin in Forbidden Valley. To suggest that filling a void that has been empty for ten years doesn't count as a "visible investment" is ludicrous.

If you paint a room, buy new furniture and install a new television, you have visibly invested in your house. You haven't just "maintained" it because the room was already there.

The investments are visible. You just don't like what you're seeing.

The decline isn't in the hardware. The hardware is arguably in the best state it has been for a decade (Nemesis, Hex, Sub-Terra all operational). The decline is in the staff, the opening hours, the food, the atmosphere.

It is the soul of the park that has been cut, not the steel.

Vloggers like "The Sad Decline" narrative because "Maintenance team does good job fixing 30 year old ride" doesn't get clicks. They need "NEW" to fuel their content mill. A park stabilising itself is boring for a YouTube channel, but it might just be essential for the park's survival.

 

[AltonLover123]

Saying "we aren't still seeing the consequences" is to misunderstand how corporate trauma works. No, the park isn't empty because of the crash anymore. However, the crash fundamentally altered the risk appetite of the entire organisation. It turned a company that was willing to push boundaries into one which is paralysed by protocol and risk mitigation. It moved the decision making power away from creatives and handed it firmly to health and safety officers and accountants. That culture doesn't vanish overnight, unfortunately it is baked into the walls now.

Great point here which again brings back one of Shaun’s points. He makes an argument that operations and throughputs were better pre-Smiler. He is correct. But he knows full well (as do we) that the culture in Merlin at the time was one part of the contributing factors that led to he tragedy.

We know from the HSE report that engineers were pushed to have as little downtime as possible to get their bonus’. That incentive causes lapses of judgement. We know the hosts and operators were pushed to be quicker or face a telling off.

The culture back then led to a arguably toxic environment.

Whilst I do not believe Alton’s throughouts are poor post smiler, they have obviously changed, and for good reason. He knows this. But again, he’s painting this in a negative light to get money.

Hes a creator. He wont make money by saying what he knows is true. He has to spin it and bend the truth to make a living.

 

[NuttySquirrel]

I feel that for all the many valid criticisms we can throw at Aramark, killing people is not really one of them...

I think they might have come pretty close actually. A couple of years ago Aramark suddenly put a temporary block on serving any food at all to allergen sufferers at all Merlin sites, which was strongly indicative of a knee jerk reaction to a major incident. Since then they have completely overhauled the ordering process for allergen-free meals and allergy sufferers must read through a policy document and agree to reject any food that arrives without an allergen flag. I suspect the wrong meal was given to a guest who consumed it in good faith and then became extremely ill across a result of allergen exposure. They're fortunate if no one died.

 

[Hid]

I feel that for all the many valid criticisms we can throw at Aramark, killing people is not really one of them...

Food improperly stored, improperly cooked or an unclean contaminated kitchens can contribute to a death. Aramark would be responsible for the quality of food and service

 

[Bert2theSpark]

Suggesting that COVID isn't a valid factor because "everyone else bounced back" is, quite frankly, economically illiterate. It assumes that every economy, and every business model, operates in a vacuum where external factors are identical. They are not.

The UK economy did not "bounce back" in the same way the US or parts of the Eurozone did. We have suffered from stickier, higher inflation and a far more severe energy price shock than the US. When your operating costs (electricity to run coasters, gas to heat hotels, food ingredients) skyrocket, and your customers' disposable income plummets, you get squeezed at both ends.

The US printed money to stimulate their economy. We printed money to pay for furloughs and then got hit with a cost of living crisis compounded by Brexit (which increased import costs and decimated the seasonal labour market that parks rely on). Comparing Alton Towers' recovery to Universal Orlando's is comparing apples to monster trucks.

Merlin is a highly leveraged, private equity owned business. It carries a massive amount of debt. Post COVID, interest rates shot up to combat inflation. This means the cost of servicing that debt increased drastically. Millions of pounds that could have been spent on a flat ride or a 4D cinema refresh are now being spent just to pay the interest on the loans used to buy the company in the first place.

Independents, or family owned entities like Europa Park, do not necessarily have that same debt structure. They can reinvest profits directly. Merlin has to feed the debt monster first.

Yes, the virus itself is gone, but the economic long COVID (high interest rates, high material costs, expensive labour, and a skint domestic customer base) is very much still dictating the budget. Mr Sanbrooke might not see that on a front of ride POV, but it is writ large on the balance sheet.

In an ideal world, you are correct. Maintenance should be OpEx and new rides should be CapEx. However, when you are looking at a project the size of the Nemesis retrack, or the Hex and Curse refurbishments, you are talking about tens of millions of pounds. That isn't "bare minimum maintenance" money found down the back of the sofa, it's a significant capital investment. To dismiss a £10 million project as "just fixing a ride" is enthusiast semantics. If they hadn't spent that money, we wouldn't have a "fixed" ride, we'd have a scrap pile and an empty pit.

That money has to come from somewhere. In the current economic climate, you cannot spend £15m rebuilding a coaster and £15m building a new dark ride in the same cycle. You have to choose.

I would argue that securing the future of Nemesis for another 30 years is a far better use of that budget than building a generic shiny new flat ride that will be broken in three years. We can lament that they let it get into that state in the first place (and we should), but fixing it is an investment. You cannot have your cake and eat it.

Saying "we aren't still seeing the consequences" is to misunderstand how corporate trauma works. No, the park isn't empty because of the crash anymore. However, the crash fundamentally altered the risk appetite of the entire organisation. It turned a company that was willing to push boundaries into one which is paralysed by protocol and risk mitigation. It moved the decision making power away from creatives and handed it firmly to health and safety officers and accountants. That culture doesn't vanish overnight, unfortunately it is baked into the walls now.

Claiming there have been no "visible" investments requires a level of selective blindness.

You are discounting Nemesis Reborn presumably because it is a "refurbishment". To the casual visitor, the demographic that actually pays the bills, a ride that was closed for a year and has now reopened with completely different coloured track, a rebuilt station, extensive landscaping and a giant animated eye is, for all intents and purposes, a new attraction. It is visibly different. It is visibly new. It also had a significant marketing campaign behind it, making it extremely visible (as did The Curse at Alton Manor).

You presumably appear to be discounting Toxicator as "just Ripsaw 2.0" and therefore not a new investment.

Ripsaw was removed in 2015, when Toxicator opened in 2025, there had been a ten year gap. A decade. There is an entire generation of target demographic visitors who have never seen a Top Spin in Forbidden Valley. To suggest that filling a void that has been empty for ten years doesn't count as a "visible investment" is ludicrous.

If you paint a room, buy new furniture and install a new television, you have visibly invested in your house. You haven't just "maintained" it because the room was already there.

The investments are visible. You just don't like what you're seeing.

The decline isn't in the hardware. The hardware is arguably in the best state it has been for a decade (Nemesis, Hex, Sub-Terra all operational). The decline is in the staff, the opening hours, the food, the atmosphere.

It is the soul of the park that has been cut, not the steel.

Vloggers like "The Sad Decline" narrative because "Maintenance team does good job fixing 30 year old ride" doesn't get clicks. They need "NEW" to fuel their content mill. A park stabilising itself is boring for a YouTube channel, but it might just be essential for the park's survival.

Wish there was a superlike for posts like this. Such a good summary of the whole situation at the moment, COVID is still very much working through its impact on reshaping the economy and society.

The economic factors are pretty insightful and gives perspective into Merlin’s decision-making at the moment. Undoubtedly some of the cuts we’re seeing at the moment will be reversed when they figure out what doesn’t work and loses them more money, but these will be reversed when the interest rates cool down a bit. Without the AI bubble, there will have easily been a recession, and the social and political discourse will have been drastically different to what we’re seeing now. Regardless, the UK is projected to have a strong 2026, but the effects of higher economic growth and lower inflation will take its time to trickled into Alton Towers’ revenue.

A lot of the spend of keeping things afloat with maintenance has been essential spend to keep customer confidence in the product offering. An active decision will have been made that investments into the likes of Nemesis, Sub Terra, Hex and Skyride will have been made against investment into new rides. There was clearly some level of political conflict within Merlin about this when Scott O’Neil stated he wouldn’t have spent the money to reinvest in Nemesis.

Merlin will be in the setting up a wish list of where it wants to be as a business in the next 10 years, where the UK tourist industry will continue to strengthen itself on the global stage (one only has to look where Comcast are making big investments at the moment). Merlin will be justifying their cuts as necessary to where they want to take the company internally, if they have to break convention to survive until then, then they will.

 

[Matt N]

I would argue that we are still feeling the effects of the crash in some ways.

As much as the park is not deserted anymore, decisions were made at that time as an indirect result of the crash that I think still have reverberating effects today.

Yes, cuts happened prior to the crash, but I think they accelerated big time after the crash in an attempt to claw back losses and cover for the fact that attendance fell by 25%.

For example, many people lament Walliams and the Dungeons. Cloud Cuckoo Land as an area didn’t get largely decimated until after the crash; many of the closures that led to that area’s demise were under the veneer of “TLC” between 2016 and 2018. With this in mind, I’d argue that those two attractions may not have happened had it not been for the crash.

On a similar thread, I’d also argue that cuts to things like support rides and entertainment were vastly accelerated as a result of the crash’s financial impact. Yes, there were cuts before, but the park was broadly able to service these and maintain a backbone support lineup… but when a large number of the attractions making up this backbone are cut at once as a knee jerk money-saving response, it becomes much harder to replace them.

 

[Hid]

Cloud Cuckoo Land probably the area hardest hit from the crash it lost all but 3 Rides remained which was sad to see.

Believe that area not just Cloud Cuckoo Land but as other as well has been nicknamed where rides go to end. Many older rides met their ends in that area Bouncing Bugs, Twirling Toadstool and Mini Apple.

Also noticed over the years it has been area that used to change the most with theatre constantly changing show or IP every few years. which kept it looking fresh.

 

[jon81uk]

The decline isn't in the hardware. The hardware is arguably in the best state it has been for a decade (Nemesis, Hex, Sub-Terra all operational). The decline is in the staff, the opening hours, the food, the atmosphere.

Yep I think the changes to outsource a lot of the operations is also a big factor in the decline in the staffing aspect as well as the overall food changes and potentially entertainment (we haven't really seen the full outcome of the ents outsourcing), I doubt staff feel as engaged when not working directly.
Opening hours I think have improved slightly though 2025 was a bit better and finally seems to be getting out of the rut.

 

[jarow]

I would argue that we are still feeling the effects of the crash in some ways.

As much as the park is not deserted anymore, decisions were made at that time as an indirect result of the crash that I think still have reverberating effects today.

Yes, cuts happened prior to the crash, but I think they accelerated big time after the crash in an attempt to claw back losses and cover for the fact that attendance fell by 25%.

For example, many people lament Walliams and the Dungeons. Cloud Cuckoo Land as an area didn’t get largely decimated until after the crash; many of the closures that led to that area’s demise were under the veneer of “TLC” between 2016 and 2018. With this in mind, I’d argue that those two attractions may not have happened had it not been for the crash.

On a similar thread, I’d also argue that cuts to things like support rides and entertainment were vastly accelerated as a result of the crash’s financial impact. Yes, there were cuts before, but the park was broadly able to service these and maintain a backbone support lineup… but when a large number of the attractions making up this backbone are cut at once as a knee jerk money-saving response, it becomes much harder to replace them.

Yes, I'd agree too that we are still seeing an impact of that incident unfortunately. As mentioned elsewhere on the thread, there were a number of rides that closed, and I feel it really wasn't until Toxicator opened that the park have gotten close to replacing them. There are still holes in the lineup that haven't been filled. Comparing the park's ride and ents lineup from 2013 when Smiler opened compared to today, even with Wicker Man, I feel overall there has been a regression.

I think one of the main problems facing Alton Towers is that it invested heavily into the hotels and attempts to market itself as a Resort, whilst simultaneously making absolutely no effort to attract people to stay with them. Sure, the themed rooms are a good selling point, but as a guest, especially staying off-peak, there's nothing to do. Theme park shuts at 4, waterpark shuts at 5, golf shuts at 5 or 6, and as far as I'm aware, very limited entertainment later on in the hotels. This, combined with poor quality, expensive dining options, and Alton Towers being located in the middle of nowhere, makes it a very unappealing place to stay in my opinion. I'm sure many families prefer to stay in Uttoxeter (or similar), where they pay a fraction of the cost and enjoy the local amenities within walking distance to the hotel. Towers could resolve this somewhat by increasing the benefits of staying on-site or by improving the evening entertainment. I'm still shocked that the waterpark closes so early.

 

[Mick]

The video was a nice whistlestop tour of all the changes Alton Towers has been through over the last 30 years, but that wouldn’t attract the same number of clicks as titling it ‘The sad decline of Alton Towers’.

I quite enjoyed seeing some of the photos and videos from the history, and as someone of a similar age to him it bought back some nostalgic memories. But the whole presenting opinion as fact loses major marks.

To dismiss Covid as not affecting the park, presumably because there was no major closures or obvious signs after it, is such blinkered thinking. As others have put far more eloquently that me, the knock on effect will have effected staffing costs, operating costs, financing costs, investment decisions. All the decisions that the government make today will be in part because of the financial position that Covid has put the country in, so to dismiss it outright loses any little credibility.

 

[Bowser]

The video was a nice whistlestop tour of all the changes Alton Towers has been through over the last 30 years, but that wouldn’t attract the same number of clicks as titling it ‘The sad decline of Alton Towers’.

I quite enjoyed seeing some of the photos and videos from the history, and as someone of a similar age to him it bought back some nostalgic memories. But the whole presenting opinion as fact loses major marks.

To dismiss Covid as not affecting the park, presumably because there was no major closures or obvious signs after it, is such blinkered thinking. As others have put far more eloquently that me, the knock on effect will have effected staffing costs, operating costs, financing costs, investment decisions. All the decisions that the government make today will be in part because of the financial position that Covid has put the country in, so to dismiss it outright loses any little credibility.

I don’t think he was dismissing it but he was saying it isn’t the main cause of the decline. Why aren’t those same effects being seen at other UK parks if they are government decisions? Also attendances quickly returned to near pre-pandemic levels across the industry.

 

[Hid]

One aspect I do notice most people who discuss problems about UK theme parks is the Brexit factor, it caused many problems in getting stuff across to the UK from increased costs in shipping the goods to the parks, getting the employee's they required, and more paper work required.

I reckon Alton Towers shortfalls are a combination of The Incident, Covid-19. Brexit and mismanagement of the direct aftermath to all the issues

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

I don’t think he was dismissing it but he was saying it isn’t the main cause of the decline. Why aren’t those same effects being seen at other UK parks if they are government decisions? Also attendances quickly returned to near pre-pandemic levels across the industry.

The assertion that these effects "aren't being seen at other UK parks" is, with the greatest of respect, demonstrably false. The effects are being seen, and in many cases, they are far more catastrophic than anything happening at Alton Towers.

Oakwood Park has ceased trading entirely. That is the ultimate "sad decline."

Lightwater Valley has actively dethrilled, removing its major rollercoasters to pivot into a family adventure park and was recently sold to Mellors.

Drayton Manor Park and Zoo fell into administration and was bought out. Its new owners have invested, yes, but their flagship coaster has been plagued with operational issues and delays, and basic throughput remains a park wide challenge.

Flamingo Land remains a park of stalled projects and a focus more on its zoo than its rides.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach, whose last major coaster opened in 2018, seems more focused on dynamic pricing and selling off heritage assets than major capital investment. I’d argue they are seeing the same effects, if not worse. They’ve cut opening hours, removed rides without replacement, and have some rather unique approaches to pricing and operations. They are hardly the beacon of post pandemic recovery.

And Pleasurewood Hills... well, it continues to exist, but has also been sold to a new operator.

Ah, but Paultons Park, you say? The shining city on the hill. Praise be! Except, comparing Paultons' success to Alton Towers' struggles is like comparing a successful, high end independent restaurant to the global logistics of McDonald's. They are not playing the same game. Paultons is a single, family owned site with a premium, low discount model. Merlin is a highly leveraged, global corporation built on volume. Even Paultons isn't immune. They started charging for carer tickets last year, a clear sign that they too are feeling the pinch.

Attendance returning to pre pandemic levels is a vanity metric if your operating costs have doubled in the same period. Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. If it costs you 40% more to staff, power, and supply the park than it did in 2019, but your ticket yield hasn't risen by the same margin, you have less money to spend.

 

[Islander]

The assertion that these effects "aren't being seen at other UK parks" is, with the greatest of respect, demonstrably false. The effects are being seen, and in many cases, they are far more catastrophic than anything happening at Alton Towers.

Oakwood Park has ceased trading entirely. That is the ultimate "sad decline."

Lightwater Valley has actively dethrilled, removing its major rollercoasters to pivot into a family adventure park and was recently sold to Mellors.

Drayton Manor Park and Zoo fell into administration and was bought out. Its new owners have invested, yes, but their flagship coaster has been plagued with operational issues and delays, and basic throughput remains a park wide challenge.

Flamingo Land remains a park of stalled projects and a focus more on its zoo than its rides.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach, whose last major coaster opened in 2018, seems more focused on dynamic pricing and selling off heritage assets than major capital investment. I’d argue they are seeing the same effects, if not worse. They’ve cut opening hours, removed rides without replacement, and have some rather unique approaches to pricing and operations. They are hardly the beacon of post pandemic recovery.

And Pleasurewood Hills... well, it continues to exist, but has also been sold to a new operator.

Ah, but Paultons Park, you say? The shining city on the hill. Praise be! Except, comparing Paultons' success to Alton Towers' struggles is like comparing a successful, high end independent restaurant to the global logistics of McDonald's. They are not playing the same game. Paultons is a single, family owned site with a premium, low discount model. Merlin is a highly leveraged, global corporation built on volume. Even Paultons isn't immune. They started charging for carer tickets last year, a clear sign that they too are feeling the pinch.

Attendance returning to pre pandemic levels is a vanity metric if your operating costs have doubled in the same period. Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. If it costs you 40% more to staff, power, and supply the park than it did in 2019, but your ticket yield hasn't risen by the same margin, you have less money to spend.

Ughhhhhhh I really hate agreeing with you Goose... but these are all excellent points.

To claim that other UK parks aren't seeing a similar decline (if we call it that) is, quite simply, farcical.

 

[Matt N]

One interesting point that is worth noting about the pandemic is that the few years following the pandemic, from about 2023 to about 2025, had a relative CAPEX spending spree at Merlin’s UK parks compared to prior years. At Alton, we had Curse, Nemesis Reborn and Toxicator in three consecutive years, we had Ghost Train and Hyperia at Thorpe, we had Jumanji at Chessington along with a proposed waterpark (had it not entered planning purgatory, I think this would have opened by now), and we had Minifigure Speedway at Legoland along with various resort activities like the Adventure Golf.

And in the coming years, we have a really exciting couple of years at Chessington (albeit somewhat of a dry spell at the other 3 beyond Bluey at Alton).

Surely if the pandemic had hit Merlin incredibly hard or been a main cause of decline, we would have seen all of this cancelled in 2020/2021? Projects opening in 2023 and beyond would have possibly not been conceived when lockdown hit, or if conceived, they would have been in an early enough stage to get cancelled in the midst of the pandemic if Merlin had really been feeling an existential threat.

I’m not saying it didn’t have an effect, but I don’t think saying it wasn’t one of Merlin’s main reasons for decline is necessarily inaccurate.