2026: General Discussion

[GooseOnTheLoose]

Efteling and AT are similar in a lot of ways yet perfectly demonstrate the difference in owners who care and prioritise reinvestment versus those who don’t.

I think you've got a little tangled in your own logic a bit. You've spent the better part of the last two years vehemently arguing that projects like The Curse at Alton Manor, the Nemesis Reborn retrack and the installation of Toxicator don't count as genuine "new" investments... Yet now you're, claiming that the owners do not prioritise reinvestment.

Taking tens of millions of pounds to entirely rebuild a 30 year old B&M, gut and renew a high capacity dark ride and replace a long lost flat ride on an existing concrete footprint is the literal, dictionary definition of reinvestment. You can't really complain that Merlin only ever reinvests in old assets rather than building new ones and then accuse them of failing to prioritise reinvestment.

The fundamental difference between Alton Towers and Efteling is not a matter of which boardroom cares more. The difference is that, from a purely logistical and economic standpoint, Alton Towers as a modern mega resort simply shouldn't work... And right now, it very much doesn't.

Efteling is situated in North Brabant, seamlessly integrated into the heavily subsidised and highly efficient Dutch public transport network. They have immediate, frictionless access to a massive pool of local talent who can commute to the park easily, cheaply and reliably to staff their restaurants and operate their rides.

Alton Towers is situated at the bottom of a logistical black hole in the Staffordshire Moorlands. As we have discussed ad nauseam, to work there, you generally need to own a car, pay extortionate young driver insurance premiums, and be willing to navigate 15 miles of winding B roads, all to earn the National Living Wage. Merlin controls the pay, yes, but they don't control the geographical and economic realities of the rural UK labour market. If you can't staff the park, the park fails to function, no matter how much you "care".

Efteling is owned by a foundation whose legal, sole mandate is the preservation and enhancement of the nature park and fairy tale atmosphere. Merlin is a highly leveraged corporate entity backed by private equity, whose legal mandate is to service its multi billion pound debt pile and provide a return for Blackstone and Kirkbi. The ownership models of both parks are diametrically opposed.

We've trodden this specific ground so often that the grass has worn away, so I'm not going to go several rounds with you on this one. Comparing a Dutch cultural foundation with excellent public infrastructure to a British private equity asset stranded in a forest achieves nothing other than raising blood pressures. This isn't me defending Merlin, or Towers, but merely explaining why the comparison doesn't actually really achieve anything. They're fundamentally different beasts, operating in fundamentally different realities.

 

[Dan19F1]

What I can’t work out though is all the other Merlin parks seem to look quite fresh - Legoland always looks good, Chessington seems to have had lots of work undertaken but Towers seems to have had… nothing?

Have they just not been allocated a sufficient budget by Merlin for the size of the park? Or has the change of leadership and upheaval at Towers over the past 6 months just caused basic things to be missed? I understand that Howard Ebison began at the start of January, maybe he hasn’t had time to have an impact yet?

 

[Hid]

Towers back in the Tussards days and even earlier days did they have good opening hours and did they use the Towers much for shows

 

[Dave]

What I can’t work out though is all the other Merlin parks seem to look quite fresh - Legoland always looks good, Chessington seems to have had lots of work undertaken but Towers seems to have had… nothing?

Have they just not been allocated a sufficient budget by Merlin for the size of the park? Or has the change of leadership and upheaval at Towers over the past 6 months just caused basic things to be missed? I understand that Howard Ebison began at the start of January, maybe he hasn’t had time to have an impact yet?

Thorpe looks dire, they are literally adding a council estate playground this year.

Lego is Lego, it’s kept a little better but I wouldn’t say it’s “fresh”.

Chessington still has areas that are truly shocking, it does seem to be the park that has the best current strategy and funding, I put that down to competition with Paultons.

 

[Dave]

Towers back in the Tussards days and even earlier days did they have good opening hours and did they use the Towers much for shows

It regularly opened until 8pm in the summer holidays. As for shows you had the Ice show, Talbot street/ Cred street theatre and the fountain square tent with multiple shows a day. Plus street entertainment.

 

[Hid]

Thorpe looks dire, they are literally adding a council estate playground this year.

Lego is Lego, it’s kept a little better but I wouldn’t say it’s “fresh”.

Chessington still has areas that are truly shocking, it does seem to be the park that has the best current strategy and funding, I put that down to competition with Paultons.

All 3 look better than a few years ago

Thorpe Park had project sparkle which helped a lot to remove the clutter.

Legoland is always looking great and fresh with new models and rides refurbed frequently.

Chessington is making great strides in this are repainting old areas.

Towers hasn't really done much at all to the right side of the park all focus has been on the left hand side

 

[Benzin]

Today's started well. Massive queue of traffic to get in. Then half the 10am openings not open.

Excited to see how bad it gets

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

Thorpe looks dire, they are literally adding a council estate playground this year.

Lego is Lego, it’s kept a little better but I wouldn’t say it’s “fresh”.

Chessington still has areas that are truly shocking, it does seem to be the park that has the best current strategy and funding, I put that down to competition with Paultons.

Strategically speaking, Chessington is the non-LEGO park it makes the most amount of sense to build up, and I can honestly see it start to be positioned increasingly more as Merlin's successor to Alton Towers in terms of a destination resort.

It doesn't have the location and local transport problems which plague Towers. It's literally within London, so has a massive tourist audience to draw from, in addition to being in an already affluent area too. With the passage of time, and the theme park having been part of the local area for almost 40 years, it appears that the planning issues it used to face aren't as horrendous either.

 

[Matt N]

On paper, I’d have said Thorpe would be the best one to build up, as it has all of the above (yes, it’s technically in Surrey rather than London, but it’s inside the M25 and I think it’s close enough to broadly count as being within the London area) as well as less restrictive planning than Chessington.

But for reasons unknown, Merlin seems to have abandoned Thorpe a bit following Hyperia… that place hasn’t had anything of note since Hyperia and seemingly has nothing in the pipeline that we know of. It’s disappointing given how much potential the park showed in 2024!

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

On paper, I’d have said Thorpe would be the best one to build up, as it has all of the above (yes, it’s technically in Surrey rather than London, but it’s inside the M25 and I think it’s close enough to broadly count as being within the London area) as well as less restrictive planning than Chessington.

My counter argument to this would be its limited size and footprint. I think Merlin have very wisely accepted that Thorpe Park is a great one day attraction, but not full on resort material and it would take an awful lot to get it to that point.

If they wanted to, in the future, they could position it as a companion additional park to Chessington's family offering, perhaps with a link bus between the two, but that's a different conversation for a different thread.

 

[Dave]

Strategically speaking, Chessington is the non-LEGO park it makes the most amount of sense to build up, and I can honestly see it start to be positioned increasingly more as Merlin's successor to Alton Towers in terms of a destination resort.

It doesn't have the location and local transport problems which plague Towers. It's literally within London, so has a massive tourist audience to draw from, in addition to being in an already affluent area too. With the passage of time, and the theme park having been part of the local area for almost 40 years, it appears that the planning issues it used to face aren't as horrendous either.

Chessington’s planning issues haven’t really changed, they have mostly just replaced existing attractions with new ones.

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

Chessington’s planning issues haven’t really changed, they have mostly just replaced existing attractions with new ones.

If we choose to ignore the from scratch land of "World of Jumanji" and the B&M Wing Coaster boomeranging through it with screaming guests, sure.

There's arguably a far more relaxed attitude toward the park, compared to the reaction from locals shortly after Vampire debuted. I'm not saying that they've got laisser carte blanche, but that that the issues aren't as horrendous as they previously have been.

 

[dave___]

Chessington’s planning issues haven’t really changed, they have mostly just replaced existing attractions with new ones.

Did they ever get permission for the big new water park they had planned?

 

[AT86]

Did they ever get permission for the big new water park they had planned?

Nope, that seems to have got stuck in planning purgatory.

 

[Hid]

I think ultimately Towers doesn't fit with a corporate entity needs to be on its own in order to truly prosper.

If Towers wad still in the Golden Era would it be superior to Paultons or Universal

 

[Benzin]

Today is just proving that the lack of support rides causes major problems when things aren't open or running at full capacity.

 

[dave___]

Today is just proving that the lack of support rides causes major problems when things aren't open or running at full capacity.

Just like last year.. and the year before.. etc

Bring back the Retrosquad at this point so there are actually things for people to go on

 

[Matt N]

I think ultimately Towers doesn't fit with a corporate entity needs to be on its own in order to truly prosper.

If Towers wad still in the Golden Era would it be superior to Paultons or Universal

If the park was on its own, though, I think it would have lacked the money to make it what it is today in many ways.

I think it’s quite rare to make a major success of a park without corporate ownership. The likes of Europa Park, Efteling and Phantasialand are outliers, I feel, and have taken many decades to curate their modern statuses; a lot of family-owned parks aren’t hugely visited. Sometimes, you do need a bit of that corporate financial might to get to the big leagues.

The “golden era” was a different era when a) theme parks were more of a novelty in Britain and b) times were better financially and people had more disposable income. And as much as we like to romanticise the Tussauds era, Tussauds, even under Pearson, were every bit as much of a faceless, profit-driven corporate entity as Merlin. You only have to look at things like how Wardley wasn’t allowed to enhance The Haunted House after opening because the ride had already generated the required profit (as confirmed by Wardley himself when he came on here a few years ago), or how many of the staff featured in the Magic Factory documentary, filmed in 1997, were already quite cynical about the focus on KPIs, profit margins and corporate buzzwords. The major difference is that Pearson were dealing with a younger park with newer core infrastructure, and also doing business in more favourable economic conditions for the theme park industry.

Were Pearson Tussauds faced with the park and economy we have today, I’m not sure their decision making would be so different.

 

[Dave]

I think ultimately Towers doesn't fit with a corporate entity needs to be on its own in order to truly prosper.

If Towers wad still in the Golden Era would it be superior to Paultons or Universal

I mean holistically it is still superior to Paultons, it’s just not run with the same care and attention. I think even a family run Towers would struggle to compete with Universal.

The problem you have is ultimately if Towers was still owned by the Bagshaws/ John Broome would it have had the big investments that came with early Tussauds? He was planning a schwarzkopf racing coaster on Nemesis site before Battersea bankrupted him. It might have remained a fairground in the woods as Wardley referred to it when Tussauds bought it.

But big business doesn’t operate like big business used to operate in the 90’s and there isn’t a single independent investor who could buy Alton Towers now even if Merlin were to sell it would be to the likes of Looping group, Aspro, Plopsa, etc.

 

[Hid]

Just like last year.. and the year before.. etc

Bring back the Retrosquad at this point so there are actually things for people to go

Some funfair rides would be good if they were themed in.

Technical Park Loop Fighter in Blade Pit, KMG Tango in X-Sector, possibly Carpriolo could be cool filler addition