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Opening Hours: A comparison around the UK and Europe

I'm surprised they havent started to blame Brexit yet for all the cuts!

With regards the opening times however, I can understand to some extent the closed and shorter days in the week when its off peak, but it would be more acceptable if an "off peak" ticket price was charged to reflect this. Might even attract more people to the park (and hotels) in the week if this was a reality.

With regards the opening times in the peak summer months, I think a "Summer Nights" event would go down well, although I can understand the logistics of emptying the park then letting only "ticket" holders back in could be a nightmare.

Perhaps opening hours are also being reduced to encourage people to spend more time in the "resort" hotels and the other attractions, i.e. waterpark, high/low ropes, mini golf etc.
 
GaryH said:
Perhaps opening hours are also being reduced to encourage people to spend more time in the "resort" hotels and the other attractions, i.e. waterpark, high/low ropes, mini golf etc.
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Tried doing that a couple of years ago and minigolf was closed by the time we got out the park, checked Towers Trading and got the monorail. Waterpark closes at 7pm so also isn't really an option as by the time you are in and changed its time to get out. If the waterpark was open until at least 9pm then maybe it would be worth getting in at 6pm.
 
The Marmaliser and The Portal are the only big theming pieces that are designed to work well at night. I believe the park is forbidden too much lighting as locals say it'd be left on all night and cause light pollution
 
Poisson said:
The Marmaliser and The Portal are the only big theming pieces that are designed to work well at night. I believe the park is forbidden too much lighting as locals say it'd be left on all night and cause light pollution
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Having read an account from a scout troup who did the camping on the front lawn supposedly power is cut off to whole areas of the park late at night so the lights and music and everything goes dead.
 
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The park are not forbidden to put in lighting, however any impact from lighting would be taken into consideration during the planning process/decision.

:)
 
Altonadvocate1 said:
C'mon, PeteB, this is your chance ;)
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I have nothing to add to this discussion. I'm in full agreement with everything that's already been said, and I think everyone knows my utter hatred of the grotesque company that is Merlin. I have similar feels towards the high level management of Towers itself.

At the end of the day, this has nothing to do with The Smiler incident. The park I loved effectively took it's last breath somewhere between 2003-2004. It limped on lifelessly until Merlin took over, hacked up it's meat and then fed it to the pigs.

Merlin are too stupid to recover the park. It IS crashing and burning as we speak.
 
2014 was a great year, that was the first time I visited the park, there were no budget cuts then. I guess pre-June 2015 was decent year but 2016 outside Scarefest was such an awful year especially when it came to opening hours and Non-coasters available... I just want the park to be at 2014 standards again and that was a really good year for Merlin too. (In-terms of profit)
 
AstroDan said:
2010 was a great season.

The last one that was.
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2010 will always be remembered as the renaissance season. After half a decade + of cut backs and regression, the park was on the up and looked like the new owners Merlin where serious about improving the park. Scarefest was excellent that year as well.

But the upwards trend Merlin started in 2008 was short lived and by 2013 when the Smiler opened, the park was looking more tired and unloved than ever. I thought 2016 was a new low, but it looks like 2017 is going to be even worse!
 
Bert2theSpark said:
2014 was a great year, that was the first time I visited the park, there were no budget cuts then. I guess pre-June 2015 was decent year but 2016 outside Scarefest was such an awful year especially when it came to opening hours and Non-coasters available... I just want the park to be at 2014 standards again and that was a really good year for Merlin too. (In-terms of profit)
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I'm afraid that just isn't true, there were cuts back in 2014. Submission was removed (reason cited as 'long term development of the park', it's still an empty space with no sign of development), Alton Towers Live was dropped and some rides has their opening pushed back to 11am. This is just what I can find from TowersStreet News for 2014. I know of other cuts, some of which were revered, but cannot remember if they were for 2013 or 2014.

2010 was the last truly good year. The Morwenna left, spider crabs arrived and things started going downhill!

:)
 
2010 was the last good all round year I suppose, 30th stuff, the return of fireworks? TH13TEEN and the massive guest numbers. 2013 was only decent due to The Smiler.
 
Rob said:
I'm afraid that just isn't true, there were cuts back in 2014. Submission was removed (reason cited as 'long term development of the park', it's still an empty space with no sign of development), Alton Towers Live was dropped and some rides has their opening pushed back to 11am. This is just what I can find from TowersStreet News for 2014. I know of other cuts, some of which were revered, but cannot remember if they were for 2013 or 2014.

2010 was the last truly good year. The Morwenna left, spider crabs arrived and things started going downhill!

:)
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I know a lot of people hold 2010 up high, and I agree some good things came of it, but it was still full of disappointments.

2010 Good points:
  • We finally got a new SW, 5 years after the mess that is Rita.
  • They did a great job with lighting at Scarefest, the park generally looked lovely everywhere.
  • Some Scarefest mazes were still at the hotels.
  • Fireworks finally returned.
2010 Bad points:
  • Th13teen was a massive disappointment, overhyped, over sold. We were completely misinformed about the ride and even the GP didn't take well to it.
  • Dark Forest turned out to be a massive WTF too, and nothing like what was proposed in the concept art.
  • Scarefest was already suffering cutbacks in comparison to the previous 3 years.
  • We lost Fo1KS and replaced it with the crappy Carnival of Screams, mindlessly shoved in an exposed marquee with the Boiler House slap bang in the middle of a car park.
  • Duel Live was turned into the crappy Skelvin's Haunted Adventure. Poorly received and didn't last another season.
  • The format of the fireworks event completely changed from the parks history and only 3 years prior to the last event. While the 30th Birthday Celebration was reasonably nice, it left a lot of people disappointed who had been visiting the firework event for many years prior.
There are many more, these are just some of the standout points for me. The only good thing I can say about 2010 is the addition of Th13teen, which once you got passed the fact it was completely mis-sold, for what it actually is it's a great ride.
 
I think a lot of the 2010 bad points are more subjective. Yes Thirteen was incorrectly marketed as a thrill ride but the marketing did it's job and got huge numbers of guests through the gate that year. You could argue that the subsequent disappointment led people not to return in the following years so I'll give you that.

Carnival of Screams I thought was pretty good in 2010, as was Boiler House. The fireworks were fantastic and it remains one of the best, if not the best, displays they have done since their return. But again they are just my opinions.

Ultimately in 2010 we had a busy park, 7pm openings in the summer, the excitement of a major new ride, the P!nk concert, what I would class as good end of season events and the best park lighting we have ever seen. For me the postives outweighed the negatives. However Merlin just allowed things to go downhill from 2011 onwards.

:)
 
PeteB said:
The format of the fireworks event completely changed from the parks history and only 3 years prior to the last event. While the 30th Birthday Celebration was reasonably nice, it left a lot of people disappointed who had been visiting the firework event for many years prior.
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If you mean three nights not five nights, that is still the fallout from the noise abatement order. Also the rise of ScareFest due to the order stopping the fireworks for a few years means you get ScareFest for half term and then fireworks the weekend after. I would expect if we did now go back to five nights of fireworks a weekend of ScareFest would be lost.

Pre noise abatement it was fireworks Fri/Sat/Sun of half term and then Sat-Sun weekend after (bonfire weekend), now with the post-2010 fireworks its ScareFest all week for half-term and then fireworks (Fri)/Sat/Sun of the following weekend.
 
PeteB said:
I know a lot of people hold 2010 up high, and I agree some good things came of it, but it was still full of disappointments.

2010 Good points:
  • We finally got a new SW, 5 years after the mess that is Rita.
  • They did a great job with lighting at Scarefest, the park generally looked lovely everywhere.
  • Some Scarefest mazes were still at the hotels.
  • Fireworks finally returned.
2010 Bad points:
  • Th13teen was a massive disappointment, overhyped, over sold. We were completely misinformed about the ride and even the GP didn't take well to it.
  • Dark Forest turned out to be a massive WTF too, and nothing like what was proposed in the concept art.
  • Scarefest was already suffering cutbacks in comparison to the previous 3 years.
  • We lost Fo1KS and replaced it with the crappy Carnival of Screams, mindlessly shoved in an exposed marquee with the Boiler House slap bang in the middle of a car park.
  • Duel Live was turned into the crappy Skelvin's Haunted Adventure. Poorly received and didn't last another season.
  • The format of the fireworks event completely changed from the parks history and only 3 years prior to the last event. While the 30th Birthday Celebration was reasonably nice, it left a lot of people disappointed who had been visiting the firework event for many years prior.
There are many more, these are just some of the standout points for me. The only good thing I can say about 2010 is the addition of Th13teen, which once you got passed the fact it was completely mis-sold, for what it actually is it's a great ride.
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Yes, but it was better than the 6 years that proceeded it and the 6 years that followed it. Early on under new ownership, the trajectory of the park seemed like it was headed in the right direction.

How wrong I turned out to be though. The DIC years now seem like a golden age compared with what we have now and 2017 is set to be even worse than 2016.
 
For many years, Towers was the flagship park of the UK (and one of the leading European parks), even perhaps still around 2010 time.

Now it's a regional park with pathetic opening hours, where any day over 7 hours is now somewhat a bonus, amongst a continuation of mothballed attractions, shops, eateries and even hotel rooms now.

Towers struggles to live up to the quality of park's Like Plopsaland and Tripsdrill as an experience, let alone the leading European park's which resemble Europa, Efteling and even Liseberg (to a lesser extent).

The Pleasure Beach will slaughter them in 2018 if recent trends are anything to go by.
 
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