I thought this would be a good time to compare previous years maps. These are the 2010, 11 and 12 maps together, and highlights (in case anybody had forgotten) just how much bigger the 2012 map was than the other 2. And given that 2011 is almost identical to 2012 you would think that they would have added more detail in the enlargement, but instead just blew the image up when the map was already known by them to not be very good at all.
I do like the colour coding of the separate areas from this year’s map though, compared to the 2011 approach which was to alternate the colours between the areas, and just made things ever more confusing. I don’t however like the fact that the entire back of the map is taken up by sections telling you about rides that are in the park and describing them. I think that was a waste of space which could have been used to advertise events and things like fried chicken. Instead they’ve got a small section on the events and I think Alton could have lost potential customers for them as it was not brought to their attention enough.
Onto the fact of hotels being on the map, I don’t think they necessarily need to go. I think the last 2 years have put a negative front on it, but it is helpful for the advertising of the hotels. If we think back to the 2010 map which was far better than the 2 following it, especially given it was half the size of this years, it had the pat rides in the right place etc. and it had the hotels on it, off to the side and it worked well. So I don’t think they really need to take the hotels off the 2013 map.
Finally to my last point. Probably the best theme park map I have ever used was Liseberg’s 2009 it wasn’t the best looking map ever, but it was definitely helpful and showed me where to go and how to get there.
But if you look at the size difference between that and this years Alton map I think it shows that for a map to be good and helpful it doesn’t necessarily have to be huge. Liseberg’s is tiny, but it was still helpful, obviously Alton’s would have to be bigger, but maybe 2013’s doesn’t have to be Scarefest size.
Now, 2013. I agree that it should be linked into SW7 for extra advertising, as then everytime the visitor looks at it, they think of SW7. And just because it should be linked in. I have always liked the idea of a sketched sort of style map, I think it would be good if it was like that for 2013 but maybe in a charcoal style rather than pencil and then coloured from that. It would be completely different to what they've had recently which needs to be done in my opinion. We've had maps in the same style for too long, it needs to be changed again to add that tiny little bit more to the experience.