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2018: General Discussion

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So Merlin say that they can't market flat rides, which maybe that is true, to an extent. But do they really need to? They still benefit the park – having more flat rides is beneficial in that there are more rides on offer to soak up the crowds than just the "headlining" rollercoasters.

I think the problem is that Merlin won't stretch the budget far enough so that the park can have both. So they go with what's more marketable. Logical, I suppose. But the number of people on sites like TripAdvisor literally pleading for more family tier rides (flat rides and dark rides) is staggering. People really recognise there is a problem here.

In other words, this is yet another problem that can't be solved unless Merlin are willing to spend more money, and more frequently. So a problem that will probably go unsolved for quite some time.
 
Crap flat rides arent going to draw people in, but imagine not being able to market this...
watch-v-rhktjcqo3za.jpg
 
Trying to bring in some balanced opinion on flatrides and park operations....

The issue with flatrides for a public company like Merlin isn’t that they cannot market them. It’s that the return is over a single year. Once the first year is spent people don’t think “ohh let’s go to Alton Towers to ride Ripsaw”. If you look at what Merlin have invested in over the last few years it is coasters and IP’s as they have a longer return shelf life.

Flat rides are expensive and mostly they have one year of admissions for an accountant to apply against their purchase. This makes them look economically poor to someone like Merlin. Six flags do pull in some flatrides but they are not really competing in the same style as most of their parks have no in-state competitors, and those that do build more coasters (looking at you magic mountain).

Where this logic starts to fail is long term strategy which the current stocks based economy is working within. Flatrides improve guest satisfaction as they tend to base their opinion of a park on the number of rides they did on a given day. Merlin do know this to some extent but they have depended on existing hardware to ensure this response and now their flatrides hardware is aging they don’t know how to balance that against their shareholders demands.....

Shock horror capitalism isn’t really working, as much of a knob as he is Elon musk seems to be thinking the same based on recent news
 
MakoMania said:
Isn't that just shareholder impatience?
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Yes it is....

But in this day and age shareholders are the only driving force in capitalism, that is why nothing with a long maturity has any chance of being a success.

Even if a long term investment will ultimately bring in more money, sharehold of today are basically gamblers who want a quick buck and won’t wait.
 
Does a sw not have a shelf life though? I mean I'm not sure wickerman will be the must do ride next year and people would flock elsewhere if a rival park opened up the next must do ride?

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themeparkfan said:
Does a sw not have a shelf life though? I mean I'm not sure wickerman will be the must do ride next year and people would flock elsewhere if a rival park opened up the next must do ride?

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It’s a 4 year shelf life.
 
Did swarm at thorpe have a 4 year shelf life? Did DBGT? Lets be honest smiler was closed for 5 months after 2 years where is this 4 year shelf life for big projects? Perhaps they should do an experiment with a flat or two.

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Britford said:
How is that the fault of capitalism, Rather than Merlin just being bad at business?
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I agree, even though there's a current pattern of short termism in public corporations, this is something that can and will be corrected with time as businesses realize it is a bad and less productive model. Merlin shareholders clearly aren't reinvesting dividends/doing the right thing and their share price is reflecting that.
Under the alternative, which I presume is Socialism, you are throwing that entrepreneurship out of the window. In fact, here is a rather fine example of what a theme park would look like under the alternative economic model :)
38756551_1918949668128292_5990965824385449984_o.jpg

And yeah, I agree absolutely that a bunch of awesome looking flat rides could be easily marketed, especially if they do stuff which looks physically insane. Dreamland's new flats have apparently took off on Facebook, so it can be done.
 
My concern with this modern era is that profit is everything! I fully understand that a profit is a must for a commercial enterprise. However there is an obsession to get record growth year after year after year . There comes a point of saturation, for example when every town has a tesco and aldi, where do they get growth the year after if people won't or can't spend any more money. That is when these wonderful advisors like kpng step in and micromanage and over analyse everything to a point of staggering ride opening times to reduce staffing costs closing food outlets because they are not profitable enough and cost savings can be made. But will they accept responsibility when customer satisfaction decreases and businesses takes a downturn.

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themeparkfan said:
Did swarm at thorpe have a 4 year shelf life? Did DBGT? Lets be honest smiler was closed for 5 months after 2 years where is this 4 year shelf life for big projects? Perhaps they should do an experiment with a flat or two.

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You are mistaking actual gain from how an accountant would put the figures in a book.
 
Sauron97 said:
Under the alternative, which I presume is Socialism, you are throwing that entrepreneurship out of the window. In fact, here is a rather fine example of what a theme park would look like under the alternative economic model :)
38756551_1918949668128292_5990965824385449984_o.jpg
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Nobody has suggested socialism? Although Towers absolutely would unironically be better off publicly owned and run in the public interest so I'll suggest that.
 
Robert.W said:
So Merlin say that they can't market flat rides, which maybe that is true, to an extent. But do they really need to? They still benefit the park – having more flat rides is beneficial in that there are more rides on offer to soak up the crowds than just the "headlining" rollercoasters.

I think the problem is that Merlin won't stretch the budget far enough so that the park can have both. So they go with what's more marketable. Logical, I suppose. But the number of people on sites like TripAdvisor literally pleading for more family tier rides (flat rides and dark rides) is staggering. People really recognise there is a problem here.

In other words, this is yet another problem that can't be solved unless Merlin are willing to spend more money, and more frequently. So a problem that will probably go unsolved for quite some time.
Click to expand...

I'm torn over this. I can see the appeal of flat rides, but would i go to a park just to go one? Probably not. But i did travel all the way to Blackpool to do Icon, and Alton for Wicker Man.

Having said that though, it would be good to get some more flat rides to take the pressure off the Coaster queues. But i can see the thinking about not being able to market flats
 
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