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2019: General Discussion

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Benzin said:
So you're suggesting that for a seasonal job the parks hire (and pay) even more staff so they can have shift patterns?
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Yes. If it means staying open later and having motivated keen staff I think there should be more staff with fewer hours. - you pay per hour so in theory shouldn't cost more.

Including ERT a day 8am - 9pm for a 10-7 opening you simply couldn't expect people to work all day.

You also save money on breaks by giving shorter shifts
 
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I don't particularly care who has to tidy up after ride close and don't care how long it takes. I don't care how they manage to staff it during busy or quiet times as it's not my problem. I just want a great day out when I choose to visit may it be weekends or weekdays, peak or off peak. That's the expectation of everyone that visits and that's how Alton Towers market themselves. Fantastical ?

I want my money's worth, not just from the price of park entry but the cost, time and effort of getting there.

Tayto park in Ireland manage to open 10am to 6 pm (7 days a week) in May and June and 9.30 am to 7 pm (7 days a week) July and August. Now that is way better than nothing.
 
Stuie said:
They should do whatever it takes to run a theme park with decent opening hours and operations. How they do that isn't a concern for the customers.
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That means spending money. Let's face it, they're not exactly global leaders in spending money correctly in order to get a return of investment, never mind return on investment.
 
Stuie said:
As a customer, I don't care about that. Why should I?

10am to 4pm is abysmal.

All other theme parks in Europe do tidying up too. They don't close at 4pm because Susan has to empty the bins after the ride closes.
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I agree it isn't good. And you're right, as customers we shouldn't care. But most of us on here aren't just customers, we're enthusiasts as well and as such we usually want to know the nuts and bolts and ins and outs of how rides and parks operate. So I wrote that from an enthusiasts point of view. I was merely stating that any opening times - late or early - will incur extra costs due to staff tidying and preparing for the next day.

As for European parks, clearly they operate in other ways to Merlin and Merlin could certainly take a leaf out of their book and learn from them.
 
Danny said:
That means spending money. Let's face it, they're not exactly global leaders in spending money correctly in order to get a return of investment, never mind return on investment.
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Precisely, Towers' hands are tied by the budget given to them by Merlin...

Regarding staffing levels, then the question is how do you convince people to apply for these jobs who will actually stay on? Most people working at the parks are students on the ground level, so that straight off limits the off-peak times as the majority of staff won't be available for longer hours...

Then it's a case of budget by numbers, back at Chessie, 1 area required 20 staff to run at maximum efficiency during the summer season, so we'd need to add a few more on there for relief purposes, so we'll say 25 to round things out...

So in order to have the park running at full capacity you'd need about 100 staff members purely on hosting and operating... Add in an afternoon/evening shift and you would need to double it... That's just to run the park for a day!

Given the current job status and the lack of security you get working a seasonal job for Merlin (Will you get invited back next year?), there's no real appetite for students to get such a job... Why not get a standard 9-5 retail job that will only disappear if the company goes under but keeps you working for 12 months of the year rather than 8?

Like with anything, it's easy for people to say "well they should just do it", without thinking of the logistics of the thing making it incredibly difficult to actually implement it... Who would swap their 9-5 office job on here to run up and down Nemesis for 8 hours for minimum wage?
 
Me :D So many other parks open past 4pm, so clearly the it's not that Merlin can't, rather they have calculated that 10-4 maximises profit.

To which I would argue, improve the food and entertainment offerings. If Towers remains open until 6 every day, many more people will stop and have tea on park before going home. Also more will have time for the dungeons, and more rooms sold in the hotels
 
Matt.GC said:
Are we seriously defending a major theme park closing at a pathic 4pm by pretending that people actually WANT to get in their cars at half 4 and sit in rush hour traffic? I thought I'd heard all the crazy fanboy defenses of the park, how wrong I was.

Come on guys, we're cleverer than this, everyone knows the real reason behind 4pm closes and it's not anything to do with guest experience or demand.
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Looks like a lot of people have lapped up so much of Merlin's bull, for so long, they are now crapping it back out themselves.
 
I believe there's still a sign on Woodcutters bar saying "miss the traffic and let us do the cooking for you" - when did they ever do this? I haven't seen it stay open late for as long as I can remember. Again, it's another missed opportunity to improve guest satisfaction and raise extra revenue.
 
RoyJess said:
Getting rid of ERT to extend the park for another hour don't make sense. The only losers here will be Pass holders and Hotel guest. We have already loss 30 minutes of ERT.

ERT is a great way to beat the queues as well as helps to distribute the crowds. I personally would rather see them extend the ERT back to an hour, but the closing times should be at least 5pm off peak and 6pm peak days regardless of ERT.
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I’m not saying what the right thing to do is (which would be to keep ERT), im saying what I would do if I was given a similar budget to Towers by Merlin. As Rob says putting the ERT budget into the main operating day benefits a greater number of people. It’s a utilitarian model I suppose
 
Dave said:
I’m not saying what the right thing to do is (which would be to keep ERT), im saying what I would do if I was given a similar budget to Towers by Merlin. As Rob says putting the ERT budget into the main operating day benefits a greater number of people. It’s a utilitarian model I suppose
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The budget that Merlin is handing down to the parks is dismal. Alton is supposed (or was once) UK number 1 theme park and Merlin supposedly second to Disney. This is no way to run a theme park.

I can't see them doing away with the ERT as it is a perk to encourage people to stay in there hotels. However I can see them in the future as their hotels accommodation expand, that ERT will be eventually become a perk excursively to hotel guests only.

Doing away with ERT or even 4pm closure wouldn't be so bad if the park had better ride operations and put through so the ride queue waiting times weren't no more than 15 mins tops, but we know that this won't happen as Merlin are in the business of selling fast tracks.
 
ERT isn't even a decent perk for staying at their hotels. A poxy 30 minutes early park entry. Compare that to Universal Orlando where you get 1 hour ERT for potter and fastpasses for the large majority of attractions in both parks. Two days worth for every guest in your room if you stay one night, now that's a perk !

Universal know how to throughput on their rides though. If every guest at towers hotels had fastrack the standard queues would never move !
 
RoyJess said:
The budget that Merlin is handing down to the parks is dismal. Alton is supposed (or was once) UK number 1 theme park and Merlin supposedly second to Disney. This is no way to run a theme park.

I can't see them doing away with the ERT as it is a perk to encourage people to stay in there hotels. However I can see them in the future as their hotels accommodation expand, that ERT will be eventually become a perk excursively to hotel guests only.

Doing away with ERT or even 4pm closure wouldn't be so bad if the park had better ride operations and put through so the ride queue waiting times weren't no more than 15 mins tops, but we know that this won't happen as Merlin are in the business of selling fast tracks.
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Yes we know the budget is dismal, but that wasn’t the point of the post. Sometimes when discussing a topic you can explore some of the finer points rather than just bemoan the fact Merlin are a mediocre organisation with poor core management.

As discussed I don’t believe the current hours are correct and even with the abysmal budget I think they could have distributed the money a little better.
 
Dave said:
Yes we know the budget is dismal, but that wasn’t the point of the post. Sometimes when discussing a topic you can explore some of the finer points rather than just bemoan the fact Merlin are a mediocre organisation with poor core management.

As discussed I don’t believe the current hours are correct and even with the abysmal budget I think they could have distributed the money a little better.
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If my memory is correct, the season before they cut the ERT from 60 minutes to 30 minutes, the closing time for off peak was 4.30pm? I can't see that by cutting ERT altogether that Alton will add that time to the end of the day.

My concern is that if Alton was to cut things like ERT, then ERT will never make a return. And we should know from past experiences, once Merlin cuts something, it then it is unlikely to return. What ever way you look at it, Merlin has cut opening times down, and if they can get away with it, they will continue to do so. So if they do away with ERT and compensate it by putting extra opening hours onto the end of the day, then I can see that this addition hour added to the end of the day will only get cut again the next season without the return of ERT.

It's not just the themepark opening hours that are abysmal, so are our local Sealife centres.
 
I can't believe it... but I am going to stick up for Merlin a little here. As an ex-Towers employee from the early 2000's (for about 5 seasons) I can remember the days of the Summer Spectacular (think that is what they called it) - the Royal Marines display team show on the main lawns lake at 7pm every night for all of August.

This was very much a marketing-led show (i.e. Towers Marketing were the big driver behind it) and it had a 7pm ride close for all of August. Believe me, from 5:30pm onwards the ride queues were very short. From 6:30 onwards, the park was more often than nor dead & the rides were walk-on, with just the same people going round and round. This was with the "draw" of a stunt show / display to keep people on park too.

Yes, this was long before the days of the current cutbacks we are seeing - so maybe guests could get their ride-fill and head off earlier, whereas now they cannot with earlier closings. It must have cost Towers a lot to keep the park open for that extra hour or 90mins for not much, if any, additional income.
 
What about the people who don't bother visiting in the first place BECAUSE the park closes at 4?

Hey, by some of the logic I'm hearing on here - since many guests don't reach the park until gone 11 why don't they just go the whole hog open 11:30 - 16:00 every day? "British people" don't like getting up too early after all......

Opening times are a self fulling prophecy.
 
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Kraken27 said:
This was very much a marketing-led show (i.e. Towers Marketing were the big driver behind it) and it had a 7pm ride close for all of August. Believe me, from 5:30pm onwards the ride queues were very short. From 6:30 onwards, the park was more often than nor dead & the rides were walk-on, with just the same people going round and round. This was with the "draw" of a stunt show / display to keep people on park too.

Yes, this was long before the days of the current cutbacks we are seeing - so maybe guests could get their ride-fill and head off earlier, whereas now they cannot with earlier closings. It must have cost Towers a lot to keep the park open for that extra hour or 90mins for not much, if any, additional income.
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They clearly haven’t been doing anything to make people want to stay. As an example, Dreamland, are packed out until 11pm close with riders because of their programming and events.

Anyway, based on what you say, 17:30 got quiet. That would be more acceptable than 16:00 wouldn’t it?
 
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