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2022: General Discussion

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Excalibur said:
Would it be cost effective just to buy another Enterprise compared to how much they spent?

Effectively if they ever got rid they’ve had to put another circular ride in. Nebulez or however you spell it anyone? 😂

Also I’d LOVE to see a Top Spin come back, Ripsaw was one of my favourite rides at the park. I doubt the park would look at getting one again, and for that matter has any park ever got rid of a ride and then bought it back as such?
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A great many things would be cost effective in the long run than spending money on dead wood like Enterprise or Blade, or on hiring funfair rides for entire seasons. But a lot of it comes down to pots of money.

The period at Alton Towers since Wicker Man has represented some of the lowest - if not THE lowest - period of capital investment in the park's history. There just isn't the money in the 'new ride' pot. There is obviously money in the 'marketing' pot, though - hence the hired rides etc...

Business...
 
AstroDan said:
The period at Alton Towers since Wicker Man has represented some of the lowest - if not THE lowest - period of capital investment in the park's history. There just isn't the money in the 'new ride' pot. There is obviously money in the 'marketing' pot, though - hence the hired rides etc...

Business...
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In fairness, I’d imagine that the money in the “new ride” pot will have increased now that Merlin has gone private. That’s if the other UK Merlin RTPs are anything to go off of, anyway; Chessington is getting a phenomenal amount of investment at present, and Thorpe’s prospects are looking up now that Exodus is being built. Exodus was said to be the start of a 10-year long term plan of investment, I think (I could have imagined that, though…).

To be honest, I could see the RetroSquad being replaced by an entirely new permanent flat ride package in 2023. Merlin have recently shown a new open-ness to installing flat rides, what with the support rides within Project Amazon at Chessington, as well as Project Anchor in the same park, and I’d assume that the RetroSquad was done with the intention of testing the waters for permanent flat rides at Towers.
 
There is no comparison between the cheap Italian kids flat rides at Chessington as part of their 2023 investment and the idea of a 'package' of higher capacity family to thrill flat rides at Alton Towers, including design and theming. The Chessington rides are some of the cheapest available from a European manufacturer; a suite of thrilling flats at Alton would push £6-8m once all is accounted for.

There is absolutely no evidence at the moment of that investment in new rides is any higher now than it was across the RTP in general.

Thorpe haven't had anything £1m+ for years. Alton Towers, always the one park you could guarantee to get capex year-in-year-out have only installed a ride originally designed for a midway, opened some second hand frog hoppers (Peter Rabbit) and re-themed some non-ride kids attractions whilst hiring funfair rides. Heide-Park have been very quiet since the Colossos re-do, and Gardaland up until the current dark ride project have also been very quiet in terms of capex in the main theme park. There has been some investment in upcharge resort additions though - hotels, Dungeons, Legoland Water Parks etc. However, these are not inclusive within the theme park offer.

You are right to point out that there are investments coming, but there is no evidence that this will be sustained or long term. Medium years seem to be a thing of the past now - with the order of the day now seeming to be small-small-extra small-extra small-large, rather than a small-medium-small-large type cycle that we saw historically, up to the early 2010s.
 
In terms of why I cited Chessington’s flats; I apologise, as I think I worded my point badly. My point wasn’t the level of investment, but rather the principle of thinking about supporting flats. Merlin didn’t really do this pre-buyout, but it appears as though they’ve had an increased level of drive for flat rides as of late.

For what it’s worth, Nick Varney has apparently said in interviews that Merlin intends to increase CAPEX investment into the RTPs now that the company is private, and I remember him and the other higher-ups speaking a lot about “longer-term vision” in investments when the company initially went private.

We’ve seen a lot of things happen under private Merlin that I’m not necessarily sure would have happened before. For instance, my personal hunch is that things like the huge increases in events & entertainment across the board, a seemingly increased drive for maintenance and presentation (what with all this closed season maintenance that happens nowadays), the announcement of major CAPEX investment into most of the RTPs as of late (as far as I can tell, Gardaland’s dark ride, Chessington’s new land, Thorpe’s new coaster, and Nemesis’ retrack were all announced or at least rumoured in the public conscious post-buyout. After Colossos at Heide, nothing appeared to be in the pipeline pre-buyout, and Varney had alluded to reducing CAPEX further by 2022), as well as non-essential, non-marketable maintenance of increasing magnitude in recent years (for instance, Shaman at Gardaland was retracked in its entirety during the 2020/21 closed season, and Nemesis’ retrack is happening without any obvious marketing hook or rebrand attached).

Before I ramble too much, my point is that what Merlin did pre-buyout and pre-COVID isn’t necessarily what they will do now. I’d personally argue that there wasn’t really a long enough period of private Merlin to suss them out before COVID hit, and as COVID will likely have had an impact on their investment plans for 2021 and 2022 (it presumably reduced the scale of them to some extent), I reckon we’re yet to see the full extent of what they’ll be like long term. I think the short term signs are promising, what with the increased events calendars and recent major CAPEX announcements, but I think we might see some more medium years come along in the long term now that COVID isn’t as much of an issue.
 
Investment is anything but "phenomenal" at Chessington and much of it is long overdue. Brake Run - The Ride is just one coaster, almost a decade late in a park that is otherwise a complete mess. Meanwhile, Towers is getting as close to zero new investment as you can get (aside from the retracking of an existing attraction which, in fairness, is highly commendable, although you wonder what choice they had). The sticking plaster of fairground flats being wheeled in every season whilst 2 of its legacy flats keep seemingly getting emergency resuscitation every season is proof of that.

In fact, what's happening in Merlin parks in general since going private is completely the opposite to increasing long term Capital expenditure investment. I don't have the numbers but it seems to have gone down. We've got hired in travelling flats, better opening hours and investment in entertainment (all very welcome) whilst most even medium term investment seems to have almost completely dried up. Other than the long overdue baby B&M and baby hyper, there's pretty much nothing coming over the hill other than upcharges, a sprinkling of Tesco value flats, some play grounds and a few lashings of paint here and there.
 
Couldn’t the Nemesis retrack be counted as major CAPEX investment as well, though?

In terms of medium term investment; I maintain that I don’t think we can judge their long term intentions in that regard yet. COVID will likely have wrecked their 2021 and 2022 plans (the lockdowns and reduced income is likely where the money for these went, as Merlin publicly announced a CAPEX halt during the COVID period that was only recently lifted), and 2020 likely still had a bit of PLC Merlin’s legacy lingering. In terms of future plans; the reason nothing is being seen “over the hill” is likely because medium term investments don’t often begin to be rumoured/known about before the summer of the year before they open (so anything 2023 likely won’t begin to rumble about until summer 2022). It’s only really the majors that get rumoured and leaked years in advance, so if the parks do have medium term stuff planned for 2023 and beyond, the reason that it’s being assumed they don’t is because it’s too early to know about it yet.
 
I think it’s fair to say there are some encouraging signs that investment will start to pick up- events, maintenance, opening hours etc. The fact that larger investments will be multi-year projects means that it will take some time for any increase in this type of investments to work through development and come to fruition. I’m sure Covid will have disrupted that to an extent too.

The next 18-24 months will show whether there really has been an upturn in capex.
 
Matt N said:
Couldn’t the Nemesis retrack be counted as major CAPEX investment as well, though?

In terms of medium term investment; I maintain that I don’t think we can judge their long term intentions in that regard yet. COVID will likely have wrecked their 2021 and 2022 plans (the lockdowns and reduced income is likely where the money for these went, as Merlin publicly announced a CAPEX halt during the COVID period that was only recently lifted), and 2020 likely still had a bit of PLC Merlin’s legacy lingering. In terms of future plans; the reason nothing is being seen “over the hill” is likely because medium term investments don’t often begin to be rumoured/known about before the summer of the year before they open (so anything 2023 likely won’t begin to rumble about until summer 2022). It’s only really the majors that get rumoured and leaked years in advance, so if the parks do have medium term stuff planned for 2023 and beyond, the reason that it’s being assumed they don’t is because it’s too early to know about it yet.
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You raise an interesting point. And whilst I think there is a dose of your signature optimism here, it does remain to be seen what will be coming over the hill.

Nemesis is a very welcome investment, but what were the alternatives? There's a big ol' pit there and Alton can't really afford to loose anything else, especially something like Nemesis. Any alternative would cost far more so I think they were kind of backed into a corner. I think they made the right choice however.

In terms of their long term intentions, we can only really predict from what we know. We know that the latter days of PLC Merlin we had announcements of cut after cut in both OP and CAP. Then, we saw some unpredicted behaviour with all the operational expenditure that they've pumped in the last couple of seasons at Towers. Fully commendable but I'm not convinced the leopard has changed its spots.

"Investment" - which my last employer proved can be a word that can easily cover a lie - can be subjective. If I cut my kids pocket money back from £2 to £1 then increase it to £1.50 a year later, then I can spin that as long term "investment". Investing 50% extra of nothing is still practically nothing.

Then we have all the hallmarks of PLC Merlin still present. A lashing of paint on an old area with a new attraction in it and passing it off as a brand new area - check. Another small and woeful capacity coaster at Chessington - check. A proposal of another short coaster being installed where loads of money has been spent chasing a record/marketable USP, possibly at the detriment of the ride experience - check.

Meanwhile, Towers enters 2022 with its last major or medium investment being 3 years ago, a laughable ghost train, a rapids in name only and hired in fairground flats papering over insufficiencies in its ride lineup - with almost nothing of note for the GP on the horizon in the near or medium term future.
 
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I think the difficulty at the moment is that we have no idea on the direction of Alton Towers in terms of rides. There is no knowledge of the next new attraction. In fact, only 12 months ago we didn't know what the next new attraction was going to be at any of Chessington, Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Heide-Park or Gardaland. For such a major operator with a suite of large theme parks... that seems crazy to me! Compare that with parks in CdA group, or Cedar Fair, or Plopsa, or Six Flags - and you can look at their parks and see a range of new additions across some or most of them.

Hopefully a long term vision is being worked on right here, right now.
 
Matt.GC said:
You raise an interesting point. And whilst I think there is a dose of your signature optimism here, it does remain to be seen what will be coming over the hill.

Nemesis is a very welcome investment, but what were the alternatives? There's a big ol' put there and Alton can't really afford to loose anything else, especially something like Nemesis. Any alternative would cost far more so I think they were kind of backed into a corner. I think they made the right choice however.

In terms of their long term intentions, we can only really predict from what we know. We know that the latter days of PLC Merlin we had announcements of cut after cut in both OP and CAP. Then, we saw some unpredicted behaviour with all the operational expenditure that they've pumped in the last couple of seasons at Towers. Fully commendable but I'm not convinced the leopard has changed its spots.

"Investment" - which my last employer proved can be a word that can easily cover a lie - can be subjective. If I cut my kids pocket money back from £2 to £1 then increase it to £1.50 a year later, then I can spin that as long term "investment". Investing 50% extra of nothing is still practically nothing.

Then we have all the hallmarks of PLC Merlin still present. A lashing of paint on an old area with a new attraction in it and passing it off as a brand new area - check. Another small and woeful capacity coaster at Chessington - check. A proposal of another short coaster being installed where loads of money has been spent chasing a record/marketable USP, possibly at the detriment of the ride experience - check.

Meanwhile, Towers enters 2022 with its last major or medium investment being 3 years ago, a laughable ghost train, a rapids in name only and hired in fairground flats papering over insufficiencies in its ride lineup - with almost nothing of note for the GP on the horizon in the near or medium term future.
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With regard to the bolded; are you referring to Gangsta Granny/Walliams World? If so, I’d imagine that PLC Merlin still influenced that one. It was originally planned for 2020 prior to COVID, and the buyout only occurred in late 2019, so private Merlin likely wouldn’t have had much influence there. I think the investment had likely even been signed off by Merlin to operate at the start of 2020 prior to COVID, as John Burton had done promotional photoshoots outside the area before COVID shut the parks (which happened within mere days of the planned 2020 season start, from memory).

In terms of the other 2; I don’t know about you, but I personally think that context is quite important to consider here.

Chessington’s last coaster was in 2004, and their last ride investment of £5m+ was in 2013, so to see a B&M of all things at a park that hasn’t exactly received a plethora of major CAPEX investment as of late is really quite remarkable, in my opinion.

Ditto with Thorpe. Their last major was in 2016, their last coaster was in 2012, and their last 2 majors had not really had any impact upon guest figures, so from a business standpoint, Merlin would have been forgiven for not greenlighting another one. Let alone a ride of the size we’re getting! Exodus is supposedly costing £18m (as per the planning application), and I think it’s easy to underestimate the pure enormity of the ride. It’s to be the UK’s tallest roller coaster by either 1ft or 23ft dependent on whose metric you use, and some of those elements look to be massive too; all 3 of the ride’s non-lift hill high points will be well over 100ft tall, and taller than all of Thorpe’s other coasters bar Stealth. While Exodus is not the world’s longest hyper coaster by any stretch, it’s by no means a phenomenally short ride, and those massive elements certainly won’t be cheap or minimal in terms of the amount of track and expenditure they require. With Thorpe’s previous major investment record and previous investment history in mind, I personally think that an investment of that enormity (£18m will be among Thorpe’s largest ever investments, and among Merlin’s largest investments) is phenomenally applaudable, and not something that many were expecting (I know many were surprised that Merlin had even green-lighted a new major coaster for Thorpe)!
 
Matt N said:
With regard to the bolded; are you referring to Gangsta Granny/Walliams World? If so, I’d imagine that PLC Merlin still influenced that one. It was originally planned for 2020 prior to COVID, and the buyout only occurred in late 2019, so private Merlin likely wouldn’t have had much influence there. I think the investment had likely even been signed off by Merlin to operate at the start of 2020 prior to COVID, as John Burton had done promotional photoshoots outside the area before COVID shut the parks (which happened within mere days of the planned 2020 season start, from memory).

In terms of the other 2; I don’t know about you, but I personally think that context is quite important to consider here.

Chessington’s last coaster was in 2004, and their last ride investment of £5m+ was in 2013, so to see a B&M of all things at a park that hasn’t exactly received a plethora of major CAPEX investment as of late is really quite remarkable, in my opinion.

Ditto with Thorpe. Their last major was in 2016, their last coaster was in 2012, and their last 2 majors had not really had any impact upon guest figures, so from a business standpoint, Merlin would have been forgiven for not greenlighting another one. Let alone a ride of the size we’re getting! Exodus is supposedly costing £18m (as per the planning application), and I think it’s easy to underestimate the pure enormity of the ride. It’s to be the UK’s tallest roller coaster by either 1ft or 23ft dependent on whose metric you use, and some of those elements look to be massive too; all 3 of the ride’s non-lift hill high points will be well over 100ft tall, and taller than all of Thorpe’s other coasters bar Stealth. While Exodus is not the world’s longest hyper coaster by any stretch, it’s by no means a phenomenally short ride, and those massive elements certainly won’t be cheap or minimal in terms of the amount of track and expenditure they require. With Thorpe’s previous major investment record and previous investment history in mind, I personally think that an investment of that enormity (£18m will be among Thorpe’s largest ever investments, and among Merlin’s largest investments) is phenomenally applaudable, and not something that many were expecting (I know many were surprised that Merlin had even green-lighted a new major coaster for Thorpe)!
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I'm sorry, but from what we know of it so far, Brake Run - The Ride is most likely going to be incredibly short by every imaginable measure. We'll know for sure when it opens but it would not surprise me at all of it breaks the record of being either the shortest by track or ride time of any chain lift propelled hyper in the world. Judgment will be reserved until we actually know more about it but everything is pointing at it being incredibly short for its height.

I agree that context is to be considered here. The context I view it from is that PLC Merlin cut themselves into a corner and probably ended up private as there was no means of escape from it. Hallmarks of many a PLC that has since been delisted before them. I don't see cutting back to the bone and then selling any investment as a good news story as a success. When you're at the bottom, the only way is up after all. There's also no way of knowing where the company would be had they not been taken private at this stage and we'll never know for sure. I would imagine Thorpe and Chessington would always have had those coasters - like I said it was long overdue at both. I don't think that either being green lit has anything to do with how the company is structured. Different politics would be at play, maybe they both would have been different. But either way there's no knowing for sure that neither would have happened or not under the PLC.

You can bet your bottom dollar the entertainment at Towers and better opening hours wouldn't be happening right now, but then in the same vain you could argue that both Chessington and Thorpe's investments could have had bigger budgets so who knows?

One thing's for sure, I wouldn't listen to any guff that's spouted in planning applications. Of course a company headed by an experienced marketeer would make every upcoming attraction out to be the best thing since Jesus. They want to twist a local authorities arm into giving them what they want. Investment into the future, longer term investment strategies, contributing to the local economy, X amount of jobs created blah blah blah. It's pretty standard stuff from any companies play book. They even spouted nonsense about that imaginary London Resort in the applications when realistically no one at Merlin of sane mind thought that was ever going to happen.

And yes, I was referring to the shameful condition of Walliams World in the bolded.
 
Danscott22 said:
Not sure where to put this, but it's related to 2022 visits - currently in a 18000 person queue to get onto Sun Savers for Alton Towers booking :sweatsmile:
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My wife and I both managed to get a set of tickets for it. The funny thing though was that the booking went live at 10am, I logged on to the Sun Savers page at 9.45, was put in the pre-queue and ended up with a 55 minute queue when it turned 10, whereas my wife logged on at 9.55 and only got a 4 minute queue! I’ve got no idea how they worked that one out, but I’m glad we both managed to get them.
 
Shaggy_Dog_ said:
My wife and I both managed to get a set of tickets for it. The funny thing though was that the booking went live at 10am, I logged on to the Sun Savers page at 9.45, was put in the pre-queue and ended up with a 55 minute queue when it turned 10, whereas my wife logged on at 9.55 and only got a 4 minute queue! I’ve got no idea how they worked that one out, but I’m glad we both managed to get them.
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Yeah I've got my two sets for May and September (third in April hopefully) - but the wait to get onto the app was about and hour and 10 minutes, so I had the phones by the side of me whilst I was doing uni work.
 
I think 'em up at work when I'm playing in the mud at work.
Thirty years of visiting the newsagent to change the paper for two weeks.
Nail scissors on the chairside table,
cut out your vouchers,
to be held on a stand on the fireplace.
Fill out your form,
stick your vouchers together,
add your SAE,
write your date preferences in the corner,
after arguing for half an hour about when you want to go,
go and buy some stamps...normally the only stamps of the year.
Wait a few weeks, then get your tickets in the post, with a couple of extra money off vouchers if you are lucky.
No more, all gone, just stick some numbers off the internet onto another internet site.
Being a spelunking luddite, my time has been and gone.
 
Launched RMC at Towers in 3 years. Calling it
Now.



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