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2022: General Discussion

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The season's not over for me yet. Having a little jog in the 5k run next Sunday. Gotta get that medal haha. Would be soooooo funny if Nemesis was open too :laughing:
 
BarryZola said:
The season's not over for me yet. Having a little jog in the 5k run next Sunday. Gotta get that medal haha. Would be soooooo funny if Nemesis was open too :laughing:
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Arnold Schwarzenegger No GIF
 
I might pop down to the Christmas event again this year as I really enjoyed it last year. But then I'll never see it covered in snow like that again.

In terms of 2022 (which isn't really over), not a great one.

Park felt fresher at the start of the season, but that's coming from a very low base. I still dislike all the overuse of purple paint. The place looks tacky. Galactica is now in an awful state, but at least some freshening up has happened with the Oblivion queue which was the most run down part of the park before. The monorail needs sorting now!

Opening hours massively rolled back. Loads of 10-4's.

As expected, no permanent flats. Retrosquad still there with their horrible music and garish looks, made worse by the "scream if you want to go faster" stuff on Spinjam. No problems with them being a temp solution, but I'm not holding my breath for permanents now. A small point but at least SpinJam was more thrilling that what came before.

The whole Cloud Cuckoo area continues to be an embarrassment.

Hotels have gone from being the better half of the park, to aligning with it to then being the armpit if the whole resort. All this in a season when the prices were jacked up massively. Shocking set of circumstances.

The worst Scarefest I've ever been to.

I liked festival of thrills actually. Not much to it but it was something different and is a net gain to the park. No strong opinions on Mardi Gras since last year. Great to see that the investment in entertainment has continued despite how poor Scarefest was. I really want this aspect of the park to stay.

Still closed shops and buildings everywhere. In fact, with higher prices and poorer quality the food and bev offering was the worst this year, more than it's ever been. Few options (outside of mobile sites) extortionate prices and low quality. I noticed that both the coffee place by Wickerman and the Welcome Inn seem to be opening less and less these days.

On availability, Funk and Fly has hardly been open on any of my visits. I had bad luck with Galactica and Oblivion on a number of visits too and of course Hex. With Enterprise now gone and Duel closing early it feels like we're back to 2016 - 2020 in terms of lineup. There's just not enough attractions despite all the efforts put in last year. This park still doesn't have enough permanent supporting attractions and temporary rides are not designed to carry the load.

When are they going to sort the rapids?

Overall, 2022 will be remembered as a season of good news coming over the hill such as the Nemesis retrack, Horizon (which is effectively a small park expansion) and the Duel refurbishment, but a massive step back from the giant leap forward that was the 2021 season. This park needs a s*** tonne of careful, considered investment in a number of areas. I hope that they're throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks at the moment and that this is coming. Here's hoping that 2023 will be better and that we'll hear some more good news about how they're going to address these deeply ingrained issues over the next few months.
 
Last season rides were on good enough capacity for crowd levels. Once the run event was over most people left and the park was dead. We were asked to stay on Thirteen for example, as there were not enough people waiting in the bays and they did a minimum number of riders to send the train.
 
Trying to get my head around the Christmas event ticketing.

So online you can book:
Market Only
Market & Lightopia
Market, Rides & Lightopia
but no option for Market & Rides without Lightopia

whereas pass holders seem to get:
Market and Rides

It seems very odd that the package for passholders is unavailable for everyone else as the barriers etc must be in place to manage this for passes?


On a positive note, as a local parent with young kids the rides being open for passholders is excellent 👍
 
evilcod said:
Trying to get my head around the Christmas event ticketing.

So online you can book:
Market Only
Market & Lightopia
Market, Rides & Lightopia
but no option for Market & Rides without Lightopia

whereas pass holders seem to get:
Market and Rides

It seems very odd that the package for passholders is unavailable for everyone else as the barriers etc must be in place to manage this for passes?


On a positive note, as a local parent with young kids the rides being open for passholders is excellent 👍
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Makes a little sense, there isn't enough rides open to make it a full day out. If you pay for the rides, get there and are bored after two hours it doesn't look good value. But with Lightopia as well it is almost a full day out.
Lightopia is a third-party attraction, so they aren't able to give it to passholders for free.
They aren't heavily advertising the market is free entry, but that gives locals access just to that. If all the locals came for the rides as well on a £15 ticket I expect the queues may get too long? Or maybe they are giving locals a seperate offer we can't see.
But I expect the main reason for no rides only ticket is that the rides don't have enough capacity.
 
I understand the Christmas event is for families but wouldn't it be beneficial for the park if the lineup was better. If at least 1 or 2 of the bigger rides was open it'd give teenagers and adults a reason to visit. They'd have more visitors come to the event if it catered for a wider demographic
 
I'd say the best placed coasters for this would be Wicker Man and either Oblivion or Rita, it may not be possible to run those rides for the full day depending on the weather. I also think it's strange there's no Get Set Go or Driving School although the former usually closes at dusk so it wouldn't get many hours.
 
Ethan said:
I understand the Christmas event is for families but wouldn't it be beneficial for the park if the lineup was better. If at least 1 or 2 of the bigger rides was open it'd give teenagers and adults a reason to visit. They'd have more visitors come to the event if it catered for a wider demographic
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Not sure if it would be beneficial though. Open just one coaster and it might get a huge queue and therefore annoys more people than it benefits.
Better to make it clear it is a family event and everyone has a nice day out.

Although only those staying at the hotels get the Santa visit, the fact there is a Santa visit makes it clear overall its for under 10s.
 
My understanding is the park would like more rides open but tech services don’t have the staff to do closed season maintenance on the bigger rides if they stay open for Christmas.

And as Merlin won’t increase Tech services pay they couldn’t recruit even if they wanted to.

It’s also worth pointing out a lot of Towers rides where never intended for year round operations. Most year round parks have spare trains so they can strip them down all year round, something Merlin should think about for the future.
 
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