Are you suggesting that Thorpe Park should have broken their legal responsibilities?
No. I don't know if you missed the entire explanation of what I meant after the part you quoted, but legal rest periods don't need to be shortened by late closing, just shifted forward. Breaking the law doesn't factor in any point I made. It happens in most industries where rest periods are tight and operations means things don't always go to plan. In my own industry, a late finish that encroaches on a rest period (which are enforced more rigidly and are even longer than the lawful minimum) simply means a later start the next day. In the case of Hyperia, a late opening would be far less impactful on guest experience than an early close.
Hence me asserting that it isn't a good enough excuse. "We're heavily inconveniencing one set of guests to reduce a tiny inconvenience on another" isn't decent, overall, guest focused operations or customer service.
Thorpe have it entirely in their power to meet guest demand, night rides are obviously going to be in high demand, make simple roster changes to adapt to them. It isn't big brain, it's basics. You have a team that can work 13 out of each 24 hour period, your park is open for 11, basic human resourcing. Your young workers can't work over 8, so they wouldn't be covering the entire day, with them focusing on break relief. Why would you prioritise early morning operation over evenings in summer? I'm positing
incompetence, not crying out for laws to be broken, that's absurd. We're so used to parks in the UK shrugging and going "it's out of our hands" that we just roll over and take it, or hell, even
defend their mediocrity.
To be clear, if it's working time regs that closed Hyperia earlier than advertised, that's bad staff planning, not an issue with the law, and my disapproval of it is nothing to do with a lack of concern or understanding of guest and employee safety.
