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2025: General Discussion

Numbers being down doesn’t automatically mean finances are down too - think of the savings they will have made on things such as axing the entertainment staff, removing events, replacing staffed games with claw machines and the like.

Full disclaimer I have no idea how either their numbers or their finances are looking this year compared to others 😂
 
Dave said:
Seriously don’t get why people think attendance is down. Merlin would not have given them budget for Friday of fireworks if attendance was down. It was around the same time last year that Merlin cut the opening times for Towers mid season because attendance was poor, if anything the mood music suggests the opposite.
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Its more due to the fact look on the pathways they are a lot emptier than they used to be. Used to be people everywhere

Mick said:
Full disclaimer I have no idea how either their numbers or their finances are looking this year compared to others 😂
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Do Merlin even display their finances in reports
 
Hid said:
Its more due to the fact look on the pathways they are a lot emptier than they used to be. Used to be people everywhere
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There’s every possibility that attendance is spread better than it used to be. The peaks might not be as high, but I wouldn’t be surprised if midweek lows were busier to compensate. The midweek days have certainly seemed busier in recent years.

With the cheap Discovery Pass and general changes in working patterns in recent years, it wouldn’t be a great surprise to me. And given that midweek is 5 days and the weekend is only 2, any rise in midweek visitation would more than offset a fall in weekend visitation.
 
I saw a very similar post from my local leisure centre about 3-month passes being introduced for the summer, similar to the annual passes Merlin have just introduced.

Given the timeframe of both passes, it’s clear they’ve seen a new industry trend elsewhere and are giving customers more ways to get customers to give them money. This is consistent with other trends within the wider leisure industry, give people more ways to pay and keep the growth going.

Not necessarily because attendance is down, the industry seems to be holding steady at the moment. More so looks like keeping growth going but that’s just my perspective from what I’ve seen. Don’t take my word as gospel.
 
Matt N said:
There’s every possibility that attendance is spread better than it used to be. The peaks might not be as high, but I wouldn’t be surprised if midweek lows were busier to compensate. The midweek days have certainly seemed busier in recent years.

With the cheap Discovery Pass and general changes in working patterns in recent years, it wouldn’t be a great surprise to me. And given that midweek is 5 days and the weekend is only 2, any rise in midweek visitation would more than offset a fall in weekend visitation.
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Midweek is five days?

News to me, I thought midweek was Wednesday, or more broadly, Tues, Wed & Thurs.

Weekdays are not midweek.

Lots of people take Fri/Mon off to tag the weekend...so they are generally busier.
 
rob666 said:
Midweek is five days?

News to me, I thought midweek was Wednesday, or more broadly, Tues, Wed & Thurs.

Weekdays are not midweek.

Lots of people take Fri/Mon off to tag the weekend...so they are generally busier.
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That was potentially clumsy wording on my part, sorry… I think I meant weekdays rather than midweek.

Even still, I’d argue that based on anecdotes and tidbits from queue times, the off-peak weekdays generally used to be quieter than they are now. From what people have said, it seems as though the days where you could go to the park on an off-peak weekday and guarantee that it would be extremely quiet are dead.

And given that the weekdays comprise 5 days of the week while the weekends comprise only 2, I would argue that any rise in weekday visitation would more than offset a fall in weekend visitation, which would potentially explain why visitor numbers have apparently risen overall in recent years, but peak weekend days are less busy than they used to be.
 
Fridays and mondays are often considered weekend days for people who regularly work rota weekends.
Many workers get friday/sat off, or sunday/monday off, or indeed fri to mon off inclusive if they work the weekend before.
My good lady now only works a four day week on a full time contract, every friday off.

And the Towers used to be very dead indeed on low termtime weekdays, my favourite days of a couple of thousand punters in the whole park are long gone.

Rather similar to your recent Paultons trip Matt.

I think the cheap passes were designed to stop such days happening.
 
Dave said:
Seriously don’t get why people think attendance is down. Merlin would not have given them budget for Friday of fireworks if attendance was down. It was around the same time last year that Merlin cut the opening times for Towers mid season because attendance was poor, if anything the mood music suggests the opposite.
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I don’t doubt Dave’s intel - but if I was a bean counter, I don’t get why budget for fireworks would be an overall indicator of the season’s performance. If the season was going really well, surely we’d be seeing it first in the opening hours across the rest of the season - not just investment for a few days at the end?
An extended budget for Friday of fireworks might better reflect strong pre-sales for Saturday and Sunday.

</bean counter>
 
Jordan said:
I don’t doubt Dave’s intel - but if I was a bean counter, I don’t get why budget for fireworks would be an overall indicator of the season’s performance. If the season was going really well, surely we’d be seeing it first in the opening hours across the rest of the season - not just investment for a few days at the end?
An extended budget for Friday of fireworks might better reflect strong pre-sales for Saturday and Sunday.

</bean counter>
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Being the ever-pessimist that I am, has the budget have been increased for Fireworks or will the original 2 day budget be spread over the 3 days with little to no increase meaning the quality of the display could be compromised?
 
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