• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

2025: General Discussion

I went to the fireworks on Sat and started to wonder about all year round ops and that stated intent.
I can’t see them offering a full park experience all year round. Maybe a full offering over Xmas and Feb half term, subject to weather restrictions and if it didn’t interfere with winter maint on the rides. I can’t see the non school market wanting to do the Smiler and Oblivion in late Jan. Frost bite could be real!!!!
I would have thought there would be a market for CBeebies all year round but I am not sure that’s enough to justify it.
I can’t believe they don’t make more of the waterpark and serious increase their corporate conferencing packages. The current offer is well below the standard required and needs serious upgrading. But then so does the rest of the park.
Tricky times to priority calls need to be made by the new management team.
 
Hid said:
I wonder if Towers will ever get to that year round status they stated they want to aim for
Click to expand...

I don't think so. They've made no moves to do so and a good number of the attractions struggle to operate across the existing season let alone all year and in harsher weather conditions.

Merlin are evidently prioritising Legoland and Chessington as the future 365 contenders.

It's a shame as a true winter AT has the potential to be as magical as Efteling or Phantasialand.
 
Hid said:
I wonder if Towers will ever get to that year round status they stated they want to aim for
Click to expand...
I'd be interested to find out but they definitely have a long way of doing that

They'd need to bring back the unused attractions such as Nickelodeon, 4D Cinema and Dungeons as well as using as many attractions as possible in winter.

Wasn't there a rumour of Nemesis Reborn being made winter-proof for potential winter operations?

At the moment, Nemesis Reborn (if work has been done to enable winter operations) and potentially RMT and Wickerman (maybe Thirteen too) would be coasters that they don't currently operate that they could make operational during winter.

I think personally that a lot of investment will be needed to bring their existing rides to winter operations.
 
There were rumours going around staff circles last year that Reborn was going to be open for the Christmas event, similar to the February Half Term lineup before 2016, but for whatever reason (presumably the restructure) this never materialised.

Having both Curse and Hex open this year definitely shows they want an expanding Christmas lineup beyond the CBeebies-aged audience. The event is definitely very under-scale for the ambition they had with Gardens Light Walk and then Christmas Markets & Lightopia. They also considered introducing an ice-skating rink to expand the Christmas offering too.

A decent number of the former Ents staff have also gone to the Lapland event up near Manchester, a much smaller seasonal business outgunning the scale of Towers’ event offering. So it just shows some of the wasted potential and ambition they have had with Christmas offerings, but I guess Merlin didn’t have the patience to find an effective business model that fits the park. Meaning that word-of-mouth marketing has been limited in terms attention that the event could bring in.
 
owenstreet7 said:
I'd be interested to find out but they definitely have a long way of doing that

They'd need to bring back the unused attractions such as Nickelodeon, 4D Cinema and Dungeons as well as using as many attractions as possible in winter.

Wasn't there a rumour of Nemesis Reborn being made winter-proof for potential winter operations?

At the moment, Nemesis Reborn (if work has been done to enable winter operations) and potentially RMT and Wickerman (maybe Thirteen too) would be coasters that they don't currently operate that they could make operational during winter.

I think personally that a lot of investment will be needed to bring their existing rides to winter operations.
Click to expand...
I feel like opening year round would take away some of the opening day excitement; some of the excitement in waiting for the day you can finally ride that new ride. Sure, having 4 months or so of reduced operations/closure isn't fun, but I feel like year round wouldn't be as good.
 
Bert2theSpark said:
There were rumours going around staff circles last year that Reborn was going to be open for the Christmas event, similar to the February Half Term lineup before 2016, but for whatever reason (presumably the restructure) this never materialised.
Click to expand...
I may have got my dates slightly wrong, but could it be possible that Nemesis Reborn running at Fireworks never happened because of the ongoing Toxicator Construction?
 
rob666 said:
They only get about half a dozen snow days each winter on average.
Good old global warming.
Click to expand...
Only takes 1 for the Daily Mail headline to write itself. Holiday MISERY as thrill seekers left STRANDED on country roads for hours due to council gritting CUTBACKS

I feel all grimy now.
 
I think Nemesis Sub Terra and Gangsta Granny could easily operate during the winter as well as all the filler rides Wickerman, Nemesis Reborn, Rita, Runaway Mine Train, Spinball Whizzer and Octonauts could all still operate only really.
 
Hid said:
I wonder if Towers will ever get to that year round status they stated they want to aim for
Click to expand...

I don’t think so and in all honesty I don’t think there would be great demand for it from the general public especially in the cold wet windy winter months.

However it’s always baffled me why they don’t do more for Christmas and new year. The hotels used to have a good offering for New Years Eve for example, which has now gone.

Christmas could be so much more, an ice skating rink, some simple rides on the front lawn (bumper cars etc) it doesn’t need every ride to be open in the park, but just something to get people in and to stay over.

As a parent with a teenager there isn’t much over these winter months to draw people to stay in the hotels and absolutely nothing over Christmas and new year.
 
dave___ said:
Problem is in winter it’s going to be an absolute dog and pony show getting there isn’t it. Those country roads aren’t going to experience much if any snow/ice clearance, they are bad enough in rain.

The others down south are all conveniently just off the M25 so don’t have this geographical Achilles heel.
Click to expand...
I was talking about it earlier and I said yes it would be great but no way am I driving to towers if there's ice or snow, I wouldn't make it ha
 
No way they're gonna run a load of the rides for more than a week or so during winter. It must cost them an absolute bomb to run a large amount of rides now and with the shiz weather over winter you won't get the footfall over a prolonged period to justify the expenditure. They might break even if they did it for a week or a few days for an event but then you're trying to recruit seasonal staff back to run the rides for a few days when you've just sacked them off for another year. Then you have the potential for a Beast from the East mk4 to turn up unluckily on the exact week you've gone all out to open everything for. It's a nice novelty but I think they learned their lessons years ago with the winter weekends and stuff, and it's even more expensive to run the place nowadays.
 
AT86 said:
I think the customer expectation is generally that theme parks will be closed over the winter and demand isn’t yet there - Universal may well change that expectation though.
Click to expand...

It's a self fulfilling prophecy though, they'd have to go through a period of adjustment. Chessington was absolutely dead when we went a few years ago but evidently they're pushing through and increasing the line up (or trying to). I don't think Halloween at theme parks was much of a thing in the 80/90's and now for many it's their most profitable season.

Obviously as mentioned AT has several other reasons that make it problematic but i don't think existing expectations would be a reason not to pursue it if they had the appetite.
 
The ride lineup is a bit strange in my opinion. Hex and Curse are at complete opposite ends of the park meaning that they will need to ensure paths are clear in the event of bad weather and facilities are open such as toilets. I for 1 feel like walking all the way to Curse or Hex for a single ride is really not worth the effort.

As such I feel they would be better concentrating on one area of the park. This either needs to be the walk up to Curse or adding Walliams world to support Hex. Now Walliams world could be a late addition depending on volume but I feel I would rather them concentrate on the walk up to Curse. If they could open Cbeebies, mutiny bay, spinball, wickerman, RMT and Curse it would be a pretty solid lineup and offer something for all the family. With the Bluey coaster this would be 5 coasters open for Christmas and Feb which would be a massive improvement.

One thing that is a challenge for them is parking off-peak as they tend to only use the express car parks and don't open the monorail. Now I know the comments are that these events are not busy but from my own experience they do run out of parking, meaning they would need to use some of the main car park and offer a shuttle / use the monorail which i dont feel they want to do.

Just my thoughts though as it feels there is a massive untapped market that much smaller attractions seem to capitalise on. Granted it would be much better for the park if they were closer to the motorway network or a major city as accessibility is a challenge but not impossible if the event is big enough to draw the crowds. Add to that we seem to be getting much milder Nov/Dec and just days ago they had their busiest event of the season showing people will travel if the offering is there.
 
MrTowers said:
If they could open Cbeebies, mutiny bay, spinball, wickerman, RMT and Curse it would be a pretty solid lineup and offer something for all the family. With the Bluey coaster this would be 5 coasters open for Christmas and Feb which would be a massive improvement.
Click to expand...

We’d probably visit at Xmas if this was the case, especially if the water park was available to non hotel guests.

Are there any European theme parks that are geographically as challenging to visit as AT?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top