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2026: General Discussion

Unfortunately as it stands Mr Burton leaves behind virtually no public legacy in the UK theme park industry. I doubt we’ll ever see a figure as influential as Mr Wardley again, someone with the vision, creativity and most importantly the freedom to leave their mark. Certainly as long as Merlin are in charge.

Arguably Mr Mancey over at Paultons is the closest candidate the UK has.
 
I agree with most of what has been said about Mr Burton here. He seems like a nice enough chap, but I don’t think he demonstrated anything that was groundbreaking or innovative to the extent some other notable figures in the industry have done.

Looking at his resume, the only attraction I could pick out as notable would be Gansta Granny, and only then because of its inherent quirky charm. Elsewhere there’s a pattern of cookie cutter, underwhelming experiences. Take Colossos’s facsimile of Wickerman or the pretty poor Jumanji The Adventure, even Curse whilst being an improvement on the low bar of Duel don’t really show any real innovation.

That’s all a bit negative, but I suppose the point is that I’m not sure this is a great loss to a company, who in any case aren’t willing to provide the parks with decent budgets for new attractions. And if you were John, you’d probably have been daft not to have taken the gig at Universal Creative.
 
Whatever thoughts we have of Burton, he likely had a vision for the park going forward yet was hamstrung by constant changes regarding management and new visions that Just give the impression of a park that doesn't know to focus more on it's past or actually be groundbreaking.

Interesting to speculate what he would have done had be been given a decade to change the park like what Wardley could do and what PH might have been. The parks absolutely needs someone ruthless to drag the park forward with a clear vision without meddling from the top and Burton was anything but that.
 
Bowser said:
Arguably Mr Mancey over at Paultons is the closest candidate the UK has.
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One who gets to play with his parents' money.
 
Watched the ThemePark Worldwide first day review.

He calls it the worst opening day he can remember. It doesn't come off as clickbait in the slightest as these are comments made well into the 60 minute video and he genuinely seems very upset about what he is seeing, emphasising how much he loves the park. A deflated enthusiast.

Rides not ready for start of season despite 4 months closure, staggered openings, rides delayed opening, massive queues, rides on low capacity, very little TLC in the park, poor presentation in various areas. He commends things like the Corkscrew painting and Towers display but it's "one step forwards, three steps back".

In fact he says the highlight of his day was riding Nemesis and seeing the geese @GooseOnTheLoose

Time to accept that the park simply will not improve under the current ownership and you'll probably enjoy it more if you set your expectations very low.
 
I think some of the comments about Burton are maybe a little harsh.

I don’t think anyone in the role of creative at Merlin was ever likely to parallel John Wardley in terms of scope of personal vision, simply because I’m not sure the corporate structures of Merlin allow for one individual to have as much autonomy as Wardley was allowed to exhibit during the Tussauds era. And as the head creatives at Merlin have gone, I would argue that Burton was one of the better ones.

I do feel that recent products like Curse, Nemesis Reborn and Toxicator were very well executed thematically compared to a lot of previous Merlin output (I would argue that the main competition would probably be something like Wicker Man), and while the theme for Hyperia maybe wasn’t as heavy as some would have liked, I think the layout of Hyperia is a definite triumph for Burton if he had much personal involvement in it (although I profess I’m not sure how much involvement Burton had versus the engineers at Mack), with many (myself included) revering it as the country’s strongest coaster. Yes, the layout wasn’t very long, but I think that within the bounds of the length, they did well to produce the layout they did.
 
I wouldn’t be surprised if Towers view these days (3 weekends in March) as soft openings prior to the start of the main season. They know it’s largely enthusiasts visiting on these days, who will always by and large be repeat guests no matter what happens

They also now have 5 days after today to continue off season work before the next weekend, and so on.

What would help immensely would be to hold a “grand opening” event at the start of the next school holidays, and make it very clear that these weekends may not be reflective of the main season.

That being said, aside from the brief storm, ride availability was good with few breakdowns. Getting the rides on full capacity will be a priority for the next few days
 
Bowser said:
Watched the ThemePark Worldwide first day review.

He calls it the worst opening day he can remember. It doesn't come off as clickbait in the slightest as these are comments made well into the 60 minute video and he genuinely seems very upset about what he is seeing, emphasising how much he loves the park. A deflated enthusiast.

Rides not ready for start of season despite 4 months closure, staggered openings, rides delayed opening, massive queues, rides on low capacity, very little TLC in the park, poor presentation in various areas. He commends things like the Corkscrew painting and Towers display but it's "one step forwards, three steps back".

In fact he says the highlight of his day was riding Nemesis and seeing the geese @GooseOnTheLoose

Time to accept that the park simply will not improve under the current ownership and you'll probably enjoy it more if you set your expectations very low.
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I’m not sure it was a particular deterioration on last year (not a high bar). My primary observations where:

- Corkscrews look good in their new colour.

- Towers street seems to have had a repaint (mostly).

- cleaning on park is very patchy (some areas seem to have been but other areas definitely not (x-sector sign looks terrible).

- The rides that were open seemed to have reasonable uptime. But big issues with no Mine train, Skyride, 1 craft on Galactica, 3 shuttles on blivvy, hex on reduced capacity.

- Operations were ok for opening day (they have never been 100% on opening even in the golden age).

- Lighting on park for after dark was good.

- The towers light show was cute.

- Food was actually ok, over priced yes but pretty tasty and reasonable portions.

- Gardens are still in a state.

As mentioned in the uptime topic the issues with the park are heavily linked to clear shortages in tech services, but I don’t see how Towers can fix that if Merlin won’t let them increase pay to be competitive.

I don’t know if transitioning across three leaders over the last six months has lost the park its closed season TLC focus, or whether they just didn’t have the money.
 
Merlin tried to take over the world spending hundreds of millions on new attractions that havent been a great success for them, all at the same time as neglecting their core attractions that have been around for donkeys years which people have grown up with.

This coupled with incredibly challenging economic times for guests has meant its been an utter disaster for them.

Merlin dont deserve the loyal fanbase they have. I simply refuse to visit any of their parks unless its an incredibly quiet off peak day as I just know that peak days are a complete and utter joke. They simply cant handle large crowds anymore through a mix of operational cut backs and incompetence.

Sad times. Universal will be the end for Merlin I fear.
 
It's clear the park aren't offering enough money or good enough conditions for tech services. Merlin are the only operator I can think of that have plenty of CapEx and no OpEx for their parks and it shows. Very very strange state of affairs.

Matt N said:
the layout of Hyperia is a definite triumph for Burton if he had much personal involvement in it (although I profess I’m not sure how much involvement Burton had versus the engineers at Mack), with many (myself included) revering it as the country’s strongest coaster. Yes, the layout wasn’t very long, but I think that within the bounds of the length, they did well to produce the layout they did.
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The layout and theme were a disaster. I implore you to ride some good hyper coasters. Even what they have is a mess with the splashdown debacle and the fact the train takes an age to return off the brakes to the station.
 
Matt N said:
And so the negative social media posting begins:

While I don’t deny that there are clearly some issues for the park to iron out still, I think the rock bottom rhetoric is overblown and it does seem as though ride availability has improved somewhat on the last couple of opening weekends (universal weather closure aside), from the sounds of things and the glimpses I’ve had at the queue times.

Yes, some things are closed and that’s not great, but it seems like they’ve generally managed to get better at avoiding that horrid yo-yo effect of things repeatedly going up and down again that dogged so much of 2024, as well as the early days of 2025. When things are open, it seems like they’re better at staying open than they were.
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It’s been about 10 years now.

Whatever criticism is being made is entirely fair.
 
Poisson said:
The layout and theme were a disaster. I implore you to ride some good hyper coasters. Even what they have is a mess with the splashdown debacle and the fact the train takes an age to return off the brakes to the station.
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I think we’ll have to agree to disagree there on the layout.

I have ridden 4 other hypers (Shambhala, Silver Star, Mako and The Big One), as well as other 200ft+ coasters like Iron Gwazi and Red Force, and I happen to think that Hyperia stacks up relatively favourably to these (granted, not quite my favourite, but of the rides I’ve listed, only Shambhala and Mako currently sit higher in my book).

Granted, the splashdown presentation and the slow brakes aren’t great, but I wouldn’t factor those into my personal rating of the layout, and what they have there is something that happens to rank pretty favourably for me.
 
Disappointed to hear about yet another week opening day, there’s been some good off-season touch-ups and little additions like the light show but the opening seems once again hindered by tech services. Don’t feel like I have any level of insight to make comments on where the problem lies but seems pretty clear that this is a persistent problem at so many season openings that there needs to be some sort of targeted intervention to prevent this.

The impression I got that this yet another season to give a miss and therefore no need to visit without anything major to appeal to me. I really want it be a massive Alton Towers nerd but the stagnation and mediocrity makes me want to keep my distance away from it.
 
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