Alton Towers visitor figures through the years

[Squiggs]

A question. I know that on a yearly basis we have a discussion about the TEA figures being estimated.

But I'm just curious if we know 'for a fact' thst Merlin don't provide figures to TEA?

*I put the quotes in because obviously there are very few things about Merlin's operations that are a verifiable fact, but I'm just wondering if anyone knew the sourse of why we believe this.

 

[Matt N]

A question. I know that on a yearly basis we have a discussion about the TEA figures being estimated.

But I'm just curious if we know 'for a fact' thst Merlin don't provide figures to TEA?

*I put the quotes in because obviously there are very few things about Merlin's operations that are a verifiable fact, but I'm just wondering if anyone knew the sourse of why we believe this.

I personally believe that Merlin probably don't because there are some quite considerable discrepancies between the TEA figure and the graph that Merlin has wheeled out for planning applications in recent years. The figures and trends have disagreed with Merlin's graph in both directions; the TEA figures have been both overstated and understated.

 

[Danny]

I know that at least SOME of the figures are given to the TEA by the parks - mainly Universal, whom delayed the report a couple of weeks due to the late submission of their figures. The report was initially due out before the end of July.

 

[Matt N]

We’ve had a very interesting development from the planning application of Project Refresh and Renew at Chessington; a new Merlin attendance graph: https://towersstreet.com/talk/threads/chessington-world-of-adventures-resort.97/page-496#post-493105

The numbers from previous years seem to line up with the Merlin attendance graph we had before, which in turn lined up with our prior general understanding of the parks’ attendance trajectory, so I don’t see why it would be wrong… but it makes the very interesting and unexpected claim that 2022 and 2023 attendance figures at Alton Towers were on par with, if not higher than, those of 2010, attaining over 3,000,000 (no scale is given, but the prior graph which had scale had 2010 on around 3,062,500). The only year that looks notably higher than 2022 and 2023 on the graph is 1994, which the previous graph pegged at around 3.3 million.

Chessington is also pegged as having hit the 2 million mark and reached parity with Legoland Windsor in 2023. The figures for Legoland and Thorpe Park seem a bit more in line with what I’d have expected, with both being roughly on par with 2019 levels of attendance in 2022 and 2023. And again, this lines up with what we already know; Thorpe Park themselves confirmed on social media that they got 1.5 million in 2023, which is on par with 2019’s figure in the previous graph… which would make the Thorpe Park sums add up.

What do we reckon to this? I don’t see why these figures would be wrong, and as I said, the graph lines up with the previous graph for every year up to 2021, which in turn lines up with pre-existing understanding that we had about attendance trajectories at the parks. So under Occam’s Razor and just about anything you could say, I’m inclined to believe that they’re genuine… but the Alton Towers and Chessington figures seem so wildly out of kilter with what I was expecting that I’m inclined to question them to an extent…

 

[AT86]

If they have been included as part of a planning application to the local authority as part of the Chessington planning process for the new Minecraft area there is no reason in my mind to believe they wouldn’t be correct.

I very much doubt Merlin would want to be putting themselves in a position where they could have misled the authorities when gaining planning consent.

 

[Matt N]

If they have been included as part of a planning application to the local authority as part of the Chessington planning process for the new Minecraft area there is no reason in my mind to believe they wouldn’t be correct.

I very much doubt Merlin would want to be putting themselves in a position where they could have misled the authorities when gaining planning consent.

This was my thinking too, and as I said, the previous years all add up. Thorpe and Legoland also add up with stuff we already know.

But those figures for Alton and Chessington are just so wildly unexpected… we were all moaning about what a dreadful year 2023 had been for attendance at Alton, but this new graph would suggest that that could not be further from the truth!

 

[rob666]

You are linking bare attendance numbers with income.
Cheap eighty quid a year Merlin passes make such links pretty meaningless.

Edit...and the great (sad sad) loss of ultra quiet days on the park are probably the biggest factor, they always used to be a couple of months a year when the whole park was dead.

 

[Matt N]

You are linking bare attendance numbers with income.
Cheap eighty quid a year Merlin passes make such links pretty meaningless.

I thought those had largely been phased out during COVID? I only seem to remember “pay for a day, come back free all year” being a thing during 2018 or so, and looking at the graph, that didn’t seem to raise 2018’s attendance figures to epic levels; that year only had about 2.2 million.

I was mainly questioning because 2010 has always been anecdotally said to have felt busy, with field car parks being used and all on peak days, alongside other anecdotes indicating high crowd levels. Yet I do not seem to remember those sorts of anecdotes in 2022 or 2023… in fact, I seem to remember lots of the very opposite from 2023! And if anything, you’d think that 3 million per year visitor figures would have felt even more exaggerated in 2022 or 2023 compared to 2010, with both the smaller attraction count and well catalogued availability issues in 2023 in particular being things that would likely cause queue times and crowd levels to rise even with lower physical visitor figures.

 

[rob666]

I thought those had largely been phased out during COVID? I only seem to remember “pay for a day, come back free all year” being a thing during 2018 or so, and looking at the graph, that didn’t seem to raise 2018’s attendance figures to epic levels; that year only had about 2.2 million.

I was mainly questioning because 2010 has always been anecdotally said to have felt busy, with field car parks being used and all on peak days, alongside other anecdotes indicating high crowd levels. Yet I do not seem to remember those sorts of anecdotes in 2022 or 2023… in fact, I seem to remember lots of the very opposite from 2023! And if anything, you’d think that 3 million per year visitor figures would have felt even more exaggerated in 2022 or 2023 compared to 2010, with both the smaller attraction count and well catalogued availability issues in 2023 in particular being things that would likely cause queue times to rise.

Sorry Matt...I was editing my above post when you posted again.
No quiet days any more means a steady few thousand extra attendances each day...good headline numbers but no real extra money...less even.
And you can buy a merlin discovery pass, today, in the current "sale" for 79.99...and turn up on all those quiet days, with butties and flask, and boost the merlin attendance figures all the more.

 

[Matt N]

Sorry Matt...I was editing my above post when you posted again.
No quiet days any more means a steady few thousand extra attendances each day...good headline numbers but no real extra money...less even.
And you can buy a merlin discovery pass, today, in the current "sale" for 79.99...and turn up on all those quiet days, with butties and flask, and boost the merlin attendance figures all the more.

Sorry, Rob; I didn’t see your edit!

That’s an interesting hypothesis… so you’re suggesting that midweek days are generally not as quiet as they used to be, thus meaning a smaller overall range in attendance that offsets super peak days being less busy? That would make some sense… given that midweek makes up 5 days of the week while the weekend only makes up 2, notably busier midweek periods would make overall attendance climb even if super peak days are less busy. And there does seem to have been some unexpectedly busy midweek days in recent years…

Perhaps the per capita spend is where the assertion of poor performance is coming from? I know people have said that that has supposedly really dropped at Merlin parks in recent years, and with the Merlin passes getting cheaper compared to the earlier years of Merlin (e.g. 2010), the link could have been broken between guest figures and financial performance when the prices began really dropping post-2015…

This sort of thing is really interesting, as there are so many factors you could consider!

 

[rob666]

Midweek days well into termtime used to be very very quiet indeed.
Staff seemed to outnumber punters, and no queues at all, maybe five minutes for the new ride...all day, April, May, September and October, apart from specific "Sunreader weeks" which could be a bit or a lot busier...depending on the season and weather.
Spent the best part of an hour on the rapids..."Wave when you want to get off".
Then passes arrived and ruined it all, and the cheap passes made it much much worse.
Now twenty minute queue days are good ones.

 

[Bowser]

Sorry, Rob; I didn’t see your edit!

That’s an interesting hypothesis… so you’re suggesting that midweek days are generally not as quiet as they used to be, thus meaning a smaller overall range in attendance that offsets super peak days being less busy? That would make some sense… given that midweek makes up 5 days of the week while the weekend only makes up 2, notably busier midweek periods would make overall attendance climb even if super peak days are less busy. And there does seem to have been some unexpectedly busy midweek days in recent years…

Perhaps the per capita spend is where the assertion of poor performance is coming from? I know people have said that that has supposedly really dropped at Merlin parks in recent years, and with the Merlin passes getting cheaper compared to the earlier years of Merlin (e.g. 2010), the link could have been broken between guest figures and financial performance when the prices began really dropping post-2015…

This sort of thing is really interesting, as there are so many factors you could consider!

Yes like Rob says, attendance from 1990s compared to today is fairly meaningless in terms of income as you're no longer comparing unique paid visitors (along with the numerous other variables as you say).

It is of course still interesting in terms of general visitor numbers and paints a curious figure of some of the parks being as popular as ever, if not more so, yet supposedly not providing satisfactory income to the point of unprecedented cutbacks.

 

[Zeock]

I find those figures interesting, especially since there wasn't a major attraction in either 2022 or 2023 to attract visitors to the park, although there was Alton Manor. I assume that during that period, there was an increase of people with Merlin passes who felt like they needed to make the most of their pass, therefore going to Towers more regularly, and boosting its attendance.

 

[Squiggs]

If you're looking at the figures as being 'correct' or 'incorrect', that's really a misunderstanding of how to read these figures.

These figures exist with a context, in this case a planning document, so they are being presented to tell a specific story. Therefore, they should be 'correct' within that context. You are likely to find that context in how the planning documentation describes what the figures are demonstrating (e.g. 'the graph demonstrates that visitor numbers fluctuate and that, without investment in new rides, visitor numbers would decline', for example)

However, unless the document has been specific about how 'attendance' is being calculated, it will be very difficult to understand how these figure reflect reality outside this context - it is difficult to confidently reuse these types of figures unless you've been given the calculation behind the figure.

For example, are these figures discussing attendance to the theme park, or the whole resort? What is an 'attendance'? How does it account in attendance in the water park, golf and conference centre, or guests who might have only stayed at the hotels? Is there a chance that a single person might be duplicated if they used two different service offered by the resort in different orders? And has the way that's been calculated been consistent over the time period stated?

These variables might explain why the figures for Thorpe Park seem to be more consistent - there are a lot less variables in place at Thorpe, as you could basically use the entrances at the park turnstiles to work out attendance. The calculation is much more difficult if you're trying to show the attendance for the whole Alton Towers Resort.

 

[Matt N]

Yes like Rob says, attendance from 1990s compared to today is fairly meaningless in terms of income as you're no longer comparing unique paid visitors (along with the numerous other variables as you say).

It is of course still interesting in terms of general visitor numbers and paints a curious figure of some of the parks being as popular as ever, if not more so, yet supposedly not providing satisfactory income to the point of unprecedented cutbacks.

I’m not sure it was ever entirely unique paid visitors. There would have been people going more than once in the 1990s, even if the number admittedly was probably a lot lower. Annual passes predate Merlin by a fair amount, as I understand it, albeit it was Merlin who really began to push them hard.

The other thing to say about “unprecedented cutbacks” is that the recent spate only really began to a great degree in 2024, and we don’t have 2024’s attendance figures yet. By all accounts, it was a year of very poor performance for Merlin, but how that manifests in terms of guest figures remains to be seen. The guest figures could have remained high, with only spend per capita being low, or they could have plummeted as we’d long thought.

I agree that it does paint an intriguing picture, however, and it does point to the link between guest figures and financial performance having been severely broken in recent years in a way that it wasn’t prior to around the mid to late 2010s.

If you're looking at the figures as being 'correct' or 'incorrect', that's really a misunderstanding of how to read these figures.

These figures exist with a context, in this case a planning document, so they are being presented to tell a specific story. Therefore, they should be 'correct' within that context. You are likely to find that context in how the planning documentation describes what the figures are demonstrating (e.g. 'the graph demonstrates that visitor numbers fluctuate and that, without investment in new rides, visitor numbers would decline', for example)

However, unless the document has been specific about how 'attendance' is being calculated, it will be very difficult to understand how these figure reflect reality outside this context - it is difficult to confidently reuse these types of figures unless you've been given the calculation behind the figure.

For example, are these figures discussing attendance to the theme park, or the whole resort? What is an 'attendance'? How does it account in attendance in the water park, golf and conference centre, or guests who might have only stayed at the hotels? Is there a chance that a single person might be duplicated if they used two different service offered by the resort in different orders? And has the way that's been calculated been consistent over the time period stated?

These variables might explain why the figures for Thorpe Park seem to be more consistent - there are a lot less variables in place at Thorpe, as you could basically use the entrances at the park turnstiles to work out attendance. The calculation is much more difficult if you're trying to show the attendance for the whole Alton Towers Resort.

I always assumed it was Alton Towers theme park; as the largest year is still 1994, before any of the resort activities existed, I assumed that these visitor figures must be for the park itself, as surely guest figures would be larger post-hotel if they were also counting the plethora of other resort activities in the equation, no?

It is certainly a good point, though, as we don’t know that for sure. My hunch is that it’s Alton Towers theme park only, but we don’t know that for certain.

 

[Bowser]

I’m not sure it was ever entirely unique paid visitors. There would have been people going more than once in the 1990s, even if the number admittedly was probably a lot lower. Annual passes predate Merlin by a fair amount, as I understand it, albeit it was Merlin who really began to push them hard.

Sorry by unique i meant people purchasing tickets for each visit (so including repeat visitors) in terms of each attendee providing income. I'm fairly sure annual passes didn't exist in 1994 but happy to be proven wrong!

Also bizarrely literally as i typed this i received an email from Merlin about Annual Passes

 

[jon81uk]

I find those figures interesting, especially since there wasn't a major attraction in either 2022 or 2023 to attract visitors to the park, although there was Alton Manor. I assume that during that period, there was an increase of people with Merlin passes who felt like they needed to make the most of their pass, therefore going to Towers more regularly, and boosting its attendance.

I would also expect people who hadn't considered a visit during the pandemic may have returned, especially as you say people may have not had annual passes for a while and come back to them.

 

[Slugjc]

@rob666 is correct .

When I went more regular 20+ years ago, I would always aim for a wednesday during school time. World get everything done in good time. Whilst now. I'm always fighting the crowds.

 

[rob666]

I used to sneak excluded kids there for a days education.
Spring balance to explain g and everything.

You could phone up a real human in advance, and they would laugh and ask you to bring a coachload.
"It will be very quiet indeed with most of the rides walk on".

We used to check for Sunreader weeks, which could be busy earlier on, as they were very date limited.

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

I believe that the Tussaud's Group Annual Pass was introduced for either the '99 or 00 season, it might have been earlier, but I distinctly remember having ours in 2000 and Daddy Goose getting rather excited about how good of a deal it was.

The concept of "Towers 2" was certainly introduced in the 1990s, which was the ability to spend an additional £5/£10 or so (when in the park) to come back the next day.

As much as I'm loathe to suggest it, I wonder if the increase in visitor numbers has more than a passing correlation with the growth of the theme park influencer cult/industry. Far more platforms, far more influencers (some with legitimately sized audiences), far more targeted social media channels. Whilst we're past the exciting peak of the social media early days of the early 10s, the entertainment form has certainly started to become dominant. Bundle that in with affordable passes and away you go.