Lots going on in this topic !
@Plastic Person - I do agree each of those examples that you posted are different, but irrespective of their differences, the fact that they all compete for leisure spend makes them bedfellows in the simplest of terms.
If a family goes to something like go ape for example, they will be entertained for the entire time they are there (most likely), and not all family members need to take part. Some will be happy to watch and it costs them nothing. They will also possibly turn it into a day out by doing other free stuff like taking a picnic or enjoying nearby countryside.
A theme park is not a full days entertainment if it is busy. It is a day of standing in queues, interrupted with the occasional 2 minute ride.
Are people so clinical about reviewing the time they spend on park like that? When we (literally meaning us) visit the park, it's not just about rides - we walk past rides with no queues to find more beer ... It's about spending time with your friends. Queues are part of the experience, no one goes expecting there not be any ... although more than possible at PB at the moment ! I know we tend to go on quieter days, but our long breaks from rides in Crevettes would be spent in queues on more normal attendance days, chatting about whatnot. A 30 minute queue for Ice Blast is nowhere near as toxic for the once a year crowd as it is to us veterans. It's a time to chat to your friends, hell ... even share some anticipation about shooting 200ft in the air at the speed of a wounded express elevator.
Your Go Ape experience jars with every time I've done it. Unless you're the first group out, the whole thing is marred by 50% of your day being spent hanging around at the bottom of trees making small talk with strangers, whilst drinking odd tasting water out of paper cones ... whilst some fat apathetic teenager spends far too long climbing a rope ladder. The zip lines are the 'signature' of those courses and the 3 or 4 of those collectively last perhaps 2 minutes.
The park certainly was quiet yesterday. So much so that Big Pizza didn't start making food until gone 1300 because they didn't have any customers. The 1100 opening probably doesn't help them on that front, but it was pretty odd to see. Everything seemed to be running, no waits of any kind really. Valhalla was testing pretty consistently.
Is pricing a factor ? Potentially ... I do think that what they have is perhaps the least worst option - sometimes you have to pick that. We've done POP vs. PPR or a hybrid of the two so many times, I don't have anything new to say. I think the main danger with a switch back to PPR is that your per cap spend would reduce, but the number of caps would not increase sufficiently to make more money.
@jon81uk It's a fair point that Adventure Island makes a hybrid of the two work, even if it is a stealth option. I do think it would be harder to achieve at the Pleasure Beach though, because the scale (value) of your smallest ride vs. your largest ride is so much different, so having a flat fee applied to the Bus in Nick Land and Valhalla is tricky. Furthermore, if you make the Bus cheap and Valhalla expensive, you run the risk of a family opting for a kid to do 5 cheap rides and a teenager doing 2 white knuckle rides ... which both al-a-carte options costing less than POP/wristband.
@rob666 I am not unsympathetic to the non-rider thing, I just think they're struggling to find a solution for it that doesn't cause them other problems. Again, I think it's a calculated bet.
For example ... If you have a family of four with grandma in tow, I think this is the thinking:
Currently
Scenario 1 - family of four go into the park, grandma goes on the pier and meets them at Pablo's later ...
~£180 revenue
Scenario 2 - family of four go into the park, they suck it up and grandma gets a wristband but doesn't ride much ... ~£220 revenue
What is being suggested / proposed
Scenario 3 - family of four go into the park to ride, grandma gets a £10 'no rides' option ... ~£190 revenue
The unintended consequence of the above which I think the park are nervous about
Scenario 4 - family of four go into the park, kids ride with dad, but mum & grandma get a £10 'no rides' option ... ~£140 revenue
Scenario 5 - family of four go into the park, kids ride, but mum, dad & grandma get a £10 'no rides' option ... ~£110 revenue
... and if I wasn't so hungover I would show the above for PPR. It's similar, a variation on a theme.
At the moment, Pleasure Beach are betting on the fact that people will spend ~£40 on POP because it's the only option and they work on the basis that if you only offer POP you will make more money with less people over an al-a-carte system whereby you get lots more people, but more than half of them are finding a way to consume and spend less. The danger is that you get more, but not sufficiently more to make up the gap, irrespective of secondary spend.
It's hard to know how effective that strategy is without knowing how many people look at it but ultimately don't pay it. The park have instrumentation on the website to understand their conversion rate and abandoned baskets, I am sure (hoping) that they use it.
I don't usually slag them off too much on the closing time changes, but what they have done with LNR this evening is absolutely disgraceful and someone should be shot on the Grand National steps at dawn. We can only hope
@Coaster was planning to attend and will be delivering both barrels.
Now you all know what things would look like if
@Matt N hacked my account.
