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Cuts 2015: How the consistency of the product is being eroded.

Have to disagree with many points made by PeteB. Although I agree with some (Thirteen poorly marketed), there are good things at the park, Mutiny Bay & Sharkbait Reef are the best themed areas on park, along with Katanga. Yes the layout of Sharkbait is identical to Chessington sealife but the theming is entirely custom for AT.
Extraordinary Golf in my opinion never felt unfinished, I was great in its first year, it is just poorly maintained and unloved (why only open half hour longer than theme park!).
CBeebies is a far better area than the farm and is what kids want. I bet if you gave a child a choice between meeting Mike the Knight and a donkey they would choose Mike. Also you only have to look at ThomasLand as well to see that IP based kids areas do better.

Also I assume you meant Pearson owned Tussaud's Group, not the park. Don't forget Merlin bought Tussauds group from DIC but much of the funding of Merlin was also from venture capitalists (Blackstone) and now shareholders. I still believe that most decisions are locally made by Alton Towers, even if the budgets come from hight up its the AT General manager deciding how to spend it. That could mean that they have to spend on safety fencing in the gardens so he has to decide not to repaint the golf.
 
@PeteB

- The Skyride gondolas and new system where pre the fire.

- Sharkbait is very well themed

- monorail, not being able to see out the windows is annoying but the state of those old trains was dire.

- Mutiny Bay, was a perfectly acceptable retheme and battle galleons theming was/ is great even if the ride choice is questionable.

DIC Tussauds brought little to no investment (and where the ones who killed the fireworks, but in their defence the noise abatement order did that). They also scrapped all park entertainment and food outlets gained their famous unsanitary assessment from food hygiene.

And worst of all they built the Dung Heap!!!!!

As for CBeebies, the farm was lovely, had lots of sentimental value too but kids where disinterested. CBeebies looks good and is an area that's buzzing again. It's not quite the quality of The Farm in its hey day but not far off, and is meeting the needs of the target audience unlike the Farm. HOWEVER I do agree they did the minimum they could get away with and Thomas Land is much much better.

And you don't need to convince me thirteen is naff. The Smiler is ok, I enjoy the roller coaster though for how long I don't know, the theming is naff.
 
My enthusiasm for Alton Towers is dying. Maybe this is the real reason for all the cuts? We all know Towers aren't the biggest fans of us enthusiasts, they hate all our moaning. So maybe they are trying to reduce the park to a level where we just won't care anymore and they'll shut us up? It's certainly working with me as I cannot be bothered to write a big rant here about everything that was wrong on Saturday.

All I can say is that much of what I saw was very sad and pathetic. A touch screen feedback thingy was filled in accordingly. A letter will be sent to head office.

:)
 
They are constantly saying they are reviewing customer feedback, particularly on the staggered opening times. One problem is there is no information of these changes, But one worrying thing I've seen is that they said on twitter there will soon be the be the necessary signs around park describing the changes.
 
Tom said:
They're too black and white as a company. They need the return on every pound invested clearly explained and proven.

Imagine the huge theming objects you get as Disney parks trying to be signed off in a Merlin boardroom.

All they're interested in is making Merlin as big as possible via generic expansion strategies, and then Varney and co will sell off the park.
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They can't be that good at spotting things otherwise things like Sub Terra would never get signed off.

"You want to build a ride that takes more staff to operate it than most of our big coasters?"
"I can't possibly see any downside to that plan in the future."
 
Rob said:
My enthusiasm for Alton Towers is dying.
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This; totally.

Saturday was probably my least favourite visit since I can remember, (obviously the theme park, not you wonderful people,) and quite honestly, without Nemesis & the gardens, I would start to seriously reconsider renewing my AP. The SRQ closure is the beginning of the end for Nemesis, I'm sure.

There's no need to reiterate the problems the weekend was plagued with, only to say that I also heard negativity of these 'cuts' from 'normal' members of the public, it's not just 'us' who noticed it all.

I no longer am looking forward to getting back to the park - I'm looking forward to Fireworks, a 'summer garden meet' and a maybe a hotel meet, but apart from that... Unless SW8 turns out to be a highly themed woodie or B&M of course ;)
 
smudge said:
This; totally.

Saturday was probably my least favourite visit since I can remember, (obviously the theme park, not you wonderful people,) and quite honestly, without Nemesis & the gardens, I would start to seriously reconsider renewing my AP. The SRQ closure is the beginning of the end for Nemesis, I'm sure.

There's no need to reiterate the problems the weekend was plagued with, only to say that I also heard negativity of these 'cuts' from 'normal' members of the public, it's not just 'us' who noticed it all.

I no longer am looking forward to getting back to the park - I'm looking forward to Fireworks, a 'summer garden meet' and a maybe a hotel meet, but apart from that... Unless SW8 turns out to be a highly themed woodie or B&M of course ;)
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What did you do before Nemesis had a single rider queue? That hole was only cut around 5 years ago ;-)

I agree with the last part though, I look forward to fireworks and a ride on Nemesis more than anything else. If they stopped doing one of the UKs best firework displays I would only visit every 2-3 years.
 
jon81uk said:
What did you do before Nemesis had a single rider queue? That hole was only cut around 5 years ago ;-)
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Haha, normal queue like everyone else. Bearing in mind back then fastrack wasn't a problem.
I didn't mean I only used the SRQ, but bloody hell was it handy for re-rides.
 
Dave said:
@PeteB

- The Skyride gondolas and new system where pre the fire.

- Sharkbait is very well themed

- monorail, not being able to see out the windows is annoying but the state of those old trains was dire.

- Mutiny Bay, was a perfectly acceptable retheme and battle galleons theming was/ is great even if the ride choice is questionable.

DIC Tussauds brought little to no investment (and where the ones who killed the fireworks, but in their defence the noise abatement order did that). They also scrapped all park entertainment and food outlets gained their famous unsanitary assessment from food hygiene.

And worst of all they built the Dung Heap!!!!!

As for CBeebies, the farm was lovely, had lots of sentimental value too but kids where disinterested. CBeebies looks good and is an area that's buzzing again. It's not quite the quality of The Farm in its hey day but not far off, and is meeting the needs of the target audience unlike the Farm. HOWEVER I do agree they did the minimum they could get away with and Thomas Land is much much better.

And you don't need to convince me thirteen is naff. The Smiler is ok, I enjoy the roller coaster though for how long I don't know, the theming is naff.
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Ok I'll let you have the Skyride gondola's but to be fair I think they were backed into a corner over it. The old ones looked like something out of the 70's and were falling apart.

Merlin takeover happened late 2006, early 2007. Last fireworks display was 06 and then 07 cancelled to be replaced with Scarefest.

Something else that just came to mind. Does anybody know the last time Alton Towers won any kind of award? They used to win all kinds back int day.
 
Ahh I failed on the fireworks thought Merlin took over 2008.

Though they did have little choice when the courts limited them to 3 a year. And Scarefest was going great until 3 years ago.

Not that this matters, the fact is Merlin have cut the operations budget by 15% and for me, put the last nail in the coffin for visiting.

And even though I disagree with your opinion on enchanted village and tree tops (I think both look great and the high ropes does have theming) staying in the village is just a rip off.
 
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Me and my family have visited Towers and stayed in ATH religiously every April since 1997. We even used to visit two or three times a year throughout the 90s and early 00s. When DIC came along our visits slowed down to once a year in April. Now these past few years we have started to question if it's worth still visiting, we enjoy Alton Towers as a weekend away as a family, although these past few years the resort as a whole feels like it has gone to pot.

This year will be the first year since 1997 that we have not visited in April. We've come to decide that there is no point in visiting at the start of the season anymore, we're considering staying over for Scarefest or Fireworks (more going on in general, even if Scarefest has remained stale since 2011) although even with that we're considering whether it's worth it, and I think that's a shame how a few years ago it was "so you booked Alton for April yet?" and now it's "should we bother going to Alton this year?". Neither of my parents are geeky, they don't notice little details like that newly painted fence or that new sign hidden behind a tree... but speaking to them they have noticed a general decline in the quality of the product.

Some may say rose tinted glasses, I say coming to see the reality of a park owned by a company that has no care for its customers or the quality and value of the product.
 
PeteB said:
Something else that just came to mind. Does anybody know the last time Alton Towers won any kind of award? They used to win all kinds back int day.
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They won Gold for the 'Large Visitor Attraction of the Year' award at the Enjoy Staffordshire Tourism Awards 2014, if that counts.
 
PeteB said:
Ok I'll let you have the Skyride gondola's but to be fair I think they were backed into a corner over it. The old ones looked like something out of the 70's and were falling apart.

Merlin takeover happened late 2006, early 2007. Last fireworks display was 06 and then 07 cancelled to be replaced with Scarefest.

Something else that just came to mind. Does anybody know the last time Alton Towers won any kind of award? They used to win all kinds back int day.
Click to expand...

It was the noise abatement order that killed off fireworks not Merlin. Alton Towers were told they could only hold fireworks on one weekend (three nights in total) so decided it was better to increase the scarefest event instead.
A few years later once scarefest was doing well the park realised they could do scarefest and fireworks, and as scarefest is popular, holding only one weekend of fireworks instead of two would not result in a loss of revenue compared to when they used to have two weekends of fireworks. So now we have both. The fact that the quality of scarefest has changed is an entirely different topic.

On the subject of awards, I don't remember the park winning anything in the 90s or 2000s? But the conference centre continues to win most unusual venue almost every year since it opened in 2003.
 
James said:
They won Gold for the 'Large Visitor Attraction of the Year' award at the Enjoy Staffordshire Tourism Awards 2014, if that counts.
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How many other "large visitor attractions" are there in Staffordshire? Seems like a token award tailored to fit the park to me.
 
Large visitor attractions in Staffordshire:

- Tamworth SnowDome
- WaterWorld
- Drayton Manor Park
- Alton Towers
- Shugborough
- National Memorial Arboretum
- Trentham Gardens
- World of Wedgwood
- Weston Park
- The National Brewery Centre
- Monkey Forest
- Conkers

...to name just a few!

:)
 
AstroDan said:
Large visitor attractions in Staffordshire:

- Tamworth SnowDome
- WaterWorld
- Drayton Manor Park
- Alton Towers
- Shugborough
- National Memorial Arboretum
- Trentham Gardens
- World of Wedgwood
- Weston Park
- The National Brewery Centre
- Monkey Forest
- Conkers

...to name just a few!

:)
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You have a forest of Monkeys? How do you plant them?
 
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