Sounds like loss of interest. Must be more money in the midway attractions. Towers must me costing them too much to run the most lucrative part of the resort year round.
"Merlin doesn’t expect the theme park to recover until 2017. Attendance at Alton Towers and another ride-heavy park declined last year and revenues fell for the company’s resort theme parks group.
Company-wide, attendance, like-for-like revenue and profits increased by less than 1 percent.
The six Legoland Parks were a standout, however, with like-for-like revenue increasing 8.2 percent. A Legoland Hotel opened in Florida last year, and the company already has plans to expand again with a beach village-themed resort there.
Four more Legoland parks are expected to open by 2020, including three that have already been announced in Dubai, Japan, and South Korea.
Plans also call for 2,000 more hotel rooms throughout the portfolio and 40 new Midway attractions — which include Madame Tussauds, The Dungeons, aquatic centers, and other venues, including some in partnership with DreamWorks — by the end of 2020.
“Our vision over the next five years is to consolidate Merlin’s position as a global entertainment company at the heart of which are multi-layered intellectual property partnerships, which actually will be part of how we move the business forward,”
-- Nick Varney
https://skift.com/2016/02/27/merlin...-more-business-with-an-investment-in-big-bus/
So more Legolands, more Hotels and forget all about the Theme Parks