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Goodbye Blade…

I actually think Walliams world needs flattening and a whole new family area created that fills the gap between cbbs and the thrill rides. Won't happen though.

The Blade going reeks of cost cutting, even though it's old Pirate ships are some of the simplest rides at a park so wouldn't have been difficult to get a few more years out of it.
 
In Towers’ forward plans and envisaging what they want the park to be like 5/10 years in the future, I think it’s fair to say that none of the Blade, Flávio’s and The Dungeons would have featured in those plans.

The problem is that with the park as it currently is they need to be adding capacity not further removing, even a one-in-one-out isn’t good enough, so to end up with a -2 for 2025 is shocking, if that’s how it transpires.

Of course, they could argue that the Topspin and Hex being back full time cancel out the Blade and Flávio’s as the Dungeon was closed anyway, but that’d require an extreme amount of spinning to convince anyone!
 
Matt N said:
My key concern is that the park seems to be becoming increasingly “all or nothing” in terms of the thrill level it caters for. It’s been said for years, but that key demographic of “too old for CBeebies, too young for the Big 7” is now very squeezed at Alton Towers, and I think the removals of Blade and Flavio’s arguably make this problem worse than ever.
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Enterprise as well was another ride that we’ve lost in recent years in that same category as Blade and Flávio’s. Of course Enterprise was old and reached the end of its life but it was very important in that it gave riders that weren’t yet 1.4m something to do in X-Sector. It’s shocking that the ride closed at the end of 2021 I think it was and still hasn’t been replaced in the park’s lineup.

But looking at the park lineup overall if we go back to the 2021 season and the attractions it had that year we’ve lost three Retrosquad rides, Flávio’s, Enterprise, Blade, and The Dungeons. Sure, the Retrosquad rides were only temporary and the Dungeons were an upcharge attraction, but still that’s a big gap in the lineup with those attractions gone and not much in the way of new attractions since then.
 
Quantum said:
I actually think Walliams world needs flattening and a whole new family area created that fills the gap between cbbs and the thrill rides. Won't happen though.

The Blade going reeks of cost cutting, even though it's old Pirate ships are some of the simplest rides at a park so wouldn't have been difficult to get a few more years out of it.
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It's a good point; I wonder if that whole coaster corner/horizon site, Dungeons & WW are being earmarked for a Wild Asia/Minecraft style refurb (minus the IP, hopefully)

Probably too much pie in the sky there, I fear.
 
Matt N said:
If I’m being honest, I’ll admit that the latest round of cuts baffles me.

I know 2024 was said to not be the best year in terms of visitor figures and income, but surely it wasn’t that bad either? There were still plenty of days where the park seemed decently busy, whereas if I think back to, say, 2015-2017, the park spent much of that period between the Smiler crash and Wicker Man’s opening absolutely deserted.

Yet despite this, it feels like the knife of cuts is possibly coming down as savagely as it ever has. In the wake of 2015, I understood the reasoning behind cuts, as visitor figures did absolutely plummet, particularly in the immediate period following the crash. But from an observer’s perspective, 2024 has not seemed like the dismally quiet seasons post-crash, and if Merlin’s latest attendance graph is to be believed, it’s coming off the back of two record attendance years in 2022 and 2023.

So unless the link between guest figures and income has truly been severed beyond recognition, then I’m struggling to see the justification for such savage cuts.
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Visitor numbers are a flawed metric in this era. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume an increasing number are MAP holders, many of whom will spend nothing on site, particularly due to the deteriorating food offerings.

Of course we can only speculate the breakdown of income but the comparative investment across the parks suggests Alton Towers is struggling the most.
 
The park needs major investment. The monorail is also coming to the end of its service life.

The park has lost and not replaced so many flat rides it's really causing issues when one of the remaining flat rides is reduced.

Really worried about the future of Towers especially if Merlin don't have the cash to fix it
 
I mean how old is the carousel now surely that’s
a very old ride to?

It is actually baffling beyond belief how old some of these flat rides were and with no plans to replace any of them over the years!

As for the 4D cinema I wouldn’t actually care if they did an Ice age and break the theme up down there it’s not like it’s a great theme anyway it’s all a mismatch with the driving school . Anything down that end would improve the atmosphere at this point or just relocate couple of rides and close the area until it can be revitalized!
 
TBoy535 said:
I mean how old is the carousel now surely that’s
a very old ride to?
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Carousels can go on and on for an incredibly long time. AT’s isn’t that old as it only dates back to 1991.

For comparison the Gallopers carousel at Blackpool has been there since 1979 at the park but was previously at other places such as Marine Lake Pleasure Beach in Rhyl as far back as 1919 so it’s actually over 100 years old.

Drayton Manor’s opened there in 1958 (but dates back to 1898 as a travelling ride according to Coasterpedia), and Flamingo Land’s also dates back to 1895 as a travelling ride. Royal Carousel is but a mere babe in comparison!
 
Quantum said:
The park needs major investment. The monorail is also coming to the end of its service life.

The park has lost and not replaced so many flat rides it's really causing issues when one of the remaining flat rides is reduced.

Really worried about the future of Towers especially if Merlin don't have the cash to fix it
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2027 marks the 20th anniversary of when Merlin took over running Towers and I do hazard a guess if maybe that it could mark the end a 20 year lease that Merlin having running the park given that the technically don't own the park and could easily pull out if they want to. With much going on with Chessington and Thorpe as well as the threat of Universal, are they seriously thinking about pull out of Towers given how much is needed and how much has been run into the ground? It would seem unthinkable that Merlin would do this but then again this is Merlin who do some stupid choices over the years so its not far fetch that they would do something like that.

There is ofc Universal on the horizon and if/when it is built by 2030 if all goes to plan there, Merlin will have their hands full for having serious competition for the first time and both Chessington and Thorpe will be in the firing line and will need all the investment they can get just to compete but it might mean that one park will have to be let go off which I'm starting to feel that Towers might be the one just so they can use whatever funds they might have used for Towers into both Thorpe and Chessington and they'll need ever last scrap of penny to get those parks to their best again never mind Towers.

A lot can happen between now and 2030 but I'm wondering that if 2027 is the year Project Horizon is open then I suspect that might be the very last major investment by Merlin for Towers before they end their lease on the park and move on and then that'll be the question of what happens next for the park and I cannot picture what it might be other than Chessington and Thorpe being fairly ok by then.
 
Can't use queue times as a sign of busyness anymore either. Especially as this year had so many breakdowns pretty much most days resulted in people having to queue for the same 2/3 rides since nothing else was open.
 
AT86 said:
The lease of Alton Towers is the same as the other ex Tussauds properties. It was extended a couple of years back and runs until 2077.
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I see, but in theory Merlin could pull out if they wanted to?
 
There is a possibility that Merlin could sell Alton Towers to fund more investments in Thorpe and Chessington.

I would hazard a guess that Towers is the most expensive to run given it's size, historic buildings and gardens. Towers was once the highest single rateable property in terms of business rates.

It's also a difficult park to staff due to limited public transport and overall location.
 
Quantum said:
There is a possibility that Merlin could sell Alton Towers to fund more investments in Thorpe and Chessington.

I would hazard a guess that Towers is the most expensive to run given it's size, historic buildings and gardens. Towers was once the highest single rateable property in terms of business rates.

It's also a difficult park to staff due to limited public transport and overall location.
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Don't really buy into this as it's been run as a theme park, a big theme park and UK number 1 since the early 80s. There is an obvious financial issue here with Merlin, either they are struggling to finance Alton Towers or they simply don't want to. All over the world there are rides operating, whether that's Rollercoasters, transport rides or flat rides which are a lot older than the ones here and parks do not have issues maintaining and repairing them. For the sky ride to be closed for two years now is quite frankly ridiculous when you have the same systems operating in harsh weather conditions and miles up mountains in the snow.

I think their purchase of Tussauds then virtually two months later they had sold the site out to an investment firm was a massive indication on how the future would look and here we are. It's beggars belief that no one in the company could foresee this, when most of the investment in Alton Towers was the early to mid 90s, here we are 30 years later and all the rides are clapped or already gone.

In the next few years you've got big attractions that need investment, Air, Rita, the Monorail and probably even Thirteen will need major work in the coming years. There does not appear to be a long term plan so perhaps that signals that they may try and sell up at some point.
 
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