You can't complain about Alton's crazy and gimmicky marketing and then buy in to one of their most famous lines and complain that something isn't true. Baffling.
Who has bought into their line whilst also complaining about their promotion?
When I've visited the park in recent times I go to have a laugh with friends, not to go picking holes in it, I end up having a sucky day because of how tacky and bolted together the place is now. It's like a big crowded commercial indulgence with a massive price tag, so not for me, and I don't go anymore.
It was never some kind of utopia, it was just fun. Simple as that, if others enjoy the product today then fine, but personally I feel they would enjoy it more if it were managed better, better designed and less tacky as well.
We all know David Blaine can't actually levitate, right? It's not magic. Because there is no magic and there never was™
With respect, it sounds like you're deliberately thinking about it completely literally to try and sound more intelligent than anyone else. We all know there is no real magic and it's all illusionary. But an illusion is a concrete thing, it either works or it doesn't, depending on how exactly it's done. Not aiming the rest this post at you specifically, just an interesting point you raise...
Anybody who has experienced being involved in good theatre, architecture, music, sound design, cinematography, editing - basically anything at all that is the process of taking random clumsy elements and creating an effect from the sum of their parts - will know how objective the process actually is. The style of it might be subjective to the viewer, but the process behind it isn't, it either works or it doesn't.
You absolutely can create 'intangible' things like atmosphere, surprise, suspense, reveal, etc, purely from how the elements are put together. Even really ignorant guests will take part and enjoy this outcome whether they are aware of the elements at play or not, while more observant guests will have a field day.
This slightly abstract output is often referred to as "magic" by some in the industry, I wish it weren't because it only sets off the "magic doesn't exist" cynicism from others, yes we aren't children - of course literal "magic" doesnt exist, it's just the entertaining effect of the elements coming together well. Steel, concrete and electronics like you say. But when done to a high design standard, it works.
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Merlin no longer design anything with this end goal in mind, they design the marketability of the ride first and foremost and then do bugger all with the ride they actually create, ending up with Frankenstein results like The Smiler - the world's most inverting ride but squeezed into a ridiculously small space for cost reasons, that would have benefitted far more with less inversions and better quality infrastructure (and ended up being more expensive to engineer it this way anyway), or Derren Brown's Ghost Train - a great principle ruined by ham-fisted VR introduced simply to get the project marketing-approved, which will cost millions to maintain the technology in the long run for little more than you will soon be able to get at home.
I think this is where the "lack of passion" idea has come from in others. The people behind the park actually are passionate most the time, but are so limited by the policies of those running the company.
Merlin have proven to themselves that designing by marketability first and foremost does not work. Designing the marketing is very important in delivering a ride concept, Nemesis and Oblivion proved this, but those attractions were also allowed to develop and improve with a huge amount of creative work in the early stages.