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Merlin - destined for mediocrity?

GooseOnTheLoose said:
Also, just being nitpicky, Subway don't sell hamburgers at all!
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That was my point to an extent, both McDonalds and Subway operate/franchise fast food outlets, but that doesn't mean they offer the same product.
Similar to Merlin being the second largest visitor attractions operator doesn't mean they will offer the same product as Disney.
 
jon81uk said:
That was my point to an extent, both McDonalds and Subway operate/franchise fast food outlets, but that doesn't mean they offer the same product.
Similar to Merlin being the second largest visitor attractions operator doesn't mean they will offer the same product as Disney.
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I personally see Legoland parks as like a cheap version of the Disney parks in a way.

Both are family parks where they are destinations with rides and attractions where you're supposedly immersed into the world of Disney or Lego.

With Legoland, it is much smaller and a lot less immersive. It also feels a lot cheaper as well.

Other than Legoland, Merlin doesn't really offer a similar product to Disney. It is more like Six Flags with their resort theme parks.
 
jon81uk said:
I don't think Merlin ever said that as much as people on this forum like to make out.

At the time it was a simple statement of fact that Merlin were the second biggest visitor attractions operator after Disney. It was never about type or quality of attractions, just quantity.
Subway is the second biggest fast food brand after McDonalds, that doesn't meant Subway sells a better hamburger.
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They certainly said it a lot when they first took over internally.

Remember having not to burst into a fit of giggles during my London Eye and Towers interviews/assessment centres. Which were between 2010-2012.

Hell didn't get job at Towers because I was blatantly too honest about my feelings on Fastrack sales.
 
Benzin said:
They certainly said it a lot when they first took over internally.

Remember having not to burst into a fit of giggles during my London Eye and Towers interviews/assessment centres. Which were between 2010-2012.

Hell didn't get job at Towers because I was blatantly too honest about my feelings on Fastrack sales.
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Why do I feel like you and several other staff members laughing like the Smash Martians mocking the stupidity of Merlin thinking they are something they're not? :p
 
Pondered this for a few weeks and my general opinion is this.

Historically Merlin has been badly managed from top to bottom, I don’t think an ex-marketing director has the strategic knowledge to deal with operational control of a big entertainment business. Its float on the stock exchange caused huge damage to the parks as money was siphoned to shareholders rather than the product.

Since Kirkby privatised the company again I think some things have improved, there is clearly a desire to refresh the aging ride stock, they have worked on some theming refresh, they have clearly seen the gap in flat rides as well and are working to correct it.

Operations I think are a symptom of past neglect of the hardware and historic poor pay for tech staff, plus post-smiler they have put a longer training period for new tech staff so vacancies take longer to fill, they have increased pay for tech staff this year so we will have to see what they brings. Food is also based on a decision made by Varney (though tbf under the control of the current owners).

The problem however, in my view is Merlin still operate on a very short term strategy, and this season demonstrates that.

It’s no secret Merlin give their attractions an operating budget and a set of performance KPI’s (assumed to be guest attendance and guest spend), when an attraction doesn’t meet its performance KPI’s it is then required to balance the budget by reducing its operational budget to match. This is nothing unusual, most big businesses do this, after all it’s only fair that a company ensures its income exceeds its expenditure. My issue is for outdoor luxury attractions I think a brave business needs to work on longer than 1 year budget cycles. This year has been a concatenation of crisis for all theme parks. The weather has been terrible and the cost of living is biting at peoples bank balances. So the parks are forced to cut their budget to manage that. It would in my view be better if a single poor season could be averaged out across a few years so as not to damage the product. Now there is a risk as if you have 2 consecutive poor seasons it would be hard to catch that back up in season three but the short termism just seems to be harming them. The family run parks seem to be better able to take a long term view and it benefits their business model. Though there are obvious traps as a number of privately owned parks have failed recently (looking at you Drayton).

Certainly whilst blackstone have half the control they are not going to change their ways, and certainly Merlin are not alone in this as it’s clear even Disney are falling for the same trap at the moment but unless there is a shift in the business model for this industry I don’t see things improving dramatically.
 
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The fact budgets have evidently been cut across the parks suggests gate figures aren't where they would like them, or at least paying day visitors are down, but the question is... are people not visiting because they can't afford it (cost of living), or are people voting with their feet due to their previous poor experiences? This also extends to food and hotels.

There is a potential trap here for Merlin if they're not careful: to convince themselves cost of living is the reason people are not spending their money.
 
It'll be a bit of column a, bit of column b and added column c representing the deluge of water coming from the sky.

But yes, battening down the hatches and having a cheapened experience for the same price will leave a bad taste in the mouth.
 
It's almost entirely of their own making. Attendance figures during other turbulent economic times have actually shown that it increases. This happened in the early 80's, the early 90's, and after 2008. Those that have money left for leisure, still want to do leisure activities, they just seek better value. Past business strategies took this in to account, and capitalised on economic conditions with their investment programmes.

Contrast that to now, where Towers in particular seems to have gone down the toilet with the rest of the economy. If your economic situation is worse than it was 10 years ago, and Alton Towers is also worse than it was 10 years ago, why would you want to visit?

The weather excuse can't be used Merlin-wide either. If I didn't read this forum, I wouldn't even know it had rained all summer in the midlands. It hasn't been like that everywhere.
 
Merlin react very quickly to external factors. They would take pride in this and see it as a positive, but sadly I think it’s what has actually ruined their business and made it the way it is.

We’ve seen countless examples of time where they have a few weeks of poor attendance and they immediately bring in a bunch of staggered ride openings and cut staff positions in response.

When Covid hit, they very quickly reacted by making mass redundancies, particularly at Legoland Windsor. Yet the following year in 2021, the parks were rammed.

After the Smiler incident, AT’s attendance took a slump and they closed 5 rides in response.

There are numerous other examples of, what I’d consider to be, very knee-jerk reactions from Merlin. These reactions have resulted in minor financial benefit in the very short term, but ultimately done a lot of long term damage to their reputation and operating capabilities.
 
Would anyone be willing to take an educated guess on how many merlin attraction visitors are annual pass holders? the reason I say this is whether you purchase one outright for 12 months or pay monthly you are committed by contract to pay that money, so merlin have your entrance fee if you like. If you don't go they don't lose money, if you do go and there are availability problems they will just tell you to go another day which is fine if you live around the corner but if you live in Scotland and travel all the way to Legoland in Windsor you can't do that easily. I just wonder if the majority of visitors are now pass holders, Merlin will know this and by association they don't have to do much to retain your business so standards can and will drop.
 
Alsty said:
The fact budgets have evidently been cut across the parks suggests gate figures aren't where they would like them, or at least paying day visitors are down, but the question is... are people not visiting because they can't afford it (cost of living), or are people voting with their feet due to their previous poor experiences? This also extends to food and hotels.

There is a potential trap here for Merlin if they're not careful: to convince themselves cost of living is the reason people are not spending their money.
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I think it is mainly due to poor experiences and the attitude of Merlin when dealing with them, certainly in my experience it is. Prior to 2023 the last time I visited Alton Towers or Thorpe Park was 2013 and 2014 respectively. The reason was I just didn't think it was good value for money due to how many people they let in the park's vs ride availability especially on busier days, my opinion towards that hasn't changed. I am now in my 2nd year as a passholder and am considering whether to bother with a 3rd year because depending on where you live in the UK is it worth travelling to other attractions? e.g. Sealife/Dungeons/Madame Tussauds aren't all that different from each other it is pretty much copy and paste.

I have been burned twice this year with operational cockups relating to new rides (Nemesis Reborn, Hyperia) which were both avoidable.

Any complaints will be met with weak apologies, offers of fast tracks or suggestions that you just visit again which I think is fine but it doesn't take into consideration that the merlin passes are marketed at getting people to travel and they do which incurs lots of extra costs that they won't reimburse, they even brought in the "planned maintenance" system which can easily be overused and based on the rate of planned maintenance we have been seeing would indicate it could be abused for their own benefit quite easily, especially on off-peak days when they have less staff and shut early.

I think being a passholder and visiting more frequently you start to notice the little "tricks" they use, and they definitely have a lot.
 
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You don't actually have to, but I did, sadly.
I enjoy newspapers in print, go round them all, and tend to use them all up, pet owners beg them, they are good for several things in the garden, and I love wrapping cat turds in the Sun, it just fits.
Done, and enjoyed, the Sun vouchers, with friends, colleagues, family and ex clients, for many decades now.
Fantastic near freebies.
Thorpe has been outstanding for freebies as well, worth the effort, and a few quid to the Murdoch clan.
 
Trooper Looper said:
We went from a lovecraftion looking 'thing' with rotten skin and exposed flesh, trapped inside a pit where the area around it is full of rustic facilities with really weird architecture, a futuristic Drilling machine consumed by flesh, monoliths, a bus covered in Mad Max like-art as a Gift Shop, etc. A very striking and mysterious theme to say the least.

Skip 30 years later, the moment MMM touch that ride, all that uniqueness is pretty much gone. No more distinctive unique rustic area filled with mystery, the creature now looks like a fan made version with Godzilla 2014 spikes and an eye that looks like it's straight from Resident Evil 2/Lord of the Rings, no more rotten skin, its all just painted primary grey for some reason now. You can agree or disagree with me on the creature, but the area around it is inexcusable. It's just a generic military area that you can find in any other theme park but void of personality and not pleasant to look at. We already had X-Sector, we didn't need another that's somehow even blander. They try too hard to be flashy and innovative, but it comes off as all style, but no substance.
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I think Nemesis Reborn looking the way it does now and losing the arguably more subtle/original character from the early to mid 1990s has been the least of Alton Tower's or Merlin's problems (but shows indirect heavy influence from Thorpe Park, a place aimed more at older teen and young adults, steering away from a broader or younger audience with more paramilitary/industrial themes). Not to everyone's taste but not really a disaster next to the cable car being out of action or met with a resounding "eh?" like with Hyperia's spartan theming, and it has massive theming for a relatively limited Merlin budget that tries to say something (the dormant Nemesis creature is not dormant or undead any longer, it is now an active and vital creature on a rampage and elite paramilitary forces are fighting to contain it, ect).

But Alton Towers and Thorpe Park in the medium to long run will likely need a fresh creative outlook for their theming to jolt them out of their 2006 techno industrial timewarp, with Alton Towers maybe leaning more into creepy & funny UK fairy tales and Thorpe Park having a total Victorian steam punk (mixed with Roman) overhaul. However the Merlin corporate structure (now in some kind of crisis) is creating too much drag and from almost its flawed inception has been running on inertia for recent decades. The main challenge with Merlin parks is that they're all joined at the hip and seemingly trapped in a cycle of "robbing Peter to pay Paul" (maybe reflected in Hyperia's true blandness and the OTT theming with Nemesis Reborn) and why they overall seem less efficiently managed and a bit rough round the edges next to comparable European parks like Efteling and Europa, etc, and Alton Towers in the 2020s is so-far stuck taking one step forward and two steps back, awkwardly fighting against being the next Oakwood.

Paultons Park is in its own niche and not directly challenging Merlin, but what about in 5 to 10 years time judging by the rate of Paulton's relatively rapid expansion and refinement since the mid 2010s?
 
In 5 to 10 years time, Paulton's will still be right on the south coast, and beyond the general market range of Alton Towers, which is also rapidly becoming a regional park.
The chances of the Towers becoming the next Oakwood are precisely zero.
There has been too much investment in the park to let it rot, unlike Oakwood, which is rotting away rapidly as a school holiday park.
 
TedShatner10 said:
However the Merlin corporate structure (now in some kind of crisis)
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I'm sorry but you can't state something like this, as definitive fact, without providing examples or sources for your theory.
TedShatner10 said:
seemingly trapped in a cycle of "robbing Peter to pay Paul"
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Citation also needed. You've made an allusion to Nemesis being "over" themed and Hyperia being "under" themed, as though one project robbed cash from another, but there's no evidence to suggest this. Hyperia has always, from the get go, been described as a "stylised" ride, similar to Icon.
TedShatner10 said:
Paultons Park is in its own niche and not directly challenging Merlin, but what about in 5 to 10 years time judging by the rate of Paulton's relatively rapid expansion and refinement since the mid 2010s?
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Thank you for enacting Goose's Law of Thoosie Discussion, I was getting worried that I might have made an error. There hasn't been a mention, or comparison, to Paulton's Park for about a week!
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
I'm sorry but you can't state something like this, as definitive fact, without providing examples or sources for your theory.

Citation also needed. You've made an allusion to Nemesis being "over" themed and Hyperia being "under" themed, as though one project robbed cash from another, but there's no evidence to suggest this. Hyperia has always, from the get go, been described as a "stylised" ride, similar to Icon.

Thank you for enacting Goose's Law of Thoosie Discussion, I was getting worried that I might have made an error. There hasn't been a mention, or comparison, to Paulton's Park for about a week!
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We used to compare to Disney
Surely that says it all?
 
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