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Merlin Entertainments: General Discussion

The car park fee was introduced in 2002 under Tussauds at £2. Express was £6 then.

Under Tussauds, Towers also decided at one point they were closing the monorail on off peak days. Think that was 2004. However the backlash over that meant a quick U-Turn.
Now seems most people just walk anyway.

I recall the monorail trains looking rather dirty by that point with externally badly faded and seat covers with years of ingrained dirt.

The dying days of Tussauds (or years) were grim. Felt like 2003 onwards were a pretty rapid deterioration with just about everything with more and more cost cutting. Merlin felt like a breath of fresh air when they took control. Alas it didn’t last.
 
venny said:
I can understand why you’d hold this view without visiting the parks back in that Tussauds era, because a lot of the headline details aren’t massively dissimilar. With that being said, when you compare that period to where we are now, I struggle to think of anything that is really an improvement. Cleanliness, entertainment, yearly investment, general upkeep, ride availability… they were all better.

The car park was free, the monorail was clean (and open, operating efficiently), the hotels had an abundance of good quality entertainment, a great restaurant with good wine list, the park had daily live shows, a “working” farm, edible food and not extortionate prices, more flat rides, a relatively more innovative ride lineup.

Tussauds weren’t perfect, post DIC certainly pretty poor, and the initial Merlin takeover generated positive changes. Comparing 90s Tussauds and present day Merlin however is not even close.

The rot seems to have gotten so bad that the reaction to their seeming abandonment of animals is not even viewed as that much of a surprise.
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I don’t deny that some of this is true. Undeniably, Pearson Tussauds did invest more highly into new things, the quality was higher in some regards, and there was generally more of a positive feeling of growth.

But my hypothesis is that at least some of that perception of better upkeep and ride availability was because a lot of the rides and core infrastructure were newer and CAPEX investment into shiny new things was flowing in readily. In the Pearson days, the Skyride and the Monorail, for example, were ~10 years old or younger, whereas in the current Merlin era, they’re nearly 40 years old. If Pearson didn’t invest much in preventative maintenance of the rides, it was better hidden by virtue of the rides being newer, whereas if Merlin does the same, it boils to the surface a lot more because the rides are getting older and the cracks are starting to show.

I would argue that the way the Haunted House and Toyland Tours were supposedly treated maintenance-wise is not the best omen for how Pearson Tussauds might have treated some of the park’s aging ride stock had they stayed on for longer. The fact that John Wardley has told us that they refused to invest further into the Haunted House after the opening year due to a lack of return on investment sounds very Merlin-style, and the fact that none of Wardley/Keith Sparks’ classic dark rides lasted in their original forms beyond 2006 would suggest that Tussauds, even potentially under Pearson, had some shortcomings in thematic upkeep. The Merlin-style ethos of “marketing first” also arguably started with Oblivion; while admittedly not quite as extreme as some of the later marketing-driven projects, it was arguably the beginning of marketing starting to take a greater role in the running of the park and the planning of investments, which people often cite as one of Merlin’s key flaws.

Going away from Alton, it’s worth remembering Chessington. That park did not receive nearly as much investment after Tussauds purchased Alton Towers in 1990, and the investment was killed almost stone dead when Tussauds purchased Thorpe Park in 1998. By the time Merlin came along in 2007, Chessington was in such a decrepit state that the park was very nearly sold off in the late Tussauds era due to the amount of money required to renovate it, and the first 10-15 years of Merlin’s tenure largely consisted of renovations and spending millions to keep the park standing still and replacing the old, decaying rides and theming. Given that Chessington started removing a lot of their crumbling theming (e.g. Runaway Train, Dragon Falls) relatively early into Merlin’s tenure, I think we can infer that Merlin does not deserve the entirety of the blame for the state Chessington fell into.

I’m not trying to say that Pearson Tussauds were bad, or that Merlin are saints. But I do think that some of the 90s prosperity was caused in part by the fact that the bulk of the park was simply newer and in a younger, more exciting phase of its life, which would have hidden any maintenance or long-term upkeep shortcomings better. Had Tussauds, under Pearson, Charterhouse or DIC, held onto Alton Towers for longer, I don’t think the direction taken would ultimately have been that different. From what I’ve heard and gleamed over my years as an enthusiast, I don’t actually think that any of the iterations of Tussauds were all that different to Merlin in many ways, and I feel that may have manifested more as the park grew older.
 
Vik said:
The car park fee was introduced in 2002 under Tussauds at £2. Express was £6 then.
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Indeed they did but the reason for introducing it was to find a new relief road. This didn’t get approval in the end at JCB wouldn’t allow it to be built on parts of their land. However, Tussauds/Merlin realised what a money spinner the parking charge was and decided to keep it.
 
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spotweld said:

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_kQq9oMnXg


I don't condone urban exploration, but I think this is worth a watch. Stick around for her speech at the end especially.

Sorry if this is not the correct place to post this.
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Are they the first urban explorers to go in there? I'm sure I saw another video where some people broke in and found the secret shark tank.

Edit: ignore that, I'm thinking of James Bond.
 
spotweld said:

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_kQq9oMnXg


I don't condone urban exploration, but I think this is worth a watch. Stick around for her speech at the end especially.

Sorry if this is not the correct place to post this.
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I would ignore this.
The video was filmed a couple of weeks after the attraction had closed. Removing all the sea life is a big task and not one that can be completed quickly. The animals in there are clearly being cared for as their is live feed there for them.

Security for the attraction is also the responsibility of the NEC as it is their property.

Also the girl behind the video deletes comments if they dare challenge her on anything. If you do it more than once she blocks you. I know this as was in a group chat where everyone said the same thing

So take what you see there with a big pinch of salt that she is not telling people the truth and the video is just to make her money.
 
I suggested (on Facebook) that it always looks dodgy when people don't film themselves entering through an already open door on these urban exploration videos (they always claim that they don't break and enter). She replied to me saying that they definitely never break into anywhere and it's always through an open door. I asked her to prove it on this occasion, as why wouldn't you film a critical bit of a video incase the police ever accused you of breaking in? She never replied to me again. If I was ever going to trespass, I'd definitely film the entry even just to cover my own back.
 
Does that mean every time London Eye appears in a film there'll be pop up link to buy tickets?

It'll just be the "Sky Cinema is sponsored by Merlin" advert before any film starts. Big that its on all the channels, but worth it just to throw a few extra Thorpe Park ads ahead of Sky Action?
 
havaska said:
Somewhat ironic Merlin are partnering with NBC Universal (Sky’s owners).
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Technically not. I work for Sky and even though NBCU is a sister company, we have very little to do with them in some areas. In the area that Merlin are partnering has nothing to do with NBCU. Even then, the universal parks are a different company within NBCU but ultimately we all fall under Comcast
 
Matt N said:
I’m actually not so certain that an overly different direction would have been taken had Tussauds kept the park. Heck, I don’t think it would have been that different had Pearson Tussauds kept the park.

A lot of the root causes of the present day problems were baked in before Merlin arrived in 2007.

A mass removal of flat rides occurred in 2004. Things like The Haunted House still slipped into a poor standard of maintenance such that it had to be heavily renovated at only 10 years old. Oblivion, built under Pearson, was arguably the start of the very marketing-driven mentality of the park for the ensuing decades afterwards.

If you remember when John Wardley made his brief appearance on here a couple of years back, he said that him and Keith Sparks wanted to add additional scenes to the Haunted House… but Pearson wouldn’t allow it because the ride had already delivered its required financial return and adding new scenes would not generate any additional return on investment. I’ve heard it said before that the Haunted House got poor in terms of maintenance as early as 1998, and the fact that most of John Wardley’s original classic dark rides had been heavily renovated by 2005 would suggest that Tussauds was never particularly great at upkeep.

This might be a controversial view, but from what I’ve heard, I actually think Pearson Tussauds were no different to Merlin in terms of upkeep. They simply had an easier time because they invested more in terms of CAPEX into new things and the bulk of the core infrastructure was a lot newer.

People idolise the Tussauds era, but I don’t think the direction taken would have ultimately been that different had Tussauds kept hold of the park.
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Pearson sold Tussauds in 1999 to Charterhouse, that's when things started slipping. 2004 was a real low point.

Maintenance wasn't perfect in this era but there was certainly a greater focus than has existed in Merlin post-Thirteen.

The Haunted House wasn't in need of 'heavy renovation'. There was lots of broken effects and it was no longer as popular, but it was just a relatively cheap way of creating a "new" attraction in 2003; "interactive dark ride upgrades" were all the rage at the time for that reason. For all the effects which were restored for Duel, far bigger issues were created; they permanently illuminated stuff which completely broke the illusion. Certainly the state of The Haunted House in 2002 was far superior to any ride I had on Duel under Merlin ownership.

It's natural for an external design agency to want to do more work on a showcase project and it's equally natural for the business responsible for that investment to be reluctant on the grounds they won't see ROI. This might be tight in one's opinion but it isn't neglectful.
 
At a Merlin Park today but none if the ones in the UK but at Gardaland their flagship park gotta say it feels completely different from the Merlin Parks in the UK
 
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