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Merlin Entertainments: General Discussion

Hid said:
That's the main difference between a company owned park and a family owned park. Family Owned you can tell the passion and natural care.

I would like Alton to become self reliant again or brough back into public ownership
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Disney and Universal parks are awash with passion and care. I agree it's more common in the independent parks but it's not exclusive.

Merlin do not operate in a manner that facilitates this.
 
Investment is all about return. You can invest in your interests or profit. Merlin are chasing money for whatever reason. I'd buy shares if they enabled me to enjoy what I believe in and also make a profit. That's how capitalism works. But I'd also invest for the greater good and ensure everybody enjoys quality and fairness. Money grabbing is wrong and freedom is fair imo.
 
Squiggs said:
I suppose the one thing we can all agree on is that this is very much a golden age for Merlin, and everything is A-OK! 👍
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I know that this is tongue in cheek, but I haven't ever claimed that this is anywhere near a golden period for Merlin Entertainments, nor have I said that they are without significant challenges ahead.

I have been a pragmatic realist based on the information available in the public domain.

They're not in a golden age, but nor are they facing an immediate collapse and selling the lease to Alton Towers tomorrow.
 
Osaka12 said:
I dunno, to put it in layman's terms mortgaging your properties in a game of monopoly is not a good thing. But who knows! They might win!! Or flip the board.
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is it?

it depends on what rules you play, however

lets say that you land on the last available property, you already have more properties than the other players, however you don't have enough to buy it and are likely to get out bid, so you could mortgage one property to earn enough to then invest in this additional property to enable you to earn more money in the future, you may think I am a bit pedantic, but this is (ideally) the very general gist of what is happening (from my knowledge), it is why a lot of companies have sold their properties it may cost them in rent in the long term but they gain capital in which they can use to increase x, y, z for more money allowing them to earn more than they may lose from rent, and they loose the risk of that property (if a sink hole opened up, or it was condemned, it likely wouldn't be their responsibility) or just do stock buy backs and make money go up, because everything is short sighted now.
 
Hid said:
...Family Owned you can tell the passion and natural care. ...
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Hahaha.
Blackpool being a case in point.
Family owned, lost half of the rides in my lifetime.
More natural carelessness with no passion.

And businesses mortgaging properties...most businesses are built on leverage/borrowing.
We are in a virtual recession, economic stagnation, and a massive loss in disposable income from the lower earners...if a business does not cut its cloth differently in challenging times, they are more likely to go to the wall, not less.
All seems sensible and logical too me...the fools are really those who spend long hours creating, watching and believing this guff.
Any of them got an MBA in business analytics?
Probably not.
 
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Bowser said:
Disney and Universal parks are awash with passion and care. I agree it's more common in the independent parks but it's not exclusive.

Merlin do not operate in a manner that facilitates this.
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Ehhhh some of Disney's decisions recently haven't exactly shown passion nor care.

But when you can hide such decisions behind a massive budget and IP then it's easier to save face.
 
There's a nice little tidbit explaining Merlin Entertainments current investment strategy, tucked away in the Harry Potter and LEGOLAND Deutschland announcement.
This partnership launches at our Resort in Germany and marks Merlin’s largest-ever single investment into an existing site, reflecting our strategy to prioritise locations with the greatest growth potential.
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Admittedly I'm putting a lot of weight on the last part of this sentence, but I do believe it explains why it feels as though Alton Towers hasn't seen (what feels like) significant investment for a while.

As the UK's largest long established theme park, it doesn't have much more growth potential. This is different from saying that it doesn't have investment potential. Investment thrown at Towers is essentially securing its position and keeping it in place, standing still as it were, at least at the moment.

Growth potential is all about, realistically, how many more visitors and spend you can attract. This isn't to say that Alton Towers will not be seeing significant investment any time soon, but it explains the prioritisation of other parks.

Full article below, and thanks for @AT86 for posting it over in the LEGOLAND Deutschland thread, and to @Bert2theSpark posting it over on the Universal GB thread.

Wands At The Ready! Harry Potter™ Is Coming To LEGOLAND® Deutschland Resort

www.merlinentertainments.biz www.merlinentertainments.biz
 
For Merlin to get access to Warner Brother Discovery’s IP library, including Harry Potter is pretty massive news. People forget that Merlin has larger global attendance than Universal, so can bolster WBD’s IP catalogue in terms of merchandising potential, especially when they can specifically tie Lego to it.

It also seems that Merlin are putting fewer but more significant investment into their attractions as of recently. No more trying to spread the spend across the portfolio (such as a new Secret Weapon every few years) but going nearer destination park scale on the investments they do make.

Something makes me think this was part of the reason Project Horizon has been seemingly cancelled, this shift has been made since Varney & Co stepped down, and the investments that were underway (too late to be scrapped) were given extra budget to fit the new direction of the company.

This definitely doesn’t feel like the classic Merlin we all once knew, just that we won’t know if this is for the better/worse until the dust has settled a bit.
 
After what has arguably been a tough year for Merlin, they do seem to be ending the year on high. As well as the Harry Potter area/accommodation at Legoland Germany, they've also announced that Legoland Shanghai has had over a million visitors in what I believe is under 4 months.
www.chinadaily.com.cn

Legoland Shanghai Resort sets a new world record in visitors

www.chinadaily.com.cn www.chinadaily.com.cn

Having never been to Shanghai, I don't know what that means the annual attendance is likely to be. Presumably it will get higher footfall in the summer months than in the winter months, and presumably there was some pent up demand for the first 4 months. We don't know how this compares to their projections. But it certainly sounds like it's doing well.
 
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