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Merlin Entertainments: General Discussion

MrTowers said:
It doesn't really surprise me, i think it actually makes pretty good business sense as I can't imagine many of them make much of a profit, and really once you've been to one you have been to all of them. Add to that there are sea life attractions at Alton Towers and Chessington and you further reduce your potential visitors who may have been to one when visiting a theme park.

I hope merlin use the sale of these attractions to open some more unique attractions in the UK. The mini clusters work well with visitors combining attractions to make a visit worthwhile.

I do wonder if merlin would consider looking at any other major cities for clusters. Bristol, Leeds and Edinburgh spring to mind as potential locations. I imagine living near a cluster means your more likely to buy a merlin pass so this could make business sense as merlin will be aware of geographical gaps where the passes don't sell and where they do.
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York probably would make more sense than Leeds given that it's already got a Dungeons there.

Surprised they have never tried to buy Jorvik in all honesty.
 
I don’t think Merlin will be opening anything new in the UK (except maybe London); everything we are seeing at the moment looks like belt tightening, either due to a genuine worry about profit or to sell (either Blackstone selling their share or Kirkby peeling off Lego parks and midways and selling the rest or floating on the stock market).
 
I do wonder how fiddling with the Sea Life estate will impact the arms length charities like Gweek Seal Sanctuary. Hopefully not at all.
 
dave___ said:
I do wonder how fiddling with the Sea Life estate will impact the arms length charities like Gweek Seal Sanctuary. Hopefully not at all.
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I hadn't realised Merlin had seperated off the Seal Sanctury (and closed the Oban one). I visited about 15 years ago using a Merlin annual pass, but it is run seperately as a wholly charity thing rather than part of the main Sea Life estate now and Merlin annual pass doesn't appear to be valid.
 
dave___ said:
York probably would make more sense than Leeds given that it's already got a Dungeons there.

Surprised they have never tried to buy Jorvik in all honesty.
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Ah yes I had forgotten about the York dungeons. Unfortunately I don't think there is much of a repeat factor to the dungeons that mean you would need an annual pass.

Speaking of the dungeons, I wonder if these will be the next attractions to be considered for closure??

Maybe now they have the minecraft brand that some midway attractions themed to minecraft could be a possibility similar to lego discovery centres.
 
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MrTowers said:
I do wonder if merlin would consider looking at any other major cities for clusters. Bristol, Leeds and Edinburgh spring to mind as potential locations. I imagine living near a cluster means your more likely to buy a merlin pass so this could make business sense as merlin will be aware of geographical gaps where the passes don't sell and where they do.
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Dave said:
I don’t think Merlin will be opening anything new in the UK (except maybe London); everything we are seeing at the moment looks like belt tightening, either due to a genuine worry about profit or to sell (either Blackstone selling their share or Kirkby peeling off Lego parks and midways and selling the rest or floating on the stock market).
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Speaking of Edinburgh, I don't know who said it on here but someone said that Edinburgh is a good location for say a Waxworks attraction with a Scottish theme which could be successful if done well.

But alas given Merlin's problems behind the scenes we'll likely never get any new acquisitions anytime soon, if ever. Still, a waxworks attraction in Edinburgh based on Scottish celebrities/athletics could have a appeal for them.
 
Fiona Eastwood has been announced as new CEO permanently. She has been at Merlin over 10 years and was interim CEO since November after Scott O’Neil left.

Merlin Entertainments Appoints Fiona Eastwood as Chief Executive Officer

Fiona Eastwood confirmed as Merlin’s CEO after a decade at the business. Her experience at Merlin includes serving as Chief Operating Officer and Global Marketing Director
www.merlinentertainments.biz www.merlinentertainments.biz
 
Dave said:
Having a CEO will help strategy but really it’s Blackstone who are calling the shots so I’m not sure they have all that much impact on the quality of the Merlin product.
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Also bear in mind that Fiona Eastwood has been acting CEO since November when Scott O’Neil left, so really this is just a formality rather than anything. Won’t change much at all.
 
Subject to what Rob said, it doesn’t really suggest there’s going to be any radical change in direction.
 
More of the same as in a decline, maybe - but it could now accelerate. She will have been fully on board with the "transformation" programme of redundancies, cutbacks, and soon-to-be Sea Life dispatches.

There are a few hints that it will be a smaller portfolio going forward, but probably with accelerated admission price rises and secondary sells at the things that do remain.
 
I’m not saying that current developments at Merlin are good on the whole, but if the company is being heavily restructured, is it not arguably somewhat of a good sign that the company is thinking of trimming fat in terms of attraction quantity rather than focusing solely on cutting budgets at existing attractions as they have in the past?

For years, people moaned that Merlin was too aggressively hyper focused on expansion and diversification, and “catching the mouse”, above all else. There were moans that the money within Merlin was being pumped into expansion and diversification rather than improving quality and maintaining experience at their existing attractions, and that the company was pursuing quantity over quality with its attractions.

But if the company is saying that it wants to sell Sea Life centres and is closing attractions like Bear Grylls and the Little Big Cities, is this not a sign that the company has moved away from its arguably damaging “quantity over quality” and “expansion above all else” mindset of the past?

Recent developments suggest to me that the company is trying to streamline its portfolio, shoring up its core offering and shedding some of its dead weight, which seems very out of step with the previous “catching the mouse” mentality of the late 2000s and 2010s. While attractions being closed or sold is obviously never ideal, I’d argue that the fact it’s happening as part of a company restructure suggests that Merlin may finally be abandoning its aggressive, expansion-focused mindset of the past and moved to instead trying to maintain an offering at their existing attractions in the long run (the widespread outsourcing has the potential to be a concerning development if handled poorly, but I don’t think we have concrete proof that it will be as yet).

In a company that expanded and diversified as aggressively as Merlin did during the late 2000s and 2010s, there was bound to be some dead weight somewhere, so hopefully the fact that they’re stripping this away instead of pursuing more and more expansion and diversification might lead to greater profitability and prosperity among the remaining core offering in the long term.

Does anyone get where I’m coming from? Or am I missing something, or do I sound overly naive?
 
Matt N said:
Does anyone get where I’m coming from? Or am I missing something, or do I sound overly naive?
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I don't think you sound naive, and not just because it's a narrative that I've been pushing for the past few weeks.

Streamlining the business, trimming the fat, restructuring personnel are all telltale signs of a company getting itself in a position for further significant capital investment, either by selling up, or floating. I think we're all aware that I'm leaning toward the latter.

With staff and event cuts it's also pretty easy to forget the consistent level of investment that the Resort Theme Parks are receiving in the UK, which has been lacking for a good while.

The refurbishments of The Curse at Alton Manor and Hex will have cost a pretty penny. In both instances, though much more the first, it was a significantly new overlay. Nemesis Sub-Terra was also rumoured to have been entirely removed at one point, so the reinstallation and recommissioning also won't have been cheap.

No one appears to count Nemesis Reborn as a new coaster, but the accountants certainly will. The ride was entirely* retracted, the entire area was rethemed. Whether they're to your critical taste, or not, it's very much a sign of money pouring in.

This year will see the opening of Toxicator, a seemingly heavily themed flat ride, with a long construction process and expensive plinth. Whether it's a good investment remains to be seen, but it is an investment.

Finally, lest we forget, the Skyride is set to reopen this season after a multi million pound refurb.

Critics will say that all of these investments had to be made, that they were desperately needed just to keep Alton Towers standing still. They will point to the closure of other flat rides, without replacement, and the cutting of events and entertainment staff, as signs that the park isn't investing at all, but it's not black and white. Operationally the park has been receiving cuts, on a pure capital level it's the most consistent investment has been since Tussaud's.

A park can have significant investment thrown at it, but still stagnate and fall apart. Other areas have been neglected and there does appear to be a rot, arguably a restructure is part of fixing that and starting again.
 
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Islander said:
Also bear in mind that Fiona Eastwood has been acting CEO since November when Scott O’Neil left, so really this is just a formality rather than anything. Won’t change much at all.
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In practice I agree she probably won’t change much as she is imbedded in the culture but time as an acting CEO won’t indicate her strategic thinking, interim leaders never change anything by their nature as they can’t see it through and wouldn’t have the support of the board/ shareholders.

To be honest with you if Merlin had a stroke and put a geek from here with financial skills in charge it still wouldn’t change because ultimately Blackstone will set their demands and those will be the CEO’s priority. Anyone who has gone from a team position to a management position in their careers will know how quickly you go from “I’m going to change the culture because I have worked in the team and know everything that’s wrong” to then finding out it’s like turning the titanic actually making any substantive change because the more senior management resist.
 
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Dave said:
To be honest with you if Merlin had a stroke and but a geek from here with financial skills in charge it still wouldn’t change because ultimately Blackstone will set their demands and those will be the CEO’s priority. Anyone who has gone from a team position to a management position in their careers will know how quickly you go from “I’m going to change the culture because I have worked in the team and know everything that’s wrong” to then finding out it’s like turning the titanic actually making any substantive change because the more senior management resist.
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This is the crux of it and bang-on. To a large extent, the CEO is not much more than a puppet, with (in this case) Blackstone the puppet master.
 
I thought that Blackstone were minority stakeholders, as their joint ownership of the company is alongside a Canadian Pension Fund? Surely that makes the KIRKBI the majority stakeholder?

Unless the other investors are more passive and Blackstone make the strategic decisions as active investors?
 
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