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Merlin Entertainments: General Discussion

Hid said:
The Merlin today ia not the same Merlin, 20 years having multiple staff restructures and the fact has had multiple versions whether a public entity to being majority owned by Lego
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Merlin is not majority owned by LEGO. KIRKBI is the largest shareholder, with 50%, but they do not own a majority.
Ash said:
They’ve built this stupid illusion for themselves, thinking they can have a subscription business model, and it’s a house of cards.
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There has been some form of group annual pass for at least the past 26 years. Hardly a house of cards.
Ash said:
Just for me, to describe the issue.

Platinum pass £249

15 visits per season
Normal online gate price 15 x £32 = £480
One fast track per visit 15 x £10 = £150
A guess at F&B and merch savings per visit 15 x £5 = £75
Free parking 15 x £13 = £195
2 stay hotel discounts = 2 x £50 = £100

Value of pass = £1000
Cost to Merlin = -£751
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The breakdown is nonsensical as it attaches "cost" to value added propositions which have no actual cost.

It doesn't cost Merlin £15 for a passholder to use a parking space, they're not paying the passholder to use it. It could only ever be described as lost revenue if that specific "free" parking space were otherwise going to be given to someone who was willing to pay for it. It costs them nothing.

The discounts on merchandise and F&B affect the amount of profit earned by item, but again it doesn't cost Merlin anything. The loss is only there if the item would have been purchased at full price by someone else. This also ignores the fact that F&B sales affect Aramark's bottom line, not Merlin's.

The fundamental distinction lies in the difference between marginal cost and opportunity cost. In reality, the actual cost to Merlin for a passholder to visit is the incremental expense of their presence. It's negligible items like water usage, additional cleaning, or a tiny fraction of a staff member's hourly wage.

The perceived value you're attaching, is a marketing lever used to make the £249 entry price feel like a bargain by anchoring it against prices that many guests would never actually pay in isolation.
 
Dave said:
I’m going to sit somewhere in the middle here.

Does the annual passes model work - yes. It’s ran too long for it to be financially problematic historically.

Where I think they have clearly lost their institutional credibility experience is adding the fast track. It won’t increase sales or retention but will add operation pressure to their attractions and potentially reduce income.

I do however, wonder if they might be having a retention issue, and whether they have given thought to why that might be (worsening of the product).
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I think, in this particular case, the inclusion of Fastrack was a panicked last minute move to attempt to add perceived value to a product which no longer felt worth the additional money, after the effective scrapping of exclusion dates on the Gold Pass.
 
rob666 said:
From all the comments above, particularly "Merlin do not know how to run a theme park..."

Then why was the place so busy yesterday???


Looking from a different perspective...


They seem to be doing things right, the park used to make massive losses on off peak days...simply no punters, yet now they have.

Think they might just have made a few quid yesterday on the good old secondary spend...parking, fasttrack, F&B, tat sales, all add up in a busy park.

Twenty years ago on a similar early season weekday the park would have been dead...more staff than punters...a real lesson in how to lose money very quickly.

So perhaps the actual professionals have a good idea of how their business works, and the regular thoosies don't really have a clue.

Repeat visitors may not be happy, but the park isn't run for them, it seems to be running on volume attendance, with lots of punters throwing their money about at the moment.

Opening weeks have been very busy...Merlin haven't got a clue?

Take a reality check here, they know exactly what they are doing.
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I'm going to take this from a neutral point of view and say that today may be a combination of school trips and inset days

My logic would say inset days and day before holidays should be an exception to having school trips as it could be carnage combining the two.

I would think for a guest experience standpoint, slightly capping school trips or school trip only days would be better for the guests than having the kids only get on 3 rides in 6 hours

It might be a way of incensing repeat visits as a school trip is a limited window whilst a full day is a better opportunity to experience everything. Arguably weekends can be quieter than school days during school trip season.
 
As an aside, I visited on the 25th of April last year and it was ridiculously quiet (a Friday). I'm talking 5/10 minute queues for most rides and some lower. If you're looking for a quiet day it might be worth looking around that period.
 
Ash said:
Just for me, to describe the issue.

Platinum pass £249

15 visits per season
Normal online gate price 15 x £32 = £480
One fast track per visit 15 x £10 = £150
A guess at F&B and merch savings per visit 15 x £5 = £75
Free parking 15 x £13 = £195
2 stay hotel discounts = 2 x £50 = £100

Value of pass = £1000
Cost to Merlin = -£751
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I disagree with this. A lot of my visits with my pass are during non-sell out days. In fact many passholders would stay away during sellouts unless there's a reason e.g. event/new ride.

I'm not taking up anyone else's spot to be inside the park, so didn't lose money letting me in.
I was never going to one shot fasttrack so they aren't losing money.
If I don't come, I don't pay parking but neither does anyone else because the car park is not full.
 
The very good weather forecast in a spell of lousy weather will have had a big effect regarding yesterday...all those passholders keeping an eye on the forecast.
Last dry day for a fortnight in the local forecast here.
Must be the school holidays.
 
The easiest workaround the free one-shot Fastrack should've been go and collect it at Box Office or wherever Fastrack is sold and then you get given one that is essentially already within the allocation for the day. That way it gets split up over the course of the day, although during popular times might lose out on sales numbers. Which is probably why they wouldn't do it that way.

The main reason it's been altered this quickly is because of the predictable nature of everyone using their Platinum Pass for Wickerman at night Fastrack. Which NO-ONE could have seen coming (will once again point to when they did MAP Fastrack back in Summer 2009).

One thing I will say based on last weekend is that the food we had was decent enough. But it is still abhorrently expensive. Least kiddo didn't have to pay for pizza pasta.
 
owenstreet7 said:
Arguably weekends can be quieter than school days during school trip season.
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When is school trip season? Is this an advertised period? How would other customers know what is priced and operated as off peak hours with expected walk on rides is in fact a heaving school trip event?
 
Bowser said:
When is school trip season? Is this an advertised period? How would other customers know what is priced and operated as off peak hours with expected walk on rides is in fact a heaving school trip event?
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Alton Towers publishes their academic year calendar on their website, along with highlighted dates for off-peak, peak and super-peak periods.

www.altontowers.com

School Trip Prices & Planning | Alton Towers Resort

Our experts can help with planning a school trip, from costs to itineraries. See our detailed school prices for a range of trips at Alton Towers Resort.
www.altontowers.com www.altontowers.com

Dynamic pricing is in effect year round for other guest tickets, giving an indication of expected of park attendance.
 
For most parks, school trip season is the last two weeks in June, and the first two weeks in July.
The first two weeks in July can be absolutely horrendous, though the days of endless spitting, fighting and queuejumping seem to have come to an end.
Just a million teens staring silently at their phones in two hour queues.
 
As I'm making my first visit to Towers of the season, I thought it was only appropriate that I take a look at Merlin's annual report for 2025.

As has become a bit of an annual tradition, I've spent my morning wading through the corporate jargon and consolidated balance sheets of an international conglomerate operating 131 attractions across 22 countries, so that you don't have to.

If 2024 was a year of mere survival and stabilisation, 2025 marks a definitive pivot. Merlin adopted a highly aggressive posture of sustainable growth, and the methods they used to achieve it were classic ruthless, late stage capitalist efficiency.

The key takeaway? Fewer people, less revenue (but don't panic).

On the face of it, the headline figures look like the thoosie doom mongers were right. Overall visitation dropped by 3.6% in 2025. The group welcomed 60.5 million guests, down from 62.8 million the previous year. That's 2 million fewer customers walking through the turnstiles.

Consequently, revenue also dipped by 2.8% (or 1.6% if you factor in constant currency fluctuations).

In the leisure industry, empty seats and quiet turnstiles are usually the kiss of death. A drop of two million visitors should trigger panic in the boardroom, but this is where the financial alchemy begins. I'm sure @Jb85 will appreciate this...

Despite losing 2 million visitors and taking a hit on top line revenue, Merlin’s core profitability actually went up. They retained an EBITDA of £571 million, which is a 0.7% increase on the previous year on a constant currency basis.

How do you make more profit with fewer customers? You squeeze the ones who do turn up.

Merlin reported a staggering 8.6% increase in commercial revenue per capita. They recognised that in a brutal, unforgiving economic year for leisure spending, families couldn't afford a second or third visit. When that family did finally take their one big trip, the sunk cost fallacy kicked in. They wanted the day to be completely flawless.

Merlin leaned heavily into a psychological strategy they call "extend the escape." They discounted the entry ticket (using it as a loss leader to get you through the door) and then deployed highly targeted ways to extract cash once you were a captive audience. Premium food and beverage options, higher end merchandise, and (of course) Fastrack. They knew they could make up the margin on upselling and it worked. In the fourth quarter of 2025, this strategy was so effective that they saw operational profitability growth across all geographic regions.

Squeezing the consumer only gets you so far, though. Fiona Eastwood’s core mandate was stabilisation through operational excellence, which meant cutting the corporate bloat.

Before 2025, Merlin was organised into three siloed operational groups based entirely on attraction types: LEGOLAND, Gateways (Midways), and Resort Theme Parks (RTPs). They were essentially running three parallel companies under one umbrella. Three different HR departments, three different marketing departments, different IT vendors. It was an expensive, duplicative mess.

They moved to a regional model (North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific), and then merged Europe and Asia Pacific for further efficiencies. By creating globally led teams and consolidating operations, they cut the global headcount by 1,000 people.

That single move generated £37 million in annual savings. They saved a further £50 million annually through smart spending efficiencies, switching from local procurement to a global method that actually leverages their massive economies of scale.

When your fixed costs are permanently lowered, every additional pound extracted from a return visitor goes straight to the bottom line at a significantly higher margin than before.

Cost cutting only goes so far, and the balance sheet still had to face reality. Merlin took a £262 million impairment charge this year.

As I have explained ad nauseam on this forum, an impairment charge is an accounting adjustment. It's the company standing up and admitting that an asset they own is no longer worth what it was previously valued at, not cash walking out of the door.

Crucially, £201 million of that hit Madame Tussauds alone. The theme parks did not take the hit. City centre foot traffic and inbound tourism have dropped off a cliff. In an economic downturn, a family will still drive two hours to ride a rollercoaster in Staffordshire, but they will not pay central London prices to look at a waxwork of Ed Sheeran.

This brings us to the £200 million sale of the LEGOLAND Discovery Centres back to the LEGO Group. Why sell the Discovery Centres but keep and invest heavily in the LEGOLAND theme parks? It seems counter intuitive until you look at the physical nature of the assets.

Discovery Centres are retail heavy indoor attractions, often anchored in struggling shopping centres. Selling them gave Merlin £200 million in hard cash and allowed them pruned their exposure to the dying retail estate portfolio. They're getting out of the shopping centre game so they can focus their capital entirely on what they are calling "epic scale short break destinations." They want to take all 11 LEGOLAND parks from single / half day visits to multi day resort destinations.

Armed with a new, highly efficient operating model, a stabilised bottom line, and £200 million in fresh cash, Merlin is pivoting. They're entering the heavyweight IP arms race.

The 2026 and 2027 pipeline includes the Minecraft World at Chessington, the first ever LEGO Harry Potter attractions in LEGOLAND Deutschland, the Bluey coaster at Alton Towers, and massive investments in the US LEGOLAND parks.

They're strategically diversifying their appeal across the entire family lifecycle:

Pre-school: Peppa Pig, Paw Patrol and Bluey.
Pre-teen: LEGO.
Teen: Minecraft.

They're also using these massive IPs to drive themed accommodation (like the upcoming Minecraft and Potter hotels). Themed hotels solve the structural flaw of the UK theme park industry: the winter closure period. You don't need the coasters open if the hotel itself is the destination.

TLDR: 2025 was a brutal year for the leisure sector. Merlin absorbed the hit, ruthlessly centralised operations, took an accounting hit on their failing city centre brands, and sold off their shopping centre based assets for cash. All so they could use the savings to invest in massive global IPs and build upwards.

They cut the fat, optimised the daily grind, and doubled down on their core assets. It's exactly what a business carrying that level of debt needed to do.
 
Would be helpful if they put out the latest change to platinum one-shot fastrack across all their social media channels, I dont use x and have no intentions too

**edit, appears merlin have removed this post from x, apparently ?
 
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Mattie boy said:
Can only find the post via the link, doesn't show on main twitter feed ? I can't vouch as I don't use it, my mate is looking. Apparently the post is only available to see as a reply to someone's question. Pass
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Yes, it’s only there as a reply to someone’s question, so isn’t helpful at all if you’re looking for information!
 
I think something Towers could do which would help them manage queues/fast track over use etc would be to check for pre books like Chessington and Legoland do.

I don't understand why they don't, when having it as a bit of a free for all causes such complaint amongst pass holders and non pass holders alike.
 
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