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Monorail Refurbishment

CoasterCrazyChris said:
The Monorail (and Towers Street) are an integral part of the Alton Towers 'experience'.

Losing one or both of them would badly damage the parks already weakened image as a big player.

The park needs a monorail even if it means replacing both the existing rolling stock and the track/rails.
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Completely agree. It wouldn't be Alton Towers without either.

Look at the alternative, a cheapo entrance in Forbidden Valley, loosing the highly marketable entrance way and view of the Towers that is Towers Street and the cost of dismantling what seems to be a sound piece of infrastructure. I don't think it makes commercial sense to do anything other than upgrade the monorail.

I think this differs from the Chessington replacement entrance (which I think is awful) in that the original entrance was never anything on the Scale and grandure of the AT entrance plaza and Towers Street, the park hasn't been marketed consistently for decades based on its entrance view and it never had a fully fledged rapid transport system like the AT monorail installed.
 
Now m£rlin has started trying crash the stock market, (30k per YEAR reduced investment and another hotel (anyone think they won't build more?))
Think that's it for the monorail?

I know, closing the monorail and moving the entrance is the worst idea in existence... But, they just built a hotel with 24-7 ents...just sayin!
 
One thing worth remembering is that Alton is Varney's former stomping ground, and where he really stuck his heels in with the industry. I'm not saying he's not just pathalogically driven by profit, but I can't imagine he would want Alton to lose that iconic view and the current entrance. Saying that, I absolutely can't imagine Merlin replacing the monorail, either.
 
Towers Street is one of the parks most underused assests. It really is our own little 'Main Street USA' and the park should be looking to enhance the area, not do away with it.
 
@Plastic Person, I don't think Varney has a clue what goes on at the individual parks. If you remember "Fantagate", it took an angry petition from us lot to draw his attention to the issue, whereupon he claimed to have no prior knowledge of the rebrand.
He's far too busy counting all those silver pieces he got when he sold his soul to give a flying hoot about the actual quality of the attractions he runs ruins.

[Legal disclaimer, this is my own opinion and should not be taken as the view of this site. Don't like what I say, Nicky boy? Bring it on.]
 
In the fantasy land where money was unlimited... I would swap that main entrance for one in Forbidden Valley with an internal monorail circling from Tower Street, to CBeebies, X Sector, Dark Forest and Forbidden Valley.
No chance of that one ever appearing though ;-)
 
I thought (and may be wrong, and cba to check) the MDT plans released a few years ago had plans to turn the temporary field car-parks, used for Fireworks only now, into fully tarmac and level car parks. If this were true this would eliminate the need for the monorail from the car park to TowersStreet.

Then the Hotels could use the second entrance (also on the MDT) under Airs drop... wait isn't this already there for night access to RCR.

Then wouldn't there be a car park free area between the park and the hotels for any additional evening venues and or hotel expansions? It would?! Wow.

Im waiting for the monorail to die so we can start the actual modernisation of Towers.
 
Moving the car park onto the fields (maybe on 2 or 3 levels to cope wit the geography} and building new rides, an entrance and hotel(s) across the current tarmac would fix most of the issues.

I see no signs that Merlin have any appetite for that level of investment. It would need the park to attract more customers, and they seem content with an approach of earning more revenue per customer over increasing customers. Partially, that is planning and access issues; but mainly it seems to be Merlins approach.
 
Tom said:
Its maintenance costs are fairly high, it is the medium-to-long term plan to get rid of it, unfortunately.
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I think realistically the kind of busses that they use at some Airports to transport people to their gates would be a good investment much cheaper to run than the monorail probably but then the monorail is electric so it might be cheaper than buying fuel.

TheBolt said:
Moving the car park onto the fields (maybe on 2 or 3 levels to cope wit the geography} and building new rides, an entrance and hotel(s) across the current tarmac would fix most of the issues.

I see no signs that Merlin have any appetite for that level of investment. It would need the park to attract more customers, and they seem content with an approach of earning more revenue per customer over increasing customers. Partially, that is planning and access issues; but mainly it seems to be Merlins approach.
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They will never do this because it essentially adds no value to the Resort when they already have the things they have to rebuild.

Dave said:
Merlin can sell the park, the land is owned by someone else but it is on a long lease with contractual obligation that the park can renew the lease before anyone else is offered it. The contract will have clauses in that allow the operating company to change without the contract expiring. The whole land sale was really nothing more than a massive loan guaranteed against the value of the land.

No one would lock themselves in to not being able to sell an assett.
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I don't think the set up of the Loan is traditional it's likely that there is a clause where they can buy back the land. The ultimate problem with a sale of any kind is that Merlin Own everything on the land which would cost a lot of money for another operator to buy as Merlin would probably inflate the prices to prevent the sale. Merlin has essentially all the control in this Lease. I think its all a big paper exercise and they actually have a lot more power over the land rights than we think. It could be that the third party that owns the land is in some was associated.
 
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Over on TowersStreet Facebook there are some new pics of an evacuation walkway being installed on the monorail. So it looks like the monorail is safe for now otherwise it would have been left SBNO.

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Genuinely surprised they didn't pull the same crap they did with Black Hole and just SBNO the monorail.
.... While claiming this is what their focus groups claim customers want.

Now all they need to do is run more than two trains.
 
Last year they were generally running enough trains, but new H&S policy prevented them from loading the bays until the train was in the station, so dispatch times were appalling. Hopefully they've got enough cash left over to fit air gates and get capacity back to what it should be.
 
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