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Park Hours: Updates and Discussion

BigShadowtinytree said:
Later opening during the term time weeks might encourage those who live close enough to pop in after school. Particularly passholders, who then might end up spending by getting dinner at the park etc.
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Quality is too low and prices too high I think for people to want to get dinner in the park unless there is a clear reason to stay late such as fireworks or Scarefest.
I agree that the hours are too short, but I think the number of people who will be interested in staying late at the parks is small.
At Thorpe and Chessington you probably would get local passholders coming but Alton Towers is too remote there just isn’t enough people within an hours drive. Thorpe has also done many late openings and without special events they’ve not been busy.
It would take several years of regular late openings I think to change the perception that it is worth staying in a theme park into an evening without special evening entertainment like fireworks.

The current hours are too short but I think there just isn’t an established culture of staying out into the evening like that in the UK to make 9/10pm work regularly.
 
We don’t need to be changing the opening time from 10am, there’s nothing wrong with that. Just less crap hours would be sufficient.
 
Great day on park today but it would have massively benefitted just having one extra hour it was somewhat busy well considering it was only open for 6 hours it was what I'd call too busy.

My friends didn't want to do smiler or oblivion today so when I was queueing for those when I was doing them throughout the last hour making conversations with people a lot of people seemed quite disappointed that it was 3pm and their day was nearly over.

Fortunately for me I'm back tomorrow so I still get my 12 hours, when I've been on 1% capacity days (according to crowd calendar) 4pm closure is a more than reasonable trade off and it's a blast but when it's towards 38% I think 4pm is a lil embarrassing.

Merlin gotta try and take their profits where they can atm considering attendance seems low I guess and there is a bit of a economic crisis happening with everything going on.
 
rob666 said:
What with Mardi Gras and school trips...in mid June...you would expect Britain's leading theme park to open past 4pm.
Absolutely bloody appalling at this time of year.
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I agree but if it's down to staff shortages etc, then there's not a lot they can do about it.
 
But it's the age-old thing - and this was done to death on Twitter not so long ago by a ride op trying to explain things - it's not 10-5 for the staff. It's more like 8-6 or even 8-7; and with longer hours on the weekends you can't expect the same staff to work 7 days a week with those hours. So you need more staff to cover. If you can't get the extra staff to allow shift rotas for long days, then long days won't happen.

Then there's the technical and behind-the-scenes staff: they probably have even longer hours as they have to be there earlier to get everything up and running and then at the end of the day, fixing any issues and carry out maintenance; the later the park shuts, the longer they have to work - then you're into shift patterns again meaning more staff which they probably don't have and can't get. So while there may not be an issue with customer facing staff, there could be shortages elsewhere which has lead to this situation.

I have no insider knowledge of how Towers operate regarding working hours, but I suspect it is far more complicated and at times a logistical nightmare for those organising staff hours made even worse by potentially not enough people.

To us, it is "only an hour". But to Towers' staff that probably equates to much longer working hours when everything is taken into account.
 
Danscott22 said:
I’m not sure why it’d have to be 8-6 on a 10-4 day personally, it still doesn’t look great on guest experience regardless.
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Mornings probably for briefings & training etc and the actual testing/handover of the ride before 10am - I've seen ride ops in place at 9.30 and earlier before. At the end of the day, ride ops have to tidy up, clean, empty queue bins of their ride. And I know (from speaking to an ex-ride host once) that they often have to do deeper cleans of the ride and area meaning they stay on longer.
 
To take a moment in this tedious thread out of gawping at out of context queue times by people who aren't on park and trying to defend or excuse atrocious opening hours...

I was impressed with the accuracy of queuetime boards across the park last week. All really quite accurate and reactive to changes in queue length. The system seems to have improved greatly over the last couple of years. Better RAP control may also be playing a part I suppose.
 
I mean Alton Towers is so easy to get to without having to use a staff bus or something...
 
Steve74 said:
But it's the age-old thing - and this was done to death on Twitter not so long ago by a ride op trying to explain things - it's not 10-5 for the staff. It's more like 8-6 or even 8-7; and with longer hours on the weekends you can't expect the same staff to work 7 days a week with those hours. So you need more staff to cover. If you can't get the extra staff to allow shift rotas for long days, then long days won't happen.

Then there's the technical and behind-the-scenes staff: they probably have even longer hours as they have to be there earlier to get everything up and running and then at the end of the day, fixing any issues and carry out maintenance; the later the park shuts, the longer they have to work - then you're into shift patterns again meaning more staff which they probably don't have and can't get. So while there may not be an issue with customer facing staff, there could be shortages elsewhere which has lead to this situation.

I have no insider knowledge of how Towers operate regarding working hours, but I suspect it is far more complicated and at times a logistical nightmare for those organising staff hours made even worse by potentially not enough people.

To us, it is "only an hour". But to Towers' staff that probably equates to much longer working hours when everything is taken into account.
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The staff are all entitled to two days off per week by law.
You don't need staff in two hours before or after ride close for meetings and briefings...briefings are usually very brief...hence the name!
Tech/mech staff work different hours and patterns.
There is zero justification for the park closing at 4pm in school trip season, in good weather, in mid June...none at all.
 
The law is actually 1 day off a week or two every 2 weeks.

The staff get there 2 hours early as that's roughly when the staff transport arrives. Alton being in the middle of the Staffordshire moorlands means it's harder to get there.

It's an hour's bus ride from Stoke, where the majority of staff are, so if they're on 10-4 then they'll be leaving stoke about 7/half 7 to get to the park for 8/half 8 to then head to their area for briefing and then get to the rides and test the rides.

Then if the bus doesn't leave Towers until half 5/6 then thats nearly 12 hours between getting on and off the bus and still have to get home etc.

If as has been said there's a lack of staff to give people rotation to take days off then how can they cope with longer days?

Longer hours would be great but if there's not enough staff then they can't open longer.
 
MattyH said:
The law is actually 1 day off a week or two every 2 weeks.

The staff get there 2 hours early as that's roughly when the staff transport arrives. Alton being in the middle of the Staffordshire moorlands means it's harder to get there.

It's an hour's bus ride from Stoke, where the majority of staff are, so if they're on 10-4 then they'll be leaving stoke about 7/half 7 to get to the park for 8/half 8 to then head to their area for briefing and then get to the rides and test the rides.

Then if the bus doesn't leave Towers until half 5/6 then thats nearly 12 hours between getting on and off the bus and still have to get home etc.

If as has been said there's a lack of staff to give people rotation to take days off then how can they cope with longer days?

Longer hours would be great but if there's not enough staff then they can't open longer.
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If the staff bus doesn't get there til 5:30 then surely the park being open til 5 would be better as they'd be working instead of waiting around for ages for the bus
 
MattyH said:
If as has been said there's a lack of staff to give people rotation to take days off then how can they cope with longer days?

Longer hours would be great but if there's not enough staff then they can't open longer.
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Exactly my point too! And also added into the mix is the rule whereby a worker has to have a minimum 11 hour break between shifts, how strictly that is enforced by law, and adhered to by employers I don't know.

We know from last season that Towers are quite prepared to do longer hours and I'm sure they'd love to this year. But if they've not got the staff to do that then they can't. Obviously not ideal, but it is what it is.
 
They need to make working for towers more attractive if they’re struggling to recruit. Better pay, a decent pension package, more flexible staff transport, maybe even staff accommodation on site or nearby would be a start, it would cost them but that’s life, sometimes you have to invest to have a successful business. Long term the benefits would outweigh the cost.

Potential employees have lots of choice in the job market at the moment, there are more vacancies than ever, of course they’re going to choose to work at the supermarket 20 minutes walk away over a theme park in a remote location, which pays the same or less and also requires you to drive (have you seen the cost of fuel??) or get on a bus for an hour to get there. Employers need to realise that they can’t offer the legal bare minimum and then complain that no one wants to work (for them).
 
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Ethan said:
If the staff bus doesn't get there til 5:30 then surely the park being open til 5 would be better as they'd be working instead of waiting around for ages for the bus
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For most rides staff have tasks to do after the last guest has been on. Depending on the length of the queue it could be 10-120 minutes between ride close and the last guest getting off. Then staff have to clean down the station, litter pick the queue, lock up anything that needs locking etc. Would be very possible that on a 4pm close they don't leave the ride area until almost 5pm.
 
I think the issue with hours boils down to wages and the demographic of the park’s workforce who do the “work” (I.e not Merlin management etc).

Most of the hosts, operators, entertainers and F&B hosts are in the 18-21 age bracket and are either still at college or sixth form, meaning AT don’t even have to pay them the full minimum wage which kicks in when you’re 23 or over. Also, only around 30% of this age bracket can drive according to ONS meaning they have to rely on public transport or lifts from parents etc. If staff transport is as bad as people are saying, why would anyone want to be commuting/standing around waiting for their bus for 2 or 3 hours a day when only being paid for 6 or 7 hours? This then leads to staff shortages which leads to shorter opening hours. It all has a knock on effect. Based on a host doing a 7 hour day on a 6 hour operating day, at £6.83 (their thresholded minimum wage), they would earn £47.81. That’s not exactly a lot when you add on 3 hours of public transport time.

If the park paid a fairer wage to adults who have rent and mortgages to pay, and most probably their own car, perhaps we’d then see longer opening hours.
 
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