Thomas said:
Many enthusiasts believe that Alton Towers should be a land away of brands, it is a land to escape. I agree with this partially that the resort should be magical, brash sponsorship has no place in my eyes at least. The Oblivion fanta occasion truly highlighted this. At the same time, I wouldn't be offended by sponsorship which was well considered.
See Oblivion is a very good example of how to and not to do sponsorship. The ride has always had sponsorship in one form or another, but the Coca Cola (and originally Mars as well) sponsorship was very subtle and blended to the area. But a quick shift of soft drink to Fanta (another coca cola brand drink) was extremely jarring and out of place and thus an unwelcome addition.
I think sponsorship is a very welcome addition to a ride so long as the sponsorship is subtle (as it was with Air and Cadbury's Heroes, or even Dargons Fury and Skips), but equally that you can actually see where the sponsorship money has been spent on the ride.
You should be able to see where the sponsorship money has been spent, more often then not through the level of theming. For example the excellent level of theming in the X-Sector was no doubt in part due to the revenue streams brought by sponsorship, which can be contrasted with the lacklustre addition of Dark Forest. Spinball also demonstrates this since, whilst the Sonic theming is somewhat jarring, you can at least see where the revenue generated was spent, as the ride's repaint was such made such a massive improvement to the look of the ride.
Alterntively you should be able to see that the money was spent on the ride itself. Large scale projects such as the Monorail or Skyride were only possibly due to sponsorship from Coca Cola on the Monorail and Kodak on the Skyride.
In fact I would go so far as to say that the park missed a trick by not getting a sponsor involved when they revamped the Skyride... I'm sure one of the big camera companies would have jumped at the chance to have been involved in that project and the revenues generated would have helped ease the strain of the ride's lrage running costs.