Save the British Theme Park Industry

[jon81uk]

You can't preserve an industry - it can either exist because there is enough financial support for it, or fail because there is not.

But ensuring there is financial support is then preserving it. For example if it looked like Blackpool Pleasure Beach was going to close down, the local council may well try to preserve it by offering financial support.

 

[rob666]

Have done so in the past, more than once.

 

[Thameslink Rail]

What's Blackpool council's financial situation like?

 

[Rick]

I don't think we're anything close to anything disappearing, but I can see the industry continuing to evolve (and rationalise) as it has been doing.

Industries do change, if you take the ~40 year period since Alton opened and look at some specific examples, they can be unrecognisable. @WillPS using the music industry is a good shout, look at tobacco, look at pubs, look at aviation etc.

Also, something that doesn't seem to come up very often in the analysis is Smiler and (much) less so, Splash Canyon. I have had so many conversations where when I mention parks/rides, or someone asks me something, the safety of the industry and even the concept of a roller coaster has been called into question - on the face of it, without a full understanding of the facts, it's a real turn off for some people, understandably so.

Industries rarely disappear, but it's also rare for them to continue in the exact same way, at the exact same scale forever.

 

[Plastic Person]

For example if it looked like Blackpool Pleasure Beach was going to close down, the local council may well try to preserve it by offering financial support.

We've been closer than you might think to this reality in just the past fifteen years!

But there are always variables. BPB is a huge employer in the town and has previously been central to Blackpool's structure, still contributing a lot to the economy even now. LWV may as well be a golf course.

 

[Funcone]

Oakwood is currently doing some recruitment, including for ride operators, team leaders and a rides manager, who I assume runs the department. According to Indeed they’re looking for a rides manager who will work on a minimum wage, seasonal contract (£8.72 an hour).

It might be a mistake, but I suspect not. A couple of years I go I nearly went for an interview at Butlins for a customer service manager. Luckily, I phoned them up before booking my train ticket to check what the pay was. “The minimum wage”, they said. Flamingo Land were generously offering their team leaders 20p an hour above the minimum wage.

https://www.oakwoodthemepark.co.uk/working-at-oakwood-theme-park/

It does feel like there’s been a vicious circle here. A lot of the UK parks seem to have very high turnover in staff. People do the job for a year to get the experience, and then move on. It might keep their costs down, but in the long run I wonder whether this kind of practice is really working for the industry. Would some of the UK parks be more successful if they tried to build up a more stable management team, invest a bit in training etc?

 

[Poisson]

Thorpe Park were recently advertising for techies, paying less than where I work (Next) for a job that's outdoors and in the London pricing sphere. The only bonus I imagine is that Thorpe you won't have to work nights (despite some of us liking them so it's horses for courses). How they expect to have many applicants who aren't people who want to work in a park and are happy to take the worse setup I don't know.

 

[WillPS]

How they expect to have many applicants who aren't people who want to work in a park and are happy to take the worse setup I don't know.

They rely on exactly that. It's fortunate that we have a minimum wage at all otherwise the open market would probably value them even lower.

 

[Funcone]

If we didn't have the minimum wage, we'd probably have to work for free, but employers would generously offer us a handful of peanuts at the end of each shift.