I don't think it'll be Merlin directly cutting the lighting. Obviously, they'll determin the overall budget Towers have for the event, but then I would expect it's up to Towers to decide where the money goes. This year, with the new mazes, and tighter budget they no doubt decided to cut the easiest thing they could; lighting. I'm not saying I condone any of it, but rather I think park managment have made this decision due to the tight budget forced upon them.
It does beg the question though as to how much they have to play with, and how much is wasted. I mean Lightwater Valley will have a fraction of the budget Alton have for Frightwater. But if they can do this:
On it, it makes me wonder where Alton's money goes. Evidently, a lot is squandered on silly little things like name badges ???
I still think it's absurd that the park hire the countless amount of lighting rigs they do each year. Sure, installing a perminant infrastructure wouldn't be cheap. But considering most of the year it wouldn't even be being used surely once the initial outlay is covered the cost per year to have them would be much less? I realise that these are used to light the areas for visibility, and not dress purposes, but all the money spent on those could go towards dressing up the areas with decorative lights and theming.
Lets say 1 generator costs the park
£300 to hire for both Scarefest and Fireworks combined, then another
£100 in fuel to run it. That's
£400 per rig. Now, they no doubt receive some kind of discount due to the number hired. So lets say they have
100 rigs, and they get
10 of those for
free as a discount.
That's
£27,000 used to light the park with them.
Ok, so lets imagine the park say over this closed season they are going to install a perminant system across the park. We'll assume that each area is going to have the same level of lighting they hire each year, but lets say they are going to use large pylons like in X-Sector and Adventure Land. So they will have less lights than they would generators, but get the same amount of coverage.
So lets say they are going to install
50 large lighting rigs around the park, at
£1000 per rig. They will then spend another
£50 per rig on infrastructure, connecting it to the power supply and making any upgrades to it to ensure they aren't going to interfere with anything else. They will also spend
£50 per rig on repaving, etc where they have dug up cables and so on.
£1100 on each rig. They've spent
£55,000 in one go on putting perminant lighting in place of the generators.
Each year when it is used the rig will cost
£50 to maintain for new bulbs and so on. This will be spent every year on the rig, to ensure it peforms as needed. So that's going to cost the park
£2500 each year, but won't need to be spent during year 1 as they are new.
Ok, so that's quite a lot to blow in one go. However, in two years, the generators have cost the park
£54,000 to hire and run. By
year three the park have spent
£81,000 hiring generator rigs each year. That doesn't even account for any inflation or fluctuations in price (Which would no doubt increase it). By the same point the perminant rigs have cost the park
£60,000 in construction and upkeep.
They're
£20,000 better off that year! That extra money saved can go towards more decorative lighting and theming for the park, and on more mazes, etc. In year 4 instead of spending the usual
£27,000 the park will have spent only
£2500 on maintaining the lights they have (That figure can vary obviously, but hopefully not too much). An extra
£24,500 more to spend!
I'm not saying any of these figures are accurate, but rather just using them to get the point over. I have no idea how much a perminant lighting rig costs, but simple logic and common sense says that in the long run it will cost less than hiring lighting each year!
The break even point may be different, but it comes sooner or later.
Considering that the park have used these generators for some time now sure they must have spent more than they would have if they'd install more perminant lighting some 6 years ago?! It just seems to be a much more cost effective solution in the long term, rather than each year using a cheaper get out, which over the years all mounts up.
Again though, it probably all comes back to the fact that they seem so reluctant to part with large sums of money on these types of investments. If cost is such a large issue then do it as a program. Each year one park area has a perminant lighting option put in place. Over the duration of the scheme they'd end up saving something I'd imagine, as each year the amount of generators needed will be much less than the last.