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The Fantastical Express

Maybe next year they could roll it out across all of merlins biggest money spinners. Basically instead of the fantastical express, change the decals to generical merlin livery and have 3-4 buses based around the country, this way the whole of the uk could be reached, the south would go to Thorpe park/chessington/legoland etc, and the north would go to Alton towers.

You could potentially win a trip to central London to do all of the main attractions there?
 
Tom said:
These made up words are cringeworthy...fantastical, fantabulous, spooktacular...
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These words have been around for years and used by numerous company's for advertising purposes.

It's lighthearted, live a little! ::)
 
You don't need to live a little to appreciate silly things, it's just that these phrases are cringeworthy and, as you suggest, are stale now.
 
Towers have used them for quite a while now, and I think they're alright.

I'd quite like them to use the word "magic" more but it can get a little cliche. At the end of the day, at least it's not the word "ultimate", hey?
 
With regard to the locality issue, I agree it's certainly not been a fair exercise to only use areas of the midlands (out of interest was the distance mentioned in the t&cs as to not waste people's time and effort?) with the reason of the coach has to set off early.

I'm sorry, it's not the only coach in the country.
Use a local company, they would appreciate the income and are setting of from that venue. And if they had to use the special bus, just switch the passengers over at a more local point. The excuse is poor.

The more I think about this whole performance the more it annoys me, it was poorly thought out, poorly executed and only open to a limited amount of people. I hope someone gets a kicking for this fiasco.
 
Now that the campaigns over, I pretty much agree Ben. This had so much potential to be BIG... But it has severely under delivered and has not captured imaginations at all. I imagine that Towers have decided to let it whimper due to a lack of popularity because of the sheer lack of promotion it has received.

The campaign had the potential to be a huge summer thing - like All Time Greats - but instead it's failed miserably really.
 
Given that Merlin are probably running this bus on red diesel, I don't see why it can't run all the way through the season.
 
Tom said:
Given that Merlin are probably running this bus on red diesel, I don't see why it can't run all the way through the season.
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I would highly doubt that Merlin have had very much involvement in this at all, it strikes me as quite an in-house job!
 
Tom, Alton Towers would not run off site vehicles on red diesel. for a couple of reasons.

1) It is illegal
2) massive fine and court case when they are stopped by VOSA (Vehicle and Operator Services Agency)
3) massive fine and court case when the vehicle is found to have 'red' in it tank/ fuel filter when MOT is done.
4) AT and maybe all merlin parks will Lose VOLs (Vehicle Operator Licence) for all vehicles including service trucks
5)The damaged to the brand due to bad publicity.
6) If a driver is sacked, they can instruct a solicitor to get a random dip from a vehicle via VOSA and claim sacking was due to refusal to drive with 'red' in the tank, and the company does not have a leg to stand on, and is fined for unfair dismissal and ends up with point two as well. (this has been done, by truck drivers)

Trust me it just not worth it for them to using red.
 
Haha that made my night but I feel bad now for you taking the time to respond in detail! I wasn't being serious!!
 
Tom, That is not in detail. that was off the top of my head posting. The curse of having a ASET level 3 driving qualification. ;)
 
I think this whole thing has been a bit of an embarrassment really.

Clearly the objective of such a campaign is to generate interest in Alton Towers ("Resort") to get more people to visit but I fail to see how this would be achieved effectively without sending it all around the UK and making it more far reaching.

OK, it's nice that they chose a town which had a hard time with flooding, but lets face it nobody really knows or cares about obscure towns in Yorkshire. A nice gesture of goodwill - but it's not going to get more people through the gates!! Its all been very sporadic too; Chester, Wolverhamption and.....Milton Keynes?!

A better approach would have been to pre-select the towns/cities they were going to visit beforehand and then let people from these places enter the competition to win tickets. Then at the end they could allow people to vote for the last towns they want the express to visit. But even this approach would fall flat without a TV campaign to support the whole thing.

The way they have chosen to conduct it has just been a bit lame really. They need to remember that Alton Towers is a national theme park, not just a regional attraction for the midlands/north west of the country.

:)
 
for those unlucky enough not to live in the handful of destinations the bus visited you can clam an offer on cheap tickets via the website here Click then press the 'your escape route' button.

I can honestly say this marketing stunt has really ruffled my feathers, more so than the 'ban x, y, z, speedo' stint we had and more so than the failure of 13s overhype.
This one just seemed so flawed and full of nothing it really drove me mad, it felt like someone suggested painting a bus then tried to work around that, adding odd bits and bobs here and there, just really unorganised and poor.

Since im on another moan about it let me deconstruct the entire thing:

The name: a little cheesy to start with, but it failed to mention even the brand name - surely if it is wanting mentions in local newspapers etc the 'Alton Towers Express' sounds alot better than 'Fantasitical Express' as it actually uses the name a key part of it. Also is a bus fantastical? Ive not used public transport in a long time, but I very much doubt anything on this bus was that - when your bus has massages, lots of space and some food - come back to me, until then dont try to rename something basic as elite.

The Nominations - so there was some facebook thing where people nominated a town and then Alton chose. Is this a fair system? I imagine they pre-picked the locations and waited for people to nominate those specific locations.
A fairer and more open way would have been to chose so many town/cities of a similar size, open a facebook vote and whichever town got the most votes would win.

The Winners - so once a town was chosen people had to visit a website and then get tickers, what about the people that nominated it, surely they should have recieved some priority for nominating it in the first place. Again if my concept of votes was used those people ought to entitiled to entry, or at least first choice on the spaces. To let people 'campaign' to a certain level and then not let them go seems ridiculous to me.

The Distance - this has really annoyed me. I refuse to believe a several thousand pound marketing event had been soley down to how far a bus driver can go. No. This is maximum stupidity.
Yes to use the bus with pretty pictures is nice, but it isnt the end all of the marketing. Busses and coaches are not in short supply, people beyond an hours drive should not lose out due to the ransom of a driver. You could have used local bus companies which drive to Alton frequently to make the journey, and if you were desperate to use the special bus just transferred the passengers as they got close, or even just parked it outside and had photos with it, the general public wouldnt know any better.
I cant stomach the whole 'poor bus driver had to go there AND back for 10 am' - balls! If you are offering free transport and entry to your park I imagine people would be up before dawn to get to you and appreciate every second of kindness.

Social Media - after suggestions from here Alton seemed to jump on the bandwagon but it was too little too late. You should have used facebook, twitter and youtube to really hammer this home. Say chesterfield was in the nominations a hash tag of 'votechesterfield' could have been used, spread the word virally. Or on facebook use a picture of the spire (or other local monument) in a pic with alton and encourage people to share it.
Really ramp up the interaction, not just a selected tweet, that shows nothing of the campaign.

Theres not much more I can say about this, apart from it has been purely shambolic at best. If it returns next year, please phone me, I'll help you make a much better project from it. I sincerly hope whoever was behind this farce is embarrased by it.
 
oldgitben said:

The Distance - this has really annoyed me. I refuse to believe a several thousand pound marketing event had been solely down to how far a bus driver can go.
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This sounds like driving hours to me :)
Right, driving hours is a horrid area, so I will try to decode it below with a simple day.

After driving for 4 and a half hours, a driver must take a break (No work what so ever) of at least 45 minutes. Then the driver can drive for another 4 and a half hours before running out of Total full day driving hours of 9 hours.

A driver can add an extra 1 hour to the Total day driving hours, twice a week, with the addition of extra breaks.

Then the driver must take a regular daily rest period of at least 11-hour before starting a new driving hour day.

I will skip the regular weekly rest period and Unforeseen events, as it does not apply to this topic. I have also left out other work (that includes driving to and from work) as it is a pain in the bum to explain, and I walk to work. so it not a part I remember easily :D

Hope this clears it up for a few people.
 
I realise there are limits etc for drivers for safety - but thats my point, why has an entire marketing stunt been controlled by one issue.
Use 2 drivers to split the distance - or like I originally suggested use local companies to do most of the drive, then you arent sending a driver out from the final stop, wasting half of the time availible it just seems stupid.
 
Ben, I thought i would give a basic explain driver hours. So that anyone that wants to comment on the topic of range an idea of what the driver would have to do by law.

I was hope this would help get debate going about the range of The Fantastical Express promotion.

There is plenty of way they could work for a longer range and keep drivers within the driving hours laws. One simple one would be, morning and afternoon drivers.

This would allow for a 9 hour round trip (although it would not be a trip I would like to take). by allowing driver 4.5 hours to get to pick up then they rest of at least 45 minutes, (last 15 could be marketing bod loading the winners) then 4.5 hours back to alton towers. Then the same on the return with another driver.

But the above would mean the coach could be on the road for up to 18 hours (- 2 breaks) for one run. and would cost two driver wages, but marketing budget could cover that.
 
Thing is, they could have gone further South with this promotion.

It only takes around 4 hours to go from Cardiff to Alton Towers. This adds up to 12 hours travelling overall (for the driver), they could easily add a second driver to spread it out and that works out at 6 hours per driver. Add a stop off in the services for the driver(s) and passengers for about 20-30 minutes and that adds more of a resting time.

They've stayed too safe with this campaign. This is what they needed to do to really get it off popular:
- Choose X amount of destinations, let people in these places take part in some form of competition to win a place on the bus.
- Go further South. Like I said, it only takes 4 hours to go to Cardiff from Alton Towers, they could have easily gone further down South England and even into Wales.
- Promote it more: I've seen hardly anything done for this campaign except a few videos. This did fall flat on its arse. I'm sure there are many ways the marketing team could have pumped up more awareness and promoted it more.
 
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