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The most unforgivable thing...

PuddoBearBoy

PuddoBearBoy

TS Member
Hi all

I've been reading this forum for a long time now, and I recently took the plunge and signed up.

Purely out of interest: what is the single most unforgivable thing that Merlin/Alton have ever done?

:)
 
Single most important? Don't think it can be narrowed down to one thing solely there are too many.

However I think removal of The Flume and Ripsaw comes pretty high on the list.

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The removal of The Flume is somewhat justified as they're at least replacing it with a ride aimed at relatively the same target audience. Ripsaw's removal and subsequent replacement however is downright criminal.
 
When I was younger, I wanted to go on Corkscrew as my first "big" rollercoaster. They went and crushed that dream.... So I went on G-Force instead.
 
Danny said:
The removal of The Flume is somewhat justified as they're at least replacing it with a ride aimed at relatively the same target audience. Ripsaw's removal and subsequent replacement however is downright criminal.
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It would have been justified if they were replacing it with another water ride. What are guests going to go on in the summer now to cool down apart from the rapids?

I entirely agree about Ripsaw - also another loss to the wet ride offering.

The fact that in just one season Charlie, Hex, Sub-Terra, Ripsaw and The Flume disappeared from the line-up with only one reopening for the following season really marks the absolute nadir for the park.
 
For me, Ripsaw was a bigger blow than the Flume. I mean look what we have in Ripsaws place.....
Flume areas getting a new coaster.
 
The blatant lies that come with "TLC". Mainly that they use it as an excuse to close an attraction for a year, across 2 closed seasons and a main season, and it has either had NO work done on it or the work is being carried out throughout the latter closed season.
 
For me its actually the car parking charge. What started as a sensible option to fund a new relief road then saw the plans shelved but the parking charge remain and go up in cost only to further expand profit margins, while the roads into the resort remain pot hole ridden and queues to exit the car parks increase due to the barriers. Public transport to Alton unlike other parks is extremely poor, and the parking charge should have been scrapped when the relief road plans were scrapped.
 
In all honesty, allowing the Fanta sponsorship mess onto Oblivion. Yes, they removed it all pretty quickly, but the fact it even happened is unbelievable.
 
For me it seems quite simple. It's trying to manage all the parks as a single entity from a bedroom in Poole, playing them off against each other and reducing budgets accordingly.
I am confident that if the park management we had pre Crabbe (Nothing against him personally just a reference for time), with the likes of Morwenna, Wardley and great in house creative teams would have been able to turn things around.
Lets not forget, things were beginning to turn around. We had Mutiny bay, a great re-theme, we had events and a building entertainment offer decent food and Thirteen.
Since then it's all fallen apart. Shop closures, no shows lots of redundancies (pre smiler crash before anyone mentions that) and constant budget cuts.
The fact that the park (Alton Towers) doesn't seem to know whats happening one week to the next is testament to the problems of being run from a garden shed in Dorset.
 
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