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.