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The Sinking Ship: (Un)Love Letters to Merlin

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Altonadvocate1 said:
They have some very clever people working for them and if the kinds of investment that we love to talk about would bring a return, they would have allready done it.
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I wonder if there where BHS pension holders saying this kind of stuff as they watched the chain being run in to the ground over many decades. I would just like to point out that Phillip Green is doing just fine by the way....

Every time this argument is brought up I cringe. The very notion that a business always knows best and can be trusted to always put it's own long term prosperity first, is extremely discredited. How can anyone ever make that argument less than 10 years after our financial system melted down and a week after the construction juggernaut that was Carillon went bust?

I can't believe how often I see criticisms of Merlin being dismissed as some sort of blind fanboyism without being explored.
 
WickerManiac said:
I'm sorry, but Great Coasters are renowned for being affordable and cheap when bench marked against other "budget" manufacturers.

The figure Merlin quote is a load of garbage.

The hardware on Wicker Man will cost about £5Million. That's the absolute max.

:)
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I get where you're coming from @WickerManiac, as wooden coasters that aren't manufactured by RMC or Intamin do tend to be a lot cheaper than their steel counterparts, and Merlin's chosen layout does not look very expensive, but GCI are, for the most part, a quality manufacturer who builds quality rides. In my view, I don't think price matters as long as you're getting a quality experience.
 
Matt N said:
I get where you're coming from @WickerManiac, as wooden coasters that aren't manufactured by RMC or Intamin do tend to be a lot cheaper than their steel counterparts, and Merlin's chosen layout does not look very expensive, but GCI are, for the most part, a quality manufacturer who builds quality rides. In my view, I don't think price matters as long as you're getting a quality experience.
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I am sure Wicker Man will be a great ride. I am just stating that it is a cheap ride by comparison to what Alton have installed over the years. And take their valuation of £16M with a pinch of salt.
 
An interesting thing to bear in mind with Merlin investments is that they tend to include every penny spent in the price. So Wicker Man's ride hardware probably did cost about £5m, as you said earlier, but when you factor in things like groundwork costs, theming, effects, marketing etc, then it probably does come to about £16m.
 
How’s about we all chip £250 each team up with Towerstimes and buy the place?

Seriously it’s never going to change.
 
Matt N said:
An interesting thing to bear in mind with Merlin investments is that they tend to include every penny spent in the price. So Wicker Man's ride hardware probably did cost about £5m, as you said earlier, but when you factor in things like groundwork costs, theming, effects, marketing etc, then it probably does come to about £16m.
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Spending £10m on marketing is very different form spending £10m on ground works on ride hard ware.

I am sitll doubtful that the ENTIRE project would exceed £9Million all in.

It's not as though Merlin have to prove where the money was/is spent.
 
Mmmm yeah they always find the money for marketing? If they invested that money in the hardware and experience I'm sure more people would visit advertising or no advertising as the trip adviser rating would be good giving free publicity

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Oh yeah sounds a bit like the crazy PFI thing that's going to bring our country to its knees and now we can't even escape it for a good day out at AT :-(

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I believe this applies to Alton Towers, Warwick Castle, Madame Tussaud's, Thorpe Park but not Chessington or Legoland.

On a 35 year renewable lease agreement.
 
The foreign parks are owned too, not sure about MT though, don't think Prestbury own that.
 
WickerManiac is right in terms of the budget for rides. Merlin have this thing of constantly hyping up their budgets, but in reality its a number plucked out of thin air for the purposes of marketing. What they do is just gather up as many possible associated costs and add them all together = NEW FOR 2018 INVESTMENT!

Though I'd seriously question how effective throwing big numbers around actually is, because the GP either just don't know what it means, or they don't care.

For example, most people who drive have a general perception of car value. They know there's a clear difference between your £10,000 Fiat 500 and a £400,000 Lamborghini or Ferrari. So when you slap big price tags on cars, it does make a difference. But when it comes to rollercoasters and other ride hardware, who the hell even knows or cares what £15 million is??

For proof of Merlin's B.S. when it comes to ride budgets, just take the figures given in the early 90's and use an inflation calculator to track all projects up to date. I still laugh at Th13teen - £15m my ass! I'd heard from several Merlin employees years ago that the ride was actually around £6m - and that's a far more realistic number.

Look around the world at new coasters, I don't even look at the budgets, I just see great new ride projects going up. But when you dig around and find the numbers, say they're quoting $30m or whatever and you allow for currency conversion, you can clearly see that for the numbers Merlin quote, by comparison we should be getting huge, long, B&M coasters - not crappy little family Intamin coasters and cobbled together Gerstache monstrosities sitting in bland concrete pits.
 
matthewgcole said:
I wonder if there where BHS pension holders saying this kind of stuff as they watched the chain being run in to the ground over many decades. I would just like to point out that Phillip Green is doing just fine by the way....

Every time this argument is brought up I cringe. The very notion that a business always knows best and can be trusted to always put it's own long term prosperity first, is extremely discredited. How can anyone ever make that argument less than 10 years after our financial system melted down and a week after the construction juggernaut that was Carillon went bust?

I can't believe how often I see criticisms of Merlin being dismissed as some sort of blind fanboyism without being explored.
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I agree that there is both greed and incompetence in business, often in the higher echelons and I agree as I stated in my post that there are many things that could be better a Towers, but...

... there is an equally common tendancy, to over criticise and not recognise the assets that we do have. Park entertainment could be better, opening hours a little longer, new attractions could open BEFORE old attractions close, and I am as baffled at the quality and lack of longevity of some recent attractions, but that said...

All this stuff about AT being an overpriced, terrible value day out. I don't see it. Yes, the food is rubbish, but they let you take your own rather than the almost body cavity search process at PBB.

I have never felt cheated after a day at Towers using two for one and maintain that it gives good value for money given the cost of the ride hardware and length of the day (the hotels, not so much).

I think it is better value for money that cinemas, pop concerts, theatres, bowling alley, pretty much everything.

I do agree with PeteB though that the cost of some recent additions have been greatly exaggerated.
 
Altonadvocate1 said:
I have never felt cheated after a day at Towers using two for one and maintain that it gives good value for money given the cost of the ride hardware and length of the day (the hotels, not so much).
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And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. The fact you don't feel cheated using a 2-4-1 implies that you do feel cheated by the on the gate price. I'd much rather they adopted a Blackpool-style approach (shock horror), where the on-the-day price isn't massively over-priced, but just enough to make online booking worthwhile.

But it seems that Merlin are in too deep with the vouchers, people expect the parks to only cost half price and feel conned if it's not. I remember Mands commenting at an IAAPA conference that Merlin have ruined the industry in this country because people expect vouchers and it's just not possible for other parks to discount and voucher the way Merlin have, because they're already priced sensibly.
 
I think it's fair to say that the pricetag quoted for new rides can sometimes be inflated and its fair to say that different park operators include different costs when quoting the cost of their new ride.

I suspect the Wickerman pricetag includes the demolition & disposal of The Flume, ride hardware, construction, provision of infrastructure, planning, MMM contribution, marketing etc.

It's easy to write off the quoted prices as nonsense but nothing is cheap when undertaking this kind of work.

In terms of quoting the cost of rides and attractions, that's nothing new and stems from the Tussauds days. The fact that Nemesis was a £10m investment was talked about relentlessly. £10m doesn't sound a great deal these days, does it.
 
Altonadvocate1 said:
... there is an equally common tendancy, to over criticise and not recognise the assets that we do have.
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I think people rightly criticise Merlin over fears that we will lose what we currently have (or see it vastly reduced in quality).

Unless customers such as ourselves make our feelings known things will continue to deteriorate.

The most efffective way to protest against Merlin is to simply stop putting money into their pockets in my opinion...
 
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