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The Sinking Ship: (Un)Love Letters to Merlin

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So when can we expect to see confirmation of these rumoured cuts? There was also a reduction of F+B offerings alluded to in that thread
 
Altonadvocate1 said:
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.
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I'm inclined to agree with you, but you appeared to post your original comments in the middle of a discussion about cuts on top of on top of cuts (although some of the comments where tongue in cheek).

To my knowledge, no one was advocating 16 hour opening times, a brass band in every corner and gold plated B&M hypers diving in and out of the windows of the Towers.

As for discussion about the value aspect of the park, I'm glad you find it good value as do many others. But others don't perceive value in the same way as you because they want the park to me more than it currently is.

You're comments are interesting my friend and could make for an interesting thread, but they seemed completely out of flow with what was being discussed.
 
Rick said:
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.
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Well, £10m then is not so far from £20m now. And I have little doubt that most of that will have had to have been spent on landscaping and the actual ride hardware (given the ride was placed almost entirely in a hole blasted out with explosives, and was also one of the first ever B&M inverts to be installed anywhere).

Meanwhile £16m now apparently gets you a bog standard ~£3m GCI (figures from other parks who've installed similar length GCI's)?
 
Alastair said:
Well, £10m then is not so far from £20m now. And I have little doubt that most of that will have had to have been spent on landscaping and the actual ride hardware (given the ride was placed almost entirely in a hole blasted out with explosives, and was also one of the first ever B&M inverts to be installed anywhere).

Meanwhile £16m now apparently gets you a bog standard ~£3m GCI (figures from other parks who've installed similar length GCI's)?
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Exactly my point.

This is one of the tamest, uninteresting and uninspiring GCI layouts I have seen. American parks install far greater ones for as little as £3m.

Let's get real here folks.
 
And I guess they are worried if they try to boast about spending £ 3 million on a new coaster to the wide world. How sad would that make them look.

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WickerManiac said:
Exactly my point.

This is one of the tamest, uninteresting and uninspiring GCI layouts I have seen. American parks install far greater ones for as little as £3m.

Let's get real here folks.
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I think you have lost a sense of realness. You phrase the discussion as if the park has set out to build Wodan Mk2 and through complete ineptness has ended up with Wickerman (a ride that you are so unimpressed with that you post under a pseudonym inspired by it and use its logo as your icon).

The park needed something to fit the tween demographic that could be built on The Flume site, coupled with the edgy/semi elaborate theme it allows it to be marketed across the demographic spectrum. It's exactly what Disney has done so successfully so many times over.

There are plenty of things to slag Merlin off for that they have actually done. Start with those and save the fictional ones for next closed season.
 
Rick said:
I think you have lost a sense of realness. You phrase the discussion as if the park has set out to build Wodan Mk2 and through complete ineptness has ended up with Wickerman (a ride that you are so unimpressed with that you post under a pseudonym inspired by it and use its logo as your icon).

The park needed something to fit the tween demographic that could be built on The Flume site, coupled with the edgy/semi elaborate theme it allows it to be marketed across the demographic spectrum. It's exactly what Disney has done so successfully so many times over.

There are plenty of things to slag Merlin off for that they have actually done. Start with those and save the fictional ones for next closed season.
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That's exactly my point. It is no Wodan. It's a small family coaster which should be very cheap.

So why are they claiming it has the price tag of such a coaster?

It looks really uninspiring, particularly the first draft.
 
Because we have created a society where there must be a "flash bang" attention grabbing headline on everything, people take no notice now if it doesn't have a huge price tag or come with a 'this happened and what happened next amazed everybody' click bait tag line.

Simply saying "Here's our new Rollercoaster" won't cut it in today's world.

Maybe the price tag is so inflated because they've included operational costs for a set period, do MMM still provide the budgets for the first three years or have they changed that now?
 
Wodan has a quoted cost of €10m (£9m). It is also a family/thrill ride. Infact, the marketing of Wodan - and Joris, and El Toro, and [insert GCI here] were all marketed way more family than SW8 thus far. Not that I dislike the theme of SW8... but it's a point to raise.

Wicker Man is a factually a small GCI compared to all others mentioned.

:)

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The cost of labour, planning, shipping and construction is very different in the UK than it is in the US. Also, the presentation of the ride and the associated groundwork and landscaping is different - and expensive!

Merlin do some things on the cheap but landscaping and infrastructure, not so much. From reclaiming land from the lakes at Thorpe to build on, to things like the new block paving path around this ride. I suggest that % of the project budget spent on the ride itself is likely much lower than the rides you are trying to compare against.

I agree that it might not have cost the quoted price. So what? It's the same ride whether it cost £10 or £10m. It's the same ride irrespective of whether you think the world's first claim is nonsense or not.
 
All this banging on about how much was spent on a basic coaster. Can I ask how many flat/filler attractions and a dark ride or two could have been installed for that amount ? And boy does AT need those!

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matthewgcole said:
I'm inclined to agree with you, but you appeared to post your original comments in the middle of a discussion about cuts on top of on top of cuts (although some of the comments where tongue in cheek).

To my knowledge, no one was advocating 16 hour opening times, a brass band in every corner and gold plated B&M hypers diving in and out of the windows of the Towers.

As for discussion about the value aspect of the park, I'm glad you find it good value as do many others. But others don't perceive value in the same way as you because they want the park to me more than it currently is.

You're comments are interesting my friend and could make for an interesting thread, but they seemed completely out of flow with what was being discussed.
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That's what I love about this forum... Loads of different opinions, but intelligent debate nontheless.

Don't worry, it's only a matter of time before Merlin do something that makes me go Rambo on these pages.

If the rumours of no rapids in 2018 are true, that would definitely do it.

They wouldn't like me when I'm angry!
 
Matt N said:
I don't know what you class as cheap @WickerManiac, but Wicker Man, while not as expensive as Smiler, is still the 2nd most expensive SW ever built at £16m.
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You simply cannot just compare rides on a cost by cost basis from different years and decades without taking into consideration inflation rates, as they give a true indication of the 'spending power' of a given sum of money. If you adjust the cost of each SW for inflation, taking the amount of what it cost to build any given ride at it's original cost when it was built and then adjust that with inflation into todays money, you get the approximate following:

Nemesis: £19.5 Million
Oblivion: £20.7 Million
Air: £19 Million
Thirteen: £19 Million
The Smiler: £19.5 Million
Wickerman: £16 Million

This shows that infact, even with Merlins over inflated (excuse the pun) cost hype. Wickerman is infact the cheapest SW that the park have ever had. Bar non. This is also reflected in Merlins current state

As you can see when adjusted for inflation, the spending power, ie, what you can actually get for your money has remained fairly consistent from SW to SW. Until now, when Merlin are doing the worst they have ever done and cost cutting like never before.
 
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I thought everyone knew Merlin put every single aspect of a project into the total cost? Swarm cost £12 million for crying out loud and even with B&M tax the ride itself cost something like half of that...
 
That is fair to do that though. You can't just buy a coaster off B&M or anyone else for that matter and claim it cost that. Because that is not what the public are seeing and riding (a load of steel track sitting in a car park).

The completed ride that the public are riding, will have needed foundations, to be physically put up, have it's electronic systems installed (by Consign LLC in the case of most B&M and GCI rides. Including every B&M in the UK.) Even landscaping. Non of these extra costs going to third party contractors would be part of B&M's cost, but are all 100% essential to get a finished product ready for the public to ride. Without any of them, you do not have a working ride. Yes landscaping is not essential. Some rides do not need landscaping, but not every ride is built on flat land, so some form of landscaping is usually essential. You get the point

You don't just buy a car and get quoted for the cost of an empty metal shell with nothing in it. You get quoted for a usable, finished product.

Merlin probably do over inflate costs especially with marketing. But quoting the cost of everything that has cost money, to get the ride you see infront of you, fully constructed and in a working and operating state, to which you pay for to go and ride. Is fair game.
 
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Rick said:
Merlin do some things on the cheap but landscaping and infrastructure, not so much.
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I'd say hiring a totally incompetent contractor, no doubt the at the absolute most rock bottom price, to completely botch what should have been the fairly straightforward landscaping of The Smiler to such an extent as it was - where now it's a total mess of badly poured concrete and non-existent drainage doesn't particularly support your point. Yes, you could extrapolate the fact that every time a coaster is built at Towers more significant landscaping has to be done than at most parks due to its height restrictions to the point where you could claim that they therefore aren't doing it "on the cheap" - but in reality, these things are forced upon them and as such they still do them as cheaply as physically possible.
 
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