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The Sinking Ship: (Un)Love Letters to Merlin

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Altonadvocate1 said:
Really tempted by one of those Mononoploy boards, but have they fully themed them?

Chance card - You arrive at AT to find it closed today. Waste 70 pounds on petrol.

You arrive in the park, but most of the rides are closed. Go directly to guest services. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 pounds.

You heard before your visit that most of the eateries apart from the Burger Kitchen are closed. Bring you own food, Save 50 pounds rather than giving it to Merlin entertainment.

Community Chest - You built far too many lodges and hotels for your guest offering and most of them are empty. Mothballing costs 200 pounds per night per lodge, 2000 pounds per hotel.

Top Trump's next!
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That is brilliant - trouble is that it's all true. Could have an absolute field-day at Towers expense with a spoof Monopoly game board & Chance / Community Chest cards.
 
Interesting that Merlin have reported a 2.7% gender pay gap in the attraction operations group, but 4.8% gap in the Sealife operations group. I wonder what's lead to the gap in the first place, and why it's larger on sealife side? Has there been any announcements to investors?
 
Dar said:
Interesting that Merlin have reported a 2.7% gender pay gap in the attraction operations group, but 4.8% gap in the Sealife operations group. I wonder what's lead to the gap in the first place, and why it's larger on sealife side? Has there been any announcements to investors?
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That will just mean there are more men in the senior management structure at Sealife, it's average earnings across the entire company (or in this case, section of the company) and not a comparison on male vs female pay for identical roles.
 
Altonadvocate1 said:
Really tempted by one of those Mononoploy boards, but have they fully themed them?

Chance card - You arrive at AT to find it closed today. Waste 70 pounds on petrol.

You arrive in the park, but most of the rides are closed. Go directly to guest services. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 pounds.

You heard before your visit that most of the eateries apart from the Burger Kitchen are closed. Bring you own food, Save 50 pounds rather than giving it to Merlin entertainment.

Community Chest - You built far too many lodges and hotels for your guest offering and most of them are empty. Mothballing costs 200 pounds per night per lodge, 2000 pounds per hotel.

Top Trump's next!
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You forgotten that the free parking square also needs to be change to pay £6 to exit ;)
 
Don't know if this has been brought up before, but I've been absolutely amazed at how haphazard entry to the park has become this season. The whole set up of the park entrance needs revising as it just creates a mass of bodies, with no idea of where to go.

As an annual pass holder who is entitled to ERT, I am confused as to why we need to enter the same queue as those with pushchairs, most of who do not have ERT. It creates no end of chaos, with those who have normal tickets trying to get in the park early. You also see people who have empty pushchairs in the queue, what's that all about?

Why do they not create a new, ERT only entrance by Galactica? Surely that'll eliminate a load of queues, and disperse people across the park. The only issue of course being that no rides in Forbidden Valley are on ERT.

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I think n ERT in forbidden Valley is the best call. They could open all of that area and Duel and have enough coasters to keep people happy. The only thing lacking is a kids ride. I don't see why CBeebies needs to open for ERT, thats got to be a massive drain on staff for such a small benefit for most of the guests.
 
Croftybaby said:
I think n ERT in forbidden Valley is the best call. They could open all of that area and Duel and have enough coasters to keep people happy. The only thing lacking is a kids ride. I don't see why CBeebies needs to open for ERT, thats got to be a massive drain on staff for such a small benefit for most of the guests.
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They just opened a hotel dedicated to Cbeebies with the intention of becoming a destination for fans of the brand and their families. If the occupancy rate on the grapevine is even close to correct, it's working!
 
The kids ride queues have been consistently long on off peak days, often longer than the adult rides.
I would say cbeebies has been a considerable success...and handy to keep all the little rugrats from under my feet.
 
Rick said:
They just opened a hotel dedicated to Cbeebies with the intention of becoming a destination for fans of the brand and their families. If the occupancy rate on the grapevine is even close to correct, it's working!
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What is th rate please?
 
Wilko said:
Don't know if this has been brought up before, but I've been absolutely amazed at how haphazard entry to the park has become this season. The whole set up of the park entrance needs revising as it just creates a mass of bodies, with no idea of where to go.
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I have to agree the state of that entrance plaza leaves a lot to be desired. It was chaos with people queuing everywhere. On my last visit I went to the annual pass gate which is also the one shared with pushchairs (??) and even then there were normal ticket holders being let through. I wasn't sure if I was queue-jumping or not as there seemed to be people milling about everywhere.

I find it all a bit strange... surely guest numbers have not changed significantly since last season, and this problem never existed before?

To improve the experience for passholders, they could perhaps set aside some of the electric gates for annual pass / ERT holders only and sign it as such. Configure them to block normal ticket holders and then staff can randomly check the pass photo every 10 guests. It seems ridiculous to require manual scanning and letting through a gate designed for pushchairs...

Wilko said:
Why do they not create a new, ERT only entrance by Galactica? Surely that'll eliminate a load of queues, and disperse people across the park. The only issue of course being that no rides in Forbidden Valley are on ERT.
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The funny thing is there used to be an entrance by the hotels and FV used to be on ERT! :laughing:

While they could, for example, open the entrance that they use for the Rollercoaster Restaurant, I just don't see it happening... it would need more infrastructure (ticket scanners, gates etc) and extra staff. I'm sure some none ERT guests would find their way to it by accident too (especially if they were walking to the entrance) and this would cause further annoyance to everyone involved.
 
It's heard mentality, people see a queue and join it, without even knowing if it is the queue they're supposed to join. We did the same, walked to annual pass gate, got shouted at by people in queue for queue jumping, ignored them and walked right in no issues, while being bag checked, I looked back and loads of people were migrating out the original queue and going to the annual pass gate passes in hand (much to the annoyance of the gobby chav).

They need staff in the plaza directing people to the correct entrance, there was nobody doing it on Good Friday.
 
The trip advisor reviews over the past few weeks make for interesting reading and show that a lot of the comments on this forum aren’t just ‘enthusiasts with unrealistic expectations’

Time and time again there are poor reviews, in fact they outnumber the good ones by a good margin. The main issues seem to be:

- Lack of organisation and long queues for the monorail, ticket office and turnstiles
- Poor ride availability and downtime with no communication from staff
- Appearance of the park and lack of care/upkeep
- Poor opening/closing times and frustration at staggered openings.

The place really is a shambles and your average once a year customers are certainly noticing.
 
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The staggered opening situation has bitten them on the behind big time this year. And we saw it coming.

Because so few rides are opening on time, you have situations before 11am where there is almost nothing to do.

Either Dark Forest or Forbidden Valley need to return to 10am opening as soon as possible.
 
A couple of neighbours have been to towers over the easter break and they comments are brutal.

Organisation comments included lines like about 'could not organise a p**s up in a brewery' 'tin cans and string would be better for info transfer'

Plaza management was so bad it verged on dangerous.

Look and site maintenance was a long list, as one spotted everything as his job is site maintenance. The rest said it looked "knackered"

Staggered opening time of ride was another topic that they talked in length about how it screwed up their day.

Then they complained about feeling like second class visitors as they did not spend extra money on "the farce track thing" after spending a fortune on getting in.

When i ask if they would go again i was asked "why the **** do you keep going back to that **** hole.

I think that is a damming but true assessment of alton towers this year.

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Am I the only person who is thinking that these new AP's and budget cuts might be related?

Like I understand that getting people to pay £55 is better than £25 but like if you've got people doing 3+ visits a year even with restrictions to certain days is less profitable? So they've some how figured out that spending less money maintenance and staffing can make the profit margins higher?

I just think there's something fishy going on with how cheap the AP's are, Look at the prices for BPB and Drayton's AP prices their more expensive, then how come the supposedly biggest UK park can somehow cost less?

Or is it just me?
 
It seems to be the case for all RTP so it’s clearly a new strategy from Merlin - Warwick Castle, Chessington and Thorpe have all been pushing the ‘pay for a day come back all year’ line. Maybe it’s to push up visitor numbers in this division so it looks like there is growth.

Edit Heide Park also have the same offer on season passes.
 
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I think a lot of people who buy the Season pass won't actually make a return visit, they are just tempted on the day. It's pretty much a win for Merlin. They are not loosing money from people who might of visited twice anyway. I bet the number of people who actually use the pass regularly or to it's maximum effect might be quite low considering the restrictions and you would likely just get bored after a few repeat visits.
 
bluesonichd said:
I think DF or FV will start opening by 10am come the summer, then Towers will make a big song and dance about it and pat themselves on the back as if they are doing us a favour
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They'll say they're opening at 10 and knowing that tech services won't have the rides open by then they'll just put them up as unavailable and tweet the usual 'our teams are trying to get the rides open as soon as possible'.

As we know they planned to open the rides even later before the park even opened this season and backed down due to the backlash. In reality they didn't back down though as it's obvious they don't have the staff to open the rides on time.

I wish they'd just be honest and stop lying to the public in a vain attempt to cover up their cuts.
 
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