Theme Park Staffing Issues

[Secret Weapon]

I think an increase in gate prices to reduce demand would not only improve guests days but improve staff morale and retention.

True, but this is a double-edged sword as higher gate price = higher guest expectations

 

[Poisson]

And the fixes have the issue of OpEx being decided remotely, not locally. The specific issues relating to Towers are not felt in Chessie/Thorpe/Lego or in Poole.

True, but this is a double-edged sword as higher gate price = higher guest expectations

Towers has most of what it needs to be a quality park, it just needs allowing to be one.

 

[Thameslink Rail]

The specific issues relating to Towers are not felt in Chessie/Thorpe/Lego or in Poole.

Sorry to be pedantic, Merlin head office moved to London in 2024

MERLIN ENTERTAINMENTS LIMITED filing history - Find and update company information - GOV.UK

MERLIN ENTERTAINMENTS LIMITED - Free company information from Companies House including registered office address, filing history, accounts, annual return, officers, charges, business activity

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk

 

[Secret Weapon]

I thought there was a big push for companies to move companies away from London?

Apparently not!

 

[Bert2theSpark]

I think another aspect that shouldn't be overlooked is the abuse front-line staff get when the system collapses. "Be nice to our staff" posters aren't going to cut it when guests are angry that they've only got on three rides all day. For that reason, I think an increase in gate prices to reduce demand would not only improve guests days but improve staff morale and retention.

Customer anger has always been an issue and since COVID it’s only gotten way more prevalent due to the amount of emotionally stunted adults (of all ages) who have the expectation that anyone wearing a uniform is there to serve their exact needs whenever they want.

This has exploded even in public sector (councils, NHS, transport etc) roles, it is crazy that so many adults that seemingly have everything have the emotional awareness of a high school student, putting up signs reminding people saying “please be nice to our staff” is useless wherever you go because the people who have temper tantrums will not even read them. Only way to deal with them is to remove them from the situation entirely for poor behaviour, because they do not capability to process their anger in the moment.

 

[Matt N]

Very informative posts @GooseOnTheLoose!

One question I do have, however, is; why do you feel that JCB is a factor now in a way that it may not have been in prior decades? JCB has operated out of Rocester for decades.

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

Very informative posts @GooseOnTheLoose!

One question I do have, however, is; why do you feel that JCB is a factor now in a way that it may not have been in prior decades? JCB has operated out of Rocester for decades.

An excellent question as always!

The difference between then and now essentially boils down to the fact that the local talent pool has shrunk, whilst JCB's requirements have grown.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, there was simply a large enough pool of local, working age tradespeople to happily feed both the theme park and the digger factory. Today, as we've established, that demographic pool is extremely shallow.

JCB also requires significantly more mechanics than they used to. They've expanded their Staffordshire footprint massively over the last two decades to meet global export demand. When a corporate giant scales up its operations that aggressively in a shrinking local labour market, they vacuum up all of the available talent.

The role of a theme park maintenance engineer has also evolved. Keeping the Corkscrew or the Blade running was predominantly a heavy mechanical endeavour, whereas modern rides are incredibly complex; relying heavily on PLCs, intricate sensor networks and advanced software systems. Alton Towers desperately need highly qualified, multi-disciplinary electro mechanical technicians. JCB need the exact same, highly specific tier of advanced engineering talent to run their newly automated, robotic assembly lines.

When both employers have to fight over the exact same, very small pool of highly skilled candidates, the company that can offer the most lucrative, year round, secure and comfortable manufacturing contract wins. Every single time.

JCB was always a competitor, but they used to be a competitor Alton Towers could coexist with. Not really so much any more.

 

[Poisson]

JCB have also responded well to the financial challenges faced by their staff and pay a good wage for the economic conditions. They demand a lot, but give a lot in a better environment.

 

[Secret Weapon]

For what it's worth, I can't currently see any AT vacancies on the Merlin website (other than a few minor jobs in the hotels, etc).

If AT fail to recruit enough staff before the season begins, then do they continue hiring during the season itself, or do they draw a line under it and make do with what they have (running rides on a limited capacity if required), due to having to arrange training and shift patterns in advance?

The long, unpaid commute essentially extends the working day without compensation. In the 90s, youths accepted this friction. Today, they do not have to.

AT must be unique in this regard, as the conventional wisdom is that people in Britain are finding it more difficult to find jobs today than during the 1990s

Remote locations often struggle with recruitment, though, as I know that the Dounreay power plant (at the northern tip of Scotland) struggles to recruit and retain staff

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

For what it's worth, I can't currently see any AT vacancies on the Merlin website (other than a few minor jobs in the hotels, etc).

If AT fail to recruit enough staff before the season begins, then do they continue hiring during the season itself, or do they draw a line under it and make do with what they have (running rides on a limited capacity if required), due to having to arrange training and shift patterns in advance?

AT must be unique in this regard, as the conventional wisdom is that people in Britain are finding it more difficult to find jobs today than during the 1990s

Remote locations often struggle with recruitment, though, as I know that the Dounreay power plant (at the northern tip of Scotland) struggles to recruit and retain staff

The UK hospitality and leisure sector currently has some of the highest vacancy rates on record [1, 2]. It's infinitely easier to find an entry level service job today than it was in the 1990s, largely because, as we've established, the foundational labour pool has vanished and the European safety valve closed.

The careers site is so barren right now, because Merlin Entertainments doesn't operate like your local pub, sticking a "Help Wanted" sign in the window whenever someone calls in sick and never comes back. HR and recruitment for the parks are highly centralised at the corporate level. They hire in massive, highly orchestrated, cyclical batches, not piecemeal.

When you're dealing with a seasonal workforce of that scale, economies of scale are everything. You cant trickle feed new hires into the system throughout the summer. It's a logistical and financial nightmare. Think about what is legally and operationally required to onboard a single theme park employee:

• Right to Work Checks: - These are heavily regulated and must be processed through corporate HR.
• Health and Safety Compliance: - Every employee requires rigorous, documented safety inductions before they can even step onto the park in uniform.
• Operational Training: - Ride hosts require specific, heavily documented training to ensure compliance with ADIPS and internal protocols.
• Logistics: - Uniform ordering, payroll setup, IT systems provisioning and safeguarding checks (for those in the hotels or CBeebies Land).

You've got to spin up an entire corporate training apparatus to do this. It requires dedicated trainers, empty ride cars for practical testing and days of classroom time. It's highly efficient to put 300 people through this machine in February and March, and again toward the end of the season for Scarefest. It's completely financially unviable to spin the same machine up in June because you are short of three ride hosts on Galactica.

So, to answer your question, yes. They draw a line under it.

If the recruitment drive in the spring falls short, if they need 500 seasonal staff and only manage to hire 450, they don't keep the adverts running all season. The training window has closed. The corporate HR apparatus has moved on to the next quarter's objectives.

The local park management is simply told to "make do" with the headcount they successfully onboarded, and they make do by triaging the operation. They open the park later. They stagger the ride openings. They shut down an Aramark food kiosk or two.

They cannibalise the guest experience to fit the operational reality of the staff they have on the books.

 

[Secret Weapon]

Very useful information again

I have a few quick additional questions:-

1) If a staff member returns the following year then do they still have to complete the training again? Or is it generally only done once (until / unless anything changes) ?

2) If training is not required each season then can AT contact past staff members in an emergency and bring them on board mid-season if required?

3) I'm guessing that there's no way of knowing this, but has AT managed to recruit all of the staff that they wanted for the 2026 season?

(Out of interest, I will monitor the website later this year to gauge whether they have potentially filled all of their vacancies)

A few further ancedotes:-

A) Amanda Thompson said that she frequently hired EU staff at Blackpool, but I don't personally recall ever having encountered any European ride operators; my guess is that perhaps many of the foreign staff worked in the restaurants etc?

B) I am surprised that Amanda needed EU staff, as there surely should have been enough local staff in Blackpool?

C) Almost everybody at AT (and other parks) seems to be under the age of 30; I'm not sure if this an intentional policy by AT (to keep the park looking 'young'), or whether the job simply attracts younger applicants?

D) I'm guessing that Thorpe Park don't struggle with recruitment as much, because - for what it's worth - I remember overhearing somebody on a bus ride there implying that he had applied but was unsuccessful (although this may have been down to his personal unsuitability rather than lack of vacancies)

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

1) If a staff member returns the following year then do they still have to complete the training again?

Yes. The HSE and the park's public liability insurers don't care if you were the undisputed king of dispatching The Smiler in 2025. If you return in 2026, you must be recertified. In fact, all seasonal employees need to reapply for their jobs every year, even if they've been working at the park for years.

Standard Operating Procedures change. Evacuation protocols are updated. First aid and fire safety inductions have a legal expiry date.

2) If training is not required each season then can AT contact past staff members in an emergency and bring them on board mid-season if required?

They could certainly try sending out a desperate email blast, but let's look at the reality. These are seasonal, zero hour or minimum wage workers. They're not sitting by the phone waiting for the Vampurr Signal to illuminate the Staffordshire sky. They've moved on. They're back at uni, or they've taken a permanent job at the aforementioned Amazon warehouse.

Even if they did want to come back for a few weekends in July, refer back to Point 1: they still need to be recertified. You can't just drop them onto a ride platform on a busy Saturday morning. The logistical friction of onboarding a mid-season returnee often outweighs the benefit of having them for a handful of shifts.

3) I'm guessing that there's no way of knowing this, but has AT managed to recruit all of the staff that they wanted for the 2026 season?

If you look at the staggered 11:00 am ride openings we're currently enduring, you most likely have your answer have your answer. No. If they had the bodies, the rides would be opening with the park gates. I don't know this with absolute certainty, and I don't know which staff they're short on... though my guess is tech services.

B) I am surprised that Amanda needed EU staff, as there surely should have been enough local staff in Blackpool?

Yes, Blackpool has significant pockets of deprivation and unemployment, but if you are a 35 year old local with rent to pay and a family to feed, you need a stable, year round job. You can't survive on a minimum wage contract which dumps you onto Universal Credit from November to February.

This is exactly why the UK leisure industry became reliant on young EU nationals. Thanks to freedom of movement, young Europeans (often students or recent graduates) could come to the UK specifically for the summer season. They were happy to live in cheap, shared, high density HMOs, work gruelling hours, save up their wages, and return home in the winter. They filled a massive structural void.

Brexit undid all of that and every other park operator, farmer, and hotelier in the country is now reaping exactly what the electorate sowed.

C) Almost everybody at AT (and other parks) seems to be under the age of 30; I'm not sure if this an intentional policy by AT (to keep the park looking 'young'), or whether the job simply attracts younger applicants?

It's just pure, unadulterated capitalism.

Minimum wage structure is tiered by age. National Minimum Wage for an 18 - 20 year old is lower than the National Living Wage for someone aged 21 and over. If you're operating a business with hundreds of entry level service roles, your payroll costs are exponentially lower if your workforce is entirely composed of 18 - 20 year olds. Additionally, as mentioned above, older adults generally require permanent, year round employment to survive. The seasonal theme park model inherently selects for youth.

D) I'm guessing that Thorpe Park don't struggle with recruitment as much, because - for what it's worth - I remember overhearing somebody on a bus ride there implying that he had applied but was unsuccessful (although this may have been down to his personal unsuitability rather than lack of vacancies)

My post entirely focussed on Alton Towers, rather than the industry as a whole.

Thorpe is located just inside the M25. It's serviced by the suburban sprawl of Greater London and Surrey. You can get a train from Waterloo to Staines and jump on the 950 express bus straight to the park entrance.

Thorpe Park has access to a phenomenally larger, significantly more mobile youth demographic than a park situated in a literal forest in the midlands. They still face fierce competition from urban retail and casual dining, but their potential applicant pool is much larger.

 

[Secret Weapon]

If you look at the staggered 11:00 am ride openings we're currently enduring, you most likely have your answer have your answer. No. If they had the bodies, the rides would be opening with the park gates. I don't know this with absolute certainty, and I don't know which staff they're short on... though my guess is tech services.

I'd initially assumed that this was due to budget cuts (i.e. to save on electricity etc), because if a ride can open at 11 then I'd have assumed that it could theoretically also open at 10, as the ride operators would already be on site and thus available for the day?

Although you may be right, as the late openings could be due to an insufficient number of technical services staff (as you suggested) rather than insufficient ride operators, and thus there isn't enough capacity to sign off the rides each morning (I suppose the clue is that the rides open late, but don't finish early, which could suggest that the issue is getting them started, rather than saving on electricity).

It's just pure, unadulterated capitalism.

Minimum wage structure is tiered by age. National Minimum Wage for an 18 - 20 year old is lower than the National Living Wage for someone aged 21 and over. If you're operating a business with hundreds of entry level service roles, your payroll costs are exponentially lower if your workforce is entirely composed of 18 - 20 year olds. Additionally, as mentioned above, older adults generally require permanent, year round employment to survive. The seasonal theme park model inherently selects for youth.

This is true, but can Alton Towers specifically state that they are only hiring teenagers because they are cheaper? (Isn't this age discrimination?)

Or do they open the applications to everybody but then unofficially (and/or illegally) only hire teenagers? (with one or two old folk to 'prove' they're not discriminating!)

This is exactly why the UK leisure industry became reliant on young EU nationals. Thanks to freedom of movement, young Europeans (often students or recent graduates) could come to the UK specifically for the summer season. They were happy to live in cheap, shared, high density HMOs, work gruelling hours, save up their wages, and return home in the winter. They filled a massive structural void.

Brexit undid all of that and every other park operator, farmer, and hotelier in the country is now reaping exactly what the electorate sowed.

I voted to remain (as, I suspect, did many people on this forum), but if the Eastern European countries had never joined the EU in 2004 then surely British businesses would have had no choice but to improve working conditions and pay for British staff, instead of relying on cheaper staff from overseas?

Although perhaps this never would have happened, and many businesses would have simply just closed down entirely.

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

I'd initially assumed that this was due to budget cuts (i.e. to save on electricity etc), because if a ride can open at 11 then I'd have assumed that it could theoretically also open at 10, as the ride operators would already be on site and thus available for the day?

That's why "conventional wisdom" will only get you so far.

The cost of electricity to run a coaster for an extra hour is more or less a rounding error on Merlin’s daily balance sheet. The power draw of the ride’s base systems (PLCs, sensors, compressors) is active the moment the ride is powered on for morning checks anyway.

If you have fewer engineers to sign off the daily ADIPS checks, it takes longer to get the park ready.

The primary reason for a staggered opening is the more likely the the ridigity of shift patterns. If the park is open until 8pm, and your staff are contracted for a standard 8 hour shift, you can't bring them all in at 8am. If you do, their shift ends at 4 pm, and you have to shut the park early. If they don't have the headcount to run overlapping morning and evening shifts (the "double cohort" they used to have), they have to push the start time of the singular shift back. The staff arrive later, do their morning checks, and the ride opens at 11am. They're likely rationing the available human hours to cover the advertised park closing time.

This is true, but can Alton Towers specifically state that they are only hiring teenagers because they are cheaper? (Isn't this age discrimination?)

No, they can't and they don't.

Or do they open the applications to everybody but then unofficially (and/or illegally) only hire teenagers? (with one or two old folk to 'prove' they're not discriminating!)

They don't have to. The job itself acts as a natural, entirely legal demographic filter.

If you offer a seasonal, temporary contract, paying the absolute legal minimum wage, requiring the employee to stand outside in the British weather, deal with abusive members of the public and navigate a hostile, expensive rural commute... who applies?

Adults with mortgages, utility bills, and dependents self select out of the applicant pool. They can't survive on that contract. The only people who can afford to take that job are dependents themselves. Teenagers living at home with their parents, whose earnings are entirely disposable income. The park doesn't need to discriminate.

I voted to remain (as, I suspect, did many people on this forum), but if the Eastern European countries had never joined the EU in 2004 then surely British businesses would have had no choice but to improve working conditions and pay for British staff, instead of relying on cheaper staff from overseas?

Although perhaps this never would have happened, and many businesses would have simply just closed down entirely.

If 2004 had never happened, would the leisure industry have improved working conditions? No. They haven't since the well of cheap staff evaporated, so this goes a long way to demonstrate.

Hospitality operates on incredibly tight, fragile profit margins. A theme park can't double its wages to £20 an hour to attract British adults without completely restructuring its pricing model.

What happens then? The British public, currently squeezed by a cost of living crisis, stops visiting. The park loses revenue, makes immediate redundancies and eventually closes.

Prior to 2004, the UK did have a functioning leisure industry without mass EU labour (although many workers were still coming from Spain, Portugal, Italy etc). However, if we hark back to my first post, back then, the localised youth demographic hadn't collapsed yet and the casual dining / logistics booms hadn't happened. Towers had a captive domestic workforce.

Today, we have simultaneously lost the local youth pool and welded shut the European safety net. The result isn't a sudden utopian era of highly paid British ride operators. The result is what you are experiencing right now.

We all want better pay and conditions for staff, but the stark reality is that the casual visitor is entirely unwilling to absorb the true cost of what that would require at the ticket booth.

 

[Secret Weapon]

The primary reason for a staggered opening is the more likely the the ridigity of shift patterns. If the park is open until 8pm, and your staff are contracted for a standard 8 hour shift, you can't bring them all in at 8am. If you do, their shift ends at 4 pm, and you have to shut the park early.

I vaguely remember Scott Bickerton from Your Experience Guide saying a year or two ago that his ride operator contract with Alton Towers stipulated that he had to work overtime if the situation demanded it*, although he might have been referring to exceptional circumstances (e.g. Hyperia running late into the night due to unexpected downtime), rather than a planned late night closure.

Now that "Alton after Dark" has ended, it will be interesting to see whether the 10 a.m. openings resume, as this may highlight whether the issue is with the rider operators (in which case, the 10 a.m. openings should resume), or the technical staff (in which case, they may not).

(*I might have this quote wrong, though, and so I will post a link to the video if I can find it)

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

Alton Towers stipulated that he had to work overtime if the situation demanded it*

Most contracts have clauses for overtime and emergency extension of working hours.

he might have been referring to exceptional circumstances (e.g. Hyperia running late into the night due to unexpected downtime)

I would agree that Hyperia running late into the night at Alton Towers would be an exceptional circumstance.

(*I might have this quote wrong, though, and so I will post a link to the video if I can find it)

Please don't.