• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

Thorpe Park: General Discussion

When you're based just outside one of the world's most expensive cities to live, and pay minimum wage, is always gonna be a struggle to attract and retain good staff.

Rent/council tax/travel/petrol/food is always going up, but wages remain low.

Young people who are passionate about the industry can no longer afford to work there. And remember Varney publicly stated he wasn't happy with the minimum wage increase? This lot do not have any clue how the real world works.
 
The swarm operations were dire on Sunday, we must have waited a good 20 mins just from the fastrack point. Every track stacked, and all the station staff seemed to care more about chatting to each other than the guests.

It was almost like the train coming in was interrupting their phone conversation. Even at one point the staff came to the middle and leaned over the track to have a chat.

Then when we got on the restraints wouldn’t lock as the operator was too busy chatting then watching the ride.

Might just be the swarm, as last week when I went all four of the station staff looked like they were on the way to a funeral.

It’s a shame as other staff across the park were friendly and did seem to care about throughputs.
 
Minimum wage was the worst thing ever introduced, I earned more than present day minimum wage in the first job I ever had, way back in 1989.
 
Rides staff at Thorpe Park get paid less than they do at other Merlin sites, leading to (understandably) uninterested ride teams, and a generally younger staff demographic. Operators especially earn much closer to minimum wage than they do at the other sites.

You can earn more on tills at Tesco than you can operating The Swarm every day.
 
HermanTheGerman said:
Rides staff at Thorpe Park get paid less than they do at other Merlin sites, leading to (understandably) uninterested ride teams, and a generally younger staff demographic. Operators especially earn much closer to minimum wage than they do at the other sites.

You can earn more on tills at Tesco than you can operating The Swarm every day.
Click to expand...
I worked out that Im higher hourly then ride hosts, and I'm data entry! Which isn't exactly a safety critical role...

Sent from my Swift 2 Plus using Tapatalk
 
What happened to the menu at Fins? Not eaten there in a while so we had a look and I was like "Is that it?" So we walked out and ended up in KFC. Even there, they started closing off areas around 4 and the park was open until 6. At least they still have the branded outlets for now.
 
Merlin should take more interest in who they have operating their rides. For a company that's paranoid about health and safety, it's surprising to find inattentive ride staff with no level of supervision.
 
The menu at Fin’s was utterly dire on Sunday. I brought food back there from KFC (which was very busy, yet I still got my food within 5 minutes), with others bringing food back from other outlets. The staff didn’t even care - I think they knew the menu there was terrible.
 
When I last visited Thorpe, I remember Fins being very good, Shame to hear it's gone downhill.
 
It was only a matter of time until it fell in line with the rest of the park which has been going downhill for quite a period of time.
 
The park I worked for back-in-the day was owned by Paramount (or Viacom, to be precise). All my rides had to produce capacity reports. We recorded cycles per hour and capacity. If we didn't hit our cycles per hour, I had to go and explain myself to Park management. If I was running full trains with and had a queue extending out the station, and didn't add a train - I had to explain myself.

We pretty much always hit our targets, my staff were paid a pretty poor wage, and they had pretty good standards (no hands in the pockets etc.). It is all about top-down management and having a pride in your work.
 
It was certainly the case that we did them in the 2000s and I imagine that's not changed. The modern control systems also keep dispatch counts which would corroborate the paper forms.

Merlin aren't particularly bothered about throughputs. They don't want to encourage their staff to get a hurry on because in the post-Smiler world it's "not safe" to make their staff work quickly... :rolleyes:
 
ScottishChris said:
The park I worked for back-in-the day was owned by Paramount (or Viacom, to be precise). All my rides had to produce capacity reports. We recorded cycles per hour and capacity. If we didn't hit our cycles per hour, I had to go and explain myself to Park management. If I was running full trains with and had a queue extending out the station, and didn't add a train - I had to explain myself.

We pretty much always hit our targets, my staff were paid a pretty poor wage, and they had pretty good standards (no hands in the pockets etc.). It is all about top-down management and having a pride in your work.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity what park was this?
 
Alsty said:
It was certainly the case that we did them in the 2000s and I imagine that's not changed. The modern control systems also keep dispatch counts which would corroborate the paper forms.

Merlin aren't particularly bothered about throughputs. They don't want to encourage their staff to get a hurry on because in the post-Smiler world it's "not safe" to make their staff work quickly... :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Aka "why not buy one of our fastrack tickets"...

Sent from my Swift 2 Plus using Tapatalk
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top