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Towers Loving Care

So when do you think they will dust off Towers Loving Care?


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WillPS said:
Good. It was embarrassing.

Routine maintenance and financially motivated closures spun as doing thoosies a massive favour.
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I never saw it as anything to do with enthusiasts other than Wayne himself. Just him and his team being proud of turning back the neglect of the few years before that.
 
jon81uk said:
I never saw it as anything to do with enthusiasts other than Wayne himself. Just him and his team being proud of turning back the neglect of the few years before that.
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Nothing at all wrong with taking pride in your work and celebrating stuff you're particularly proud of. It was the attempt to package mostly essential/mandated maintenance along with ride closures with a brand that implied improvement which I found embarrassing/borderline insulting.
 
WillPS said:
Nothing at all wrong with taking pride in your work and celebrating stuff you're particularly proud of. It was the attempt to package mostly essential/mandated maintenance along with ride closures with a brand that implied improvement which I found embarrassing/borderline insulting.
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Your correct, but if there was no budget for anything else, what exactly were marketing meant to do to get people back in the park?
 
WillPS said:
Nothing at all wrong with taking pride in your work and celebrating stuff you're particularly proud of. It was the attempt to package mostly essential/mandated maintenance along with ride closures with a brand that implied improvement which I found embarrassing/borderline insulting.
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Jb85 said:
Your correct, but if there was no budget for anything else, what exactly were marketing meant to do to get people back in the park?
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It wasn’t marketing though at least initially, it was a seperate twitter account giving a look at the improvements the team were doing.
Yes the TLC name was “hijacked” when they kept Hex closed a year longer than it needed to be and killed Twirling Toadstool.

But the original Twitter account was just a small project to show off the improvements that team were making, it was rarely mentioned by the main social media accounts, maybe just once at the end of the season to show what they had been up to, but Thorpe Park used their main social media to show those improvements all the time, they did seem to market it more. Whereas TLC at AT felt more like a small passion project.
 
TLC was never intended to be some kind of marketing campaign or even aimed at the general public at all. It was very much a passion project and something for enthusiasts.

Most younger members won’t remember, however fans sites a long time ago did closed season updates where you would get frequent updates from within the park over closed season showing all the maintenance and changes going on.

TLC was reminiscent of that, with the difference being updates from Towers itself rather than fan sites.

I think it was pretty harmless.
 
James said:
TLC was never intended to be some kind of marketing campaign or even aimed at the general public at all. It was very much a passion project and something for enthusiasts.

Most younger members won’t remember, however fans sites a long time ago did closed season updates where you would get frequent updates from within the park over closed season showing all the maintenance and changes going on.

TLC was reminiscent of that, with the difference being updates from Towers itself rather than fan sites.

I think it was pretty harmless.
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Agreed - if it was just a blog on the side, no harm. It was the expansion of that brand to include the closures of Charlie, Sub Terra & Twirling Toadstool and the temporary closures of Hex and Driving School which I found totally outrageous, and the implication that the TLC "investment" was in lieu of any proper capital expenditure.

A premier theme park should not be presenting a maintenance and rationalisation programme to everyday guests at all, frankly.
 
WillPS said:
A premier theme park should not be presenting a maintenance and rationalisation programme to everyday guests at all, frankly.
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I don't see why not? Just a small update of "look what we've been up to this closed season" is interesting and probably better than the geeks visiting in half term trying to put cameras over the fences. There are people interested in those small improvements and it was nice coming directly from the project instead of a fan-site.
At Thorpe at the moment its a mix of both with the park putting updates in their facebook group but also inviting Jack Silkstone to film.
Whereas at Chessington it is just Chessington Buzz seeing what they can see over fences and similarly at AT its just what TowersStreet manage to glimpse. Far better to have an "official" look.
 
jon81uk said:
I don't see why not? Just a small update of "look what we've been up to this closed season" is interesting and probably better than the geeks visiting in half term trying to put cameras over the fences. There are people interested in those small improvements and it was nice coming directly from the project instead of a fan-site.
At Thorpe at the moment its a mix of both with the park putting updates in their facebook group but also inviting Jack Silkstone to film.
Whereas at Chessington it is just Chessington Buzz seeing what they can see over fences and similarly at AT its just what TowersStreet manage to glimpse. Far better to have an "official" look.
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Because they're supposed to be lands of escapism and fantasy.

The guests should not be subjected to something they want to experience being closed with "Towers Loving Care" as the explanation, which then leads them to a photofeed which shows all the grot that people are working hard to remove. Don't close stuff, and if you have to close stuff try your best to minimise the fact its closed and signpost to other, better (or at least open!), experiences.

If they seek it out themselves, as many of the contributors here will have done back in t'day, then yeah that's different.
 
WillPS said:
Because they're supposed to be lands of escapism and fantasy.

The guests should not be subjected to something they want to experience being closed with "Towers Loving Care" as the explanation, which then leads them to a photofeed which shows all the grot that people are working hard to remove. Don't close stuff, and if you have to close stuff try your best to minimise the fact its closed and signpost to other, better (or at least open!), experiences.

If they seek it out themselves, as many of the contributors here will have done back in t'day, then yeah that's different.
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The issue of the "Towers Loving Care" reason being used when Twirling Toadstool was closed is a seperatre issue and bad in its own right. That was never the main aim of TLC.

But the general argument about the TLC Twitter and occasional blog post is as you say people that want to see that sort of thing will seek it out. Why should it matter if the Twitter account is run by a person who works for the park or done by a fan site? People that want to see that sort of content will seek it out and it seems better to have the project manager tweeting that they painted something instead of Towers Street team poking a camera over a fence and getting a worse picture.
 
jon81uk said:
The issue of the "Towers Loving Care" reason being used when Twirling Toadstool was closed is a seperatre issue and bad in its own right. That was never the main aim of TLC.

But the general argument about the TLC Twitter and occasional blog post is as you say people that want to see that sort of thing will seek it out. Why should it matter if the Twitter account is run by a person who works for the park or done by a fan site? People that want to see that sort of content will seek it out and it seems better to have the project manager tweeting that they painted something instead of Towers Street team poking a camera over a fence and getting a worse picture.
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I don't disagree - and if that was the limit of TLC, I'd have no problem with it. When you start popping that logo on closed ride entrances and primary customer-facing media (i.e. altontowers.com) the proposition rather changes.
 
WillPS said:
I don't disagree - and if that was the limit of TLC, I'd have no problem with it. When you start popping that logo on closed ride entrances and primary customer-facing media (i.e. altontowers.com) the proposition rather changes.
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I agree but it did look like one persons small passion project was hijacked and used where it shouldn't have been.
It never seemed like marketing, just someone decided "we could use TLC as an excuse to close rides down" and forced the TLC team to run with it.
 
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