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UK's lack of themed staff uniform consistency

A

Aardvark

TS Member
Now I know that this may seem like a slightly odd title for a thread and a little bit of a pedantic one, but I am interested on people's thoughts.

After returning from DLP in October and then Europa Park just last week, it has struck me just how much-themed staff costumes add to the thematic experience. Especially at Europa, it was notable how the lack of a 'park-polo' made the experience even in the shops and restaurants feel more premium.

It got me thinking about themed costumes in the UK, as it seemed that I couple of years ago, it was something that Merlin were going fully into, especially on newer rides at Alton Towers. It now seems, however, that many of these are gone from viewing recent park footage. Gruffalo at Chessington has lost it and it has also gone for Ninjago at Legoland (leaving Legoland with no special outfit to my knowledge). I would be interested to know what other rides have or have now lost unique uniforms for staff in the UK. It feels a particular shame that they are no longer being used for attractions that had them, as they add to the experience. I know that they add extra complications with staffing but I do think they are worth it.
 
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I think when it comes to Merlin that uniforms are just an extension of a bigger company wide issue which is a lack of investment in the smaller details - it comes under the same category of not bothering to check the spelling on signage or letting paint peel off rides for 5 years too long before getting the paint brushes out. It’s poor short term penny pinching that waters down the overall experience and impacts people’s perception of the brand.

Towers don’t do too badly on this front as they do seem to introduce new uniforms when a new attraction debuts such as Smiler, CBeebies Land and Wickerman - and surprisingly they have stuck around - Smiler still has its uniform nearly 10years on.

But the bog standard uniform has been around for a good 15yrs and is just a copy of paste between each park with a different colour.

I quite like the Efteling uniform, it’s smart but not over the top for a theme park and can be customised with a different shirt for example for different roles. I think this would be a nice uniform for Towers St / Monorail/Ticket office staff as it gives off a welcoming usher’ or traditional theatre ticket checking vibe.

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Efteling is one of my favourite bone themed uniforms. They look smart, are clearly well made and detailed. Meanwhile you get staff at towers wearing red polo tops which have clearly been washed 10,000 times and are so faded. Or even recently I’ve seen staff in just plain red polos with no branding at all.

But it could be worse, the Thorpe uniform is probably the worse as that is just plain dark or light blue polo shirts with zero branding.

Back at towers, A few years back it did feel we would end up with themed uniform everywhere, but that seems to have stopped at bit. However gangsta granny does have its own uniform, but the themed uniform for the rest of the area was half arsed (just a yellow Gillete which doesn’t really work with the red polo) and no one seems to wear that anymore.

But when you think about it towers do have a lot of uniform:
Cbeebies
Galactica
Wicker Man
Smiler
Ganagsta granny
Sealife
Dungeons

Then add on the various uniforms the hotels have, plus water park, RCR, golf, etc, they do actually have loads of uniforms and certainly more then other merlin parks out there.
 
Themed uniforms are excellent and Disney did it best with his tunnel system under the magic kingdom.
Last year a member of staff still wearing his CBeebies uniform was operating spinball and a member of staff in his normal uniform was at the top of the stairs on the Smiler taking guests what bay to go 2 like to the general public they wouldn’t have noticed or cared but them 2 really stayed in my mind.
 
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djtruefitt said:
Efteling is one of my favourite bone themed uniforms. They look smart, are clearly well made and detailed. Meanwhile you get staff at towers wearing red polo tops which have clearly been washed 10,000 times and are so faded. Or even recently I’ve seen staff in just plain red polos with no branding at all.

But it could be worse, the Thorpe uniform is probably the worse as that is just plain dark or light blue polo shirts with zero branding.

Back at towers, A few years back it did feel we would end up with themed uniform everywhere, but that seems to have stopped at bit. However gangsta granny does have its own uniform, but the themed uniform for the rest of the area was half arsed (just a yellow Gillete which doesn’t really work with the red polo) and no one seems to wear that anymore.

But when you think about it towers do have a lot of uniform:
Cbeebies
Galactica
Wicker Man
Smiler
Ganagsta granny
Sealife
Dungeons

Then add on the various uniforms the hotels have, plus water park, RCR, golf, etc, they do actually have loads of uniforms and certainly more then other merlin parks out there.
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And Nemesis for this season, will be interesting to see if they have themed uniforms again in 2024.
 
Just found this thread, and I completely agree!! Parks in the UK need more Themed Staff uniforms, or at least a consistency. I think they do add so much to the experience, especially when staff members are part of the experience. When I worked on The Haunting at Drayton Manor, I always loved the idea of a 80s sci fi themed uniforms, like a mix of Aliens and Ghostbusters, and what do you know, they actually had a uniform before 2019. They used a Lab coat to look part as a RIPA member. But since Covid, they've never bothered to bring them back, which is a huge shame I think, especially for a walk through attraction when you can interact with the Guests.

Imagine Stormforce 10s Staff wearing Yellow rubber coats for immersion, or at least each area having a different uniform colour scheme.
 
Ideally for costumes you want something that’s durable, can be machine washed on a standard setting, and is gender neutral. Although parks with costumes like Disney do sometimes have different costumes for each gender, and different costumes depending on the weather.

To be fair to the UK parks, the parks around the world with costumes are the exceptions, rather than the rules. It isn’t a cheap thing to have. They do have to be durable, so it’s no good buying some cheap fancy dress that’s been designed to be worn a few times at parties. They also have to be practical for doing the kinds of roles you get in a theme park. Because they’re expensive, you then want to have staff who are capable of doing basic repairs on them.

You’ve then got to have a massive inventory. Let’s say you’ve got one uniform. You’ve got to have a mix of uniform from XL small to XXXXL large for all the staff. But across a workforce of a 1000 staff the number of people in each size averages out more. If each attraction or area has a uniform, you’re going to end up with more extremes, for example one attraction where most staff are quite small or an attraction where most of the staff are quite large. You end up with a massive inventory and a large portion of the uniform not being used. The uniform you see on the staff is probably a minority of what they’ve got in total.

As other people have said, it’s also a lot harder to have costumes in a park where staff are regularly rotated around between different attractions.
 
I do like the idea of themed staff uniforms for various rides and areas and would like to to see more of it. However I’m not a fan of the Smiler uniform though, it doesn’t look like the most comfortable thing to wear either.
 
It’s Merlin, opening year they spend the money on just about enough uniform for the team operating the attraction. Staff damage the uniform or take it home then next season, the attraction isn’t new, so why bother?


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Do we think we could see themed uniforms for Duel's refurbishment when it opens next year? And I'd expect Sub Terra to have them if it opens next year too.
 
Slightly related but I found it fascinating to hear that when they built Nemesis. They employed a totally brand new set of staff that had not worked at the park previously to operate the ride.

I presume this was to eunure consistency in the quality of their acting led roles I guess. Without being tainted with old ways and habits from staff already working at the park.
 
I know that Merlin have experimented with themed uniforms in the past.

The big problem is that, because UK rides tend to have smaller teams, it’s not as easy as a Disney where you have a team of 20 people on Tower of Terror for example all in the themed uniform, and let them sort their own breaks out among themselves. I know that most of the rides at Europa Park have a similar system of self-contained rides teams, including the one-man ops which rotate with each other.

At UK parks however, especially the medium and smaller sized parks, ride teams tend to cover multiple rides around the parks with different themes. You can get one operator covering 4 breaks at all different rides. This person would have to get changed 4 times if every ride had its own themed uniform. I know that Chessington Rides teams have a quite complex rotation system to cover breaks which involves them swapping between several different rides throughout the day, so again it would be highly time consuming if they had to get changed in between every swap.

All this said though; themed uniforms, if done properly, look so much better than what we have at the UK parks.
 
I think area uniforms would be better (and easier for the park to manage) where possible.

Personally when smiler opened I would have created a Ministry of Joy uniform which could be worn on all those rides.

The valley is the same, with a phalanx style uniform (I guess except for galactica).
 
I just hope they don't try overalls on Nemesis again. Poor souls having to wear them all day as they're roasting
 
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