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White Elephants

Rick said:
@Jb85 Alton was run by a public company from 1990 - 2005 and from 2013 onwards (with an odd mix of shareholders inbetween).

Disney is a public company. That's not the problem, if you perceive there to be one.
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Disney have a caper budget far superior and one Merlin can only dreams of. Comparing them is like comparing apples and pears
 
SeaWorld is also a public company, much smaller than Merlin, and manages 10am-9pm or 10pm opening times during the summer at its reigonal parks with similar attendance to Alton Towers such as SeaWorld San Antonio. The problem lies with Merlin, not the stock exchange.
 
Surely one of Merlin's biggest flaws when installing new attractions at their parks is that they are so labout intensive? If you are having to make staffing cuts acorss your parks, how does it make sense to install attraction that require so many staff? Sub-Terra, Ice Age, Galactica, Derren Brown. When it comes to a round of cuts, the existing operational requirements for such rides are just not sustainable.

Let's wait and see how many staff are required to run SW8.

:)
 
What Rob has said above is part of a bigger problem with Merlin Magic Making. They identify as a separate company to the rest of Merlin and neither have to budget for or are held accountable for the long term operation of an attraction.

This means that they don't have to include the number of staff in their budget. Neither do they have to budget for reliable equipment when a cheaper alternative will be enough to get the ride open. If it fails a few years later it is the Park who has to budget the replacement, not them.

It is the above reason that makes VR a viable option. MMM can green light it because the installation is cheap relative to its marketing power. Yet for the parks it is both staff intensive and very expensive (not to mention nearly impossible to repair).

Merlin are effectively bleeding money because they green light projects based purely on how marketable they are vs. The initial cost. They don't compare MMM's cost of delivering the project with the eventual increase in budget the Parks need to maintain and operate the attraction.

Technically Disney have a similar system, with Imagineering being a separate division of the company. However I belive Imagineering are budgeted by the parks rather than Disney as a company. If the park can't budget its future they take the concept back to the Imagineers and make them rework it.
 
@Tim - that is not my understanding of how the relationship works between the parks and MMM - at all. Is that conjecture, a prediction or what?
 
It is an oversimplification of where I think the problem lies. In reality I know that this is not how anyone intends it to be. MMM don't set out to make cheap gimmicks. They have some very smart and intelegent people working for them that know how to design great attractions. I've also been lucky enough to see the original designs for a few attractions which are very clearly designed with the parks in mind.

However somewhere between the initial design stages and final execution very problematic cuts start to creep in. I'm not going to pretend I know exactly how they happen but I do see the end results. A lot of components in the attraction are cheapened in a way that requires major modification in years to come. And as we've seen many rides are designed reliant on far more staff than they can ever sustain. There is no way any decent operations manager would have allowed Galactica to go ahead knowing it would require over a dozen additional staff... unless the marketability of a gimmick overruled their input.

This is an issue I want to see resolved. By writing it in a clear black & white way I hope that it shines a light on the issue. I know there is a lot of talk going on between the parks and MMM, but the end results never seem to reflect it.
 
@Tim The advantage of Galactica is that it gave them a new marketable attraction for relatively low Capex, but it is indeed true that there is considerable Opex involved due to the number of staff.

They didn't pay for the coaster, they chose to spend a relatively minor sum on refreshing an existing asset but now they are paying more to run it. You have to look at the lifetime cost of the attraction - you can't just look at operational costs or capital expenditure costs, they're not exclusive of each other in both practical and tax terms.

I suspect the ride will revert back to Air in the coming years, but we'll see. I don't disagree it's short termist - but there you go.
 
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Rick said:
...You have to look at the lifetime cost of the attraction - you can't just look at operational costs or capital expenditure costs, they're not exclusive of each other in both practical and tax terms.
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This was kind of the point I was trying to make in the first place. I belive they are focused way too much on capital expenditure costs and not operational cost.

Galactica is only one example. I chose to use it because I have first hand experience of the wear and tear interactive ride elements experience. For example your standard laser shooting ride is on average likely to have 1 damaged gun per day. Inside them you're likely to find a trigger, laser source and maybe a speaker. That is a very simple bit of technology and easy to fix. A VR headset is very expensive cutting edge technology. Even assuming they have someone on staff that can repair them I'd still estimate they have to replace multiple headsets per week. At a street cost of around £500 a headset and let's say 10 fail each month that's over £5,000 a month. If I wanted to spend that amount where I work I have to prove that what I'm buying will last more than 5 years. Galactica might not even last the next 2.

But I get that they wanted to build something that on paper seemed like a cheap, marketable option for a low investment year. What concerns me more are the high Capex rides that have the same problem, for example Derren Browns Ghost Train.
 
@Tim excellence insight thank you.
You have more or less confirmed what we all thought - there is a lot of short sightedness
Would be great to see those designs !!!
 
SW8 should be low Capex and Opex, a tried and tested ride system, decent throughput (hopefully) to be gained by either one or two stations with not a huge amount in each (3 x10 row trains?)so a staff member per 5 rows or just 2 staff, plus an op, batcher, 2 in a bag drop, one on merge, one on entrance and a staff member or 2 in offload (if it has one)

Have lessons been learned? I don't hold my breath
 
Poisson said:
SW8 should be low Capex and Opex, a tried and tested ride system, decent throughput (hopefully) to be gained by either one or two stations with not a huge amount in each (3 x10 row trains?)so a staff member per 5 rows or just 2 staff, plus an op, batcher, 2 in a bag drop, one on merge, one on entrance and a staff member or 2 in offload (if it has one)

Have lessons been learned? I don't hold my breath
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I'm not sure the terms "low Opex" and "wooden roller coaster" are associated with each other. Ever.
 
Quite, it will be interesting to see if Merlin permit re-tracking when the time comes (which it inevitably will).

I don't think a new wooden coaster with elaborate landscaping and at least some potentially good theming could be considered low CAPEX either!

:)
 
I haven't learnt my lesson about posting late at night. Anyway it should have a low staff requirement, in line with other coasters.
 
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