Routine Maintenance

Enthusiasts often bemoan the length of time Merlin parks sometimes take to repair broken effects on rides. After all, surely there should be preventative maintenance in place to prevent this stuff going wrong in the first place? At the very least, routine maintenance to rides should mean such issues get rectified quickly.

Merlin Context

What most enthusiasts fail to realise is that Merlin's idea of routine maintenance is very different to the norm. In fact, Merlin parks have a policy of never repairing anything. 'Routine maintenance' in a Merlin context refers to the removal of broken stuff and its replacement with identical equipment. This is of course an expensive procedure, especially when something breaks in a part of a ride that is difficult to access, and is the main reason why anything that breaks regularly is eventually removed and never replaced. After all, if they fixed broken things, they'd soon notice which specific bits were going wrong and make improvements to them to cure the issues.

Accidental Discoveries

In order to speed up routine maintenance, excavation equipment is often stolen from the JCB factory near Alton Towers and used to rip out the stuff that needs maintaining. When maintenance tasks are thin on the ground, they're often used as toys for the amusement of the maintenance staff. Unfortunately, theme parks are dangerous places to dig holes, as Merlin, like Tussauds before them, have discovered to their cost. For example, the horrifying events that followed the discovery of Nemesis in Thunder Valley/Forbidden Valley in the early 1990s need never have happened if the Routine Maintenance team had been tearing out and replacing broken effects in the Haunted House with a pair of freshly pilfered diggers instead of just messing about with them. The discovery of a secret government research facility on the other side of the park in 1998 was also accidental, and occurred during the creation of an utterly enormous pit purely for what staff termed “The lulz.”

Routine Restoration

“Routine restoration” refers to activities almost identical to routine maintenance, and has resulted in similarly disastrous unearthals. For example, in 1999, during routine restoration work inside the Towers themselves, a bricked up doorway was discovered behind an ancient bookcase. Some things are best left undisturbed, and this doorway proved to be one of them, as the restoration team's decision to tear out the bricks with a microdigger proved to be a big, big mistake. The bricked up doorway proved to be concealing the 15th Earl of Shrewsbury's Vekoma Madhouse, and as the bricks were removed, the evil power of the Fallen Branch inside began to affect the Octagon, one of the rooms closest to the passageway. This nasty influence can still be seen in the Octagon today, but is usually interpreted by guests as being nothing more than a few slightly rubbish (but nonetheless dramatic) special effects.

Recent Routine Maintenance

Background

The most concerning discovery from routine maintenance however occurred between 2008 and 2010 in what was once known as Ug Land. A small stone had become caught in one of the Corkscrew's brakes. One of the tech team took it upon himself to remove the stone during his early morning checks on the ride, and it promptly fell onto the ground under the brake run. Unfortunately, the Routine Maintenance team heard about this and eventually decided that the stone was both part of the ride system and theming, the former being due to the amount of time the stone had been in the brake and the latter a lazy, late-Tussauds attitude to what constitutes theming. It therefore needed to be replaced with a new stone in the brake.

The Routine Maintenance team presented their case for replacing the stone to Towers Management, who dismissed the absence of the stone as insufficient reason to close the ride (“While we realise the stone has a significant impact upon guests' experience of riding the Corkscrew, the rest of the ride is perfectly operational”). This resulted in a blazing row that lasted for three days straight, and the bullshit and hot air echoing down the corridor in Magic HQ at this time is known to have been very inspiring to the Marketing Department, who claim it influenced their marketing style for the next two to three years.

Disaster Strikes

Eventually the RM team got their way after threatening to perform maintenance on most of the park's signature rides at once. They gleefully moved in with diggers and a crane, removing sections of track one at a time to get to the brake run at the back of the ride. By the time they were able to fit a new stone, most of the ride had been dismantled. It was then that disaster struck. The forest behind the Corkscrew proved to be alive and keen to expand, covering ground faster than chavs racing towards SORE at 10:05 AM on a typical day at MEH PARK. A mysterious crypt began rising from the ground, and wraiths started to appear in the area. Within the space of mere months, there was no way the Corkscrew could have been rebuilt as the vegetation refused to relinquish the ground it had claimed.

Outraged, Management called in God to make a new ride in this hostile environment, and got rid of the RM team once and for all by sending them packing to Gardaland in Italy, hiring an all new team for Alton. One can only hope that there are less dangers lurking underground in Italy for them to discov...what's that, you say? A flying prehistoric monster?