WTF Merlin?

[Howie]

^Hate to break it to you, but the woodland walk has gone too. Yep, no more shortcut to Forbidden Valley. Been gone a couple of seasons now.

 

[caffeine_demon]

ok - so if done over, say half an hour, hour max, with a few of the smaller rides - staggered openings wouldn't be too terrible, but when it's half the park, with the rest opening over 2 hours, (or a third of the day in some cases), that's just flippin ridiculous!

what other park would even consider opening every day with 4 major coasters closed for an hour or two?

 

[gavin]

Lol

Sent from my Redmi Note 4 using Tapatalk

 

[Chris Brown]

Think Merlin going public back in 2013 was the start of a slippery downward slope. Grown to accept that Alton will get a lot worse before it gets any better. Just a shame that the Merlin Monopoly has influenced the state of the UK tourism industry to the point where growth is just not economically viable.

Annoying thing is Alton wont be sold until Merlin can prove its self sufficient, at the moment it seems to be sucking the profits out of Merlin's other attractions hence the continuous cuts.

 

[Sandman]

I'd loveeee it if some smaller UK parks chirped up now on social media with some semi-bitchy comments about how they are open longer with better availability Come on Mandy, stick it to 'em!

 

[Matt N]

Annoying thing is Alton wont be sold until Merlin can prove its self sufficient, at the moment it seems to be sucking the profits out of Merlin's other attractions hence the continuous cuts.

Well, if the lease with Nick Leslau is anything to go by, Merlin will be at Alton until 2042...

 

[silenthillXD]

Wow, don't know if anyone's seen Thorpe's announcements today, but for some reason Saw Alive is returning this Summer. Seems a bit random, but hey it's a scare attraction i'll take it! Nice to see Merlin doing something seemingly only for the customer for once!

 

[Will]

^
Soft opening for all 'actor led' attractions, including DBGT, low season weekday closures (probably nothing new, I've not been to Thorpe since 2015)
Logger's Leap remaining closed for another season, by the looks of things, and a cobbled together rehashing (again) of a 20+ year old coaster
I don't really see the point of Saw Alive outside of October (there's not a lot of point to it IN October!) but that's just me.

Much as I ****ing hate defending Thorpe, they don't look to be screwing over the paying customer nearly as much as their northern cousin and if I was 5-10 years younger, I'd be thrilled at the prospect of 10PM Summer openings, which were great in the early noughties.

Any doom and gloom or otherwise from Chessie, or have we just decided we don't to know?
Skim-read their twitter, but it's all sealions and tigers.

 

[Thekingin64]

Haven't checked if their is a topic for this yet but in reply to @Will , the re-themed dragon falls will re-open on 5th may as Tiger Falls, with tigers from Kolmarden!

(screenshot sent to me by a friend, presumably originally from SouthParks going by URL address)

 

[Will]

So THAT's why Chessington's tigers were having a facetime call with Kolmarden's.
I have my doubts that tigers will recognise eachother just from seeing images on a screen, but I'm prepared to be wrong!

 

[catsounds]

Do thorpe make the most out of all the merlin UK parks? As it seems it's the only one that's remained relatively worth the money

 

[Dar]

Nah, combined with Chessington, they still make less than Towers. It's just that Thorpe is comparatively small and they've already made cuts in other areas behind the scenes

 

[Gazza]

10:00 Alton T_____
11:00 Alton Tow___
12:00 Alton Towers

 

[spicy]

^Hate to break it to you, but the woodland walk has gone too. Yep, no more shortcut to Forbidden Valley. Been gone a couple of seasons now.

I assumed it was closed whilst the Cbeebies hotel was being constructed and then it would reopen?

If not that sucks, that was such a nice walk into the park whilst skipping the monorail crowds

 

[Howie]

^I used to do that too - great way of cutting out monorail and turnstile faff. But it definitely hasn't been open for the last two seasons - I've tried.
I assume it's still there, so presumably it could be reopened at some point, but I ain't holding my breath.

 

[Chris Brown]

Whats this woodland walk thing then? Never heard of it before and sounds like it used to be quite handy? Was there a second smaller entrance?

 

[NeoXIII]

Whats this woodland walk thing then? Never heard of it before and sounds like it used to be quite handy? Was there a second smaller entrance?

There used to be a second entrance for hotel guest that would get you straight into the Forbidden Valley for ERT's that goes through the forest bit behind Galactica. If you were a hotel guest or had a pass you could just go through there and avoid the extra walking.

I doubt it'll will be open this season, especially with the staggered opening times.

 

[Mysterious Sue]

I've only ever done the woodland walk backwards (i.e. from the park to the hotel) during the evening to visit the bar.

 

[SilverArrow]

Aside from the obvious saved wear and tear/maintenance costs, it seems like the operating hours are short enough that they only need one shift of ride ops, whose workdays will be so short that they're not legally mandated to have a lunch break. This means they can run the rides with an absolute minimum of crew all day, which again translates into having to hire fewer people.

Quite sad to see so much cost cutting going on, though. I know it's been speculated that Merlin has overextended and bought more properties than they could sustain, but one would think Alton Towers would be one of their big income generators. Or is the park actually losing money overall? I wonder what the numbers look like, to justify drastic cost cuts like these.

UK merlin parks don't do double shifts for ride staff, even at Halloween it's the same people the whole day. They will be paying for less hours for those that come in though.

 

[Hixee]

It does make me wonder how the staff feel about it.

I don't think I'd feel terribly impressed if my company turned around and said "your working day is now two hours less, but we're reducing your pay proportionally too".