Re: British theme parks a rip off"say more than half of visi
Joey said:
I was told, and I'm sure Erol was told the same, that Chessington needs 500 guests paying full entry in the park to break even. That's not even thinking about other things they may or may not pay for. How many guests do you get on an average day...? Thats a LOT of money that isn't going towards new stuff. Who's pocket is it ending up in?
That's simple, shareholders. The Merlin parks have been part of "investment groups" for years. So when John Broome opened Alton as a Theme Park, he will have paid a fair chunk to do it, but his initial investment will have been paid back very quickly with the 80's boom. He'll have made millions and millions on his sale to Tussauds over the investment he made in his life into the park.
That means that Tussauds then have to run for several years to break even on their investment (even worse, they heavily invested in the park too). So each investment will have a pay back of x years. However, the company has to take money each year to pay back their investment. It's essentially like the shareholders/directors/whoeverthemoneymenare are giving the park a bank loan. They don't mind if they don't get all the money back (the investment retains value, or even has it's value grow), but they still want their interest repayments each year - this is based on a percentage of the overall value of the park, or a percentage of "profits". When DIC bought Tussauds, they paid the "value" of the parks in the group, plus more. So the initial Tussauds investment shareholders/directors will have had their "park debt" paid off, plus profit on top of a projected x year set of x payback.
A privately owned park, the business "keeps" all the profit the business makes. The owners will pay themselves a salary and they keep the park and ride values as an asset if they ever need to free up capital. They don't need to pay millions back to investors though (although they may have bank loans, or purchase/lease agreements with ride companies to pay back).
So yeah, that's why the family owned businesses can be a little more active in terms of investment. They either have the money or don't, and if they do, then they know that the spend will probably pay back. As part of a group, each investment has to be applied for through a budget proposal, then a return on investment plan will have to be written, marketing and testing consulted to get a ROI projection to see if it's a viable use of the group's money. Every £ spent on an investment has to have a profit projection that the investors can see clearly coming back to them. It's just business after all...
Erm, to make this even longer, I was talking about this to friends last week after returning from Blackpool.
We had a great day on the live (even if we did mostly do our own thing), but the day easily cost us £200-£250. WOW! That's a lot of money to spend for a day at a theme park.
However...
We don't usually spend anywhere near that amount on days out to theme parks. So we're in the "once a year" category really in terms of spending money on theme parks, just as everyone else in "rip-off Britain" is.
Let's actually break it down a little bit and put it into a decent context. Say it was £200 for the four of us, that's actually £50 each for the day.
We were on park for 9 hours and ate two meals there.
Now, a picnic in the woods will cost us around £5 each and we do that quite a lot. However, as "nice" as it is, it's becoming harder and harder to drag the kids away to do it
How about "family film night"? A lot of people will have these once a week, or maybe once every couple of weeks. Takeaway and they'll buy a DVD to watch. For an evening's entertainment, about £2.50 each for the film, and for takeaway you're looking at £5 per head. So for one meal and two hours entertainment, £7.50 each. It's still a lot less than the trip to Blackpool, but it's a quarter of the amount of entertainment and you do it regularly. Guaranteed too, the takeaway will cost roughly the same as a meal at a theme park (people think theme park food is a rip-off, but it's not that badly priced, it's the quality
rice ration that's wrong).
Anyway, I reckon most families will spend around £200 each per year on this, or or £800 for the family.
It's still a cheap bit of entertainment though, so it's not a fair comparison.
How about the cinema? We go with the family, probably four times a year. Some people I know just do it once or twice.
Again, for two hours entertainment, you're looking at £8 or so per person for a ticket, then £5 each for "drink and popcorn"? No you're looking at £50 for the family to go to the cinema once. Make that four times and it's actually roughly the same cost per hour as Blackpool was.
As far as adults go, how many spent £16 on a couple of crates of alcohol for the long weekend watching football/X-Factor? Probably also bought a take-away. Barbecue? £20 on alcohol/drinks, £20 on meat and charcoal easily for a family of four. £40 for an evening at home with people you probably don't really like
I went to Donington for the tour car racing last year. That was £30 for the ticket, £10 for camping and about £50 on beer and food for the weekend. That's just for me. Okay, it was an entire weekend away, but it's still far from cheap, and I did spend a lot of it in a tent
Things aren't inherently cheap, it's all about what value you place on something. for me, the weekend was worth every penny for the amount of pleasure the family as a whole got from it. The rides, the atmosphere, the chance to eat rubbish and
deliberately spend money haphazard as part of the fun of the day was superb. It's a once a year blow out, bollocks to it!
Have the Mirror asked women about how many clothes or shoes they've spent a fortune on in their lives, just to wear it once at a "do"? If you're talking about spend compared to value, I'll bet a lot of people couldn't justify a lot of things they do.
