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Do UK parks underperform?

slappy mcguire

slappy mcguire

Mega Poster
If UK parks charge about £25 to £35 on average, and can expect the average visitor to visit one to three times a year, how does that compare with other forms of leisure?

If you compare it to cinema visits, which are around £10 per person, and the average visitor visits maybe 5-10 times a year, then the ratio doesn't seem too bad, but then compare it to something like a football match, where for a premiership team will charge upwards of £20 for maybe 5-15 visits a year, it then looks less successful than you'd perhaps expect

Just to clarify, I'm not trying to compare Theme parks to Football matches, more the concept of paying twenty or so pounds for a leisure activity of whatever nature, it does seem slightly odd that people don't visit theme parks more often by comparison.
 
This seems quite similar to the "value for money" topic I set up a few weeks ago.

I'm not entirely sure of the actual question in the topic title or in the opening post tbh, but I think most people see a theme park trip as "once a year" activity. People are happy to repeatedly spend cash going to football matches and the cinema because they are getting a different experience each time.

Most non-enthusiast I know are quite happy to make a trip to Alton Towers or Thorpe once every three years and be done with it.

I think parks know this, hence the annual passes, BOGOF offers and "bounceback" to entice people back.

Sorry I waffled a bit there, I was tad confused about the question.
 
Right my view on this.

UK parks do ok for what they offer, people who have never been to the USA or Europe would not have a clue so they are happy. They are happy as they have not seen what the rest of the world has to offer in terms of service.

Compared to Germany, France, LA and Orlando, Denmark UK parks are not on the same level in what they offer. The rides are ok but the service is not with regards to nice ride ops and customer service.

The UK cannot have 400ft rides and our parks are really limited to what they can have. But we still have world class coasters, yes not many, but we have worlds firsts etc. We only have one large company running the main parks not 3 like the USA for example.

We just fail on service which is a shame.

We have had ERT in Denmark and Germany where the staff seems so happy to have us there really getting involved etc. We have had ERT in the uk where the staff just did not give a **** and it ruins it.
 
slappy mcguire said:
the best UK parks charge usually no more than under £50 for entry
Click to expand...

???

What does that even mean?

What are you even asking?

You're not making any sense man!
 
Right, in English.

What I was meaning is simply this - why do you think that people tend to visit theme parks in the UK less (on a yearly basis) than similarly priced leisure activities (i.e. things, such as football matches, or similar activities priced between £20 and £40 for entry), when surely on the face of it, they would seem to offer more for that money (i.e. an all day attraction, rather than something that fills a couple of hours) than these alternatives?
 
They are difficult to get to and time consuming. A theme park is generally a long journey and you have to be there for the whole day to get decent value. It's far easier to go to the cinema for a couple of hours which is on your local high street.
 
I think that it's unfair to compare sports tourism to the [generally] day-tripper market of theme parks, or other recreational activites such as going to the cinema. It'ld be much fairer to compare theme parks to zoos or museums, of which you don't seem to have any "averages" for.

Talking of "averages", you seem to have pulled yours out from your arse. 20 visits a year for a Premier League team? They only have 19 home league games a season! Like Ian said, I suspect the "average" tourist to visit theme parks perhaps once or twice a year, or maybe even less. Definitely not 3 times a year though.
I haven't looked at any official stats for visitor attractions, but yours feel way off!

Finally, you seem to imply that sporting events are only there to "fill in a couple of hours", which is a load of rubbish really.

This topic is about as useless as your theories that "closing all the small UK parks would be good for us", in my opinion. :/
 
You'll be ****ing lucky to get tickets to all the home games at a Premier League football ground if you don't have a season ticket.
 
They're completely incomparable things. It's not like people go and watch the exact same football match, or the exact same film 15-20 times (regardless of the fact that your numbers seem way off anyway).

If you go to a theme park more than once a year, you're going back to do and see (pretty much) the exact same things.

Even as an enthusiast, I'd rather go and see 20 different films in the cinema than go to Alton Towers 20 times. It's easier (it requires less planning, travel and effort), cheaper, doesn't require a full day to do and doesn't become monotonous.

I, and many others I expect (not including the annual pass whores), would prefer a visit to a theme park to be something special, which it won't be if you're going more than a couple of times a year.
 
Is that in a nutshell why the merlin pass has proved so successful for Merlin; a season ticket doesn't mean the same experience over and over again, it is far more possible to vary your experiences? By the same logical path, should the smaller parks offer shared season tickets (like perhaps Drayton, LWV and Flamingoland) to encourage people to visit Theme parks more regularly as part of their leisure time, rather than having just visited one park a couple of times?

Last year I visited theme parks more overall in number of days, than the year previous (where I visited more parks, but less days out) largely because of the merlin pass, spending more money overall.

Might there also be an argument for more of the smaller parks where things can be done in half a day to bring in more leased rides changing throughout the year, to combat the sense of nothing new to see - for example LWV obviously hired a Top Scan for the hotter months last year befor returning it to Crows, would it have made sense to hire an autumn attraction, such as the travelling Big Ben drop tower, to encourage people to return?
 
As the guy I work with today said as we drove past Legoland.

"It cost me £300 for the day there for my family, we got on **** all and I will never go back to the **** hole again"

I would like to add that they used Tesco points to get the kids in but in order to get on anything they had to spend an extra £40 a person to get q-bots.

Legoland is a family park, did they give his family a good day out? NO! Waste of £300 in his view yes.

It would cost them less to go to a football match and at least they are getting what they paid for.
 
The thing is, a football season pass will cost considerably more than a theme park pass, but there's a reason which Gavin points out. A football game is different each time and the entertainment value to the football team fan is very high. It's not the just the act of watching the game that is enticing, it's the competition against other teams.

I think in terms of locale, you'll find that pass holders and season ticket holders are similar though. If you love a park/team and live near your local park/stadium then you'll get your yearly pass. When we first delved into the MAP thing, it was a no brainer. We were clocking up at least one visit a year to Alton and for the cost of another visit, we could go as many times as we wanted plus the other Tussauds parks.

Getting it on Tesco makes it an even better deal.

Living less than 20 miles from Alton, it's close enough to pop over for a day or afternoon to get the family out of the house. A lot of pass holders are like this, it's just convenient for them.

However, most Man U supporters (seeing as they're abroad or south of the Watford gap :p ) won't buy a Man U season ticket for home games, it's too much effort. In the same way our members here wouldn't buy an Alton AP when they live ten miles from Thorpe (kudos to them though for not bothering with Thorpe and considering Alton ;) ).

So yeah, it's just not comparable at all as Gavin pointed out, no matter how many APs Merlin flog - it covers a lot of parks around and the pay back (especially if you're around London) is massive.

See a football fan doesn't just go to home games, or watch their team play. They enjoy football a lot of the time no matter who is playing. They enjoy the sport, not just the team. It's a bit like suggesting that every MAP holder also only watches Roller Coaster documentaries and films that have theme parks in them. They get their friends around to play "spot the Six Flags/Cedar Fair park" in Spy Kids 2.

Football is an encompassing social past time that happens very regularly over the year. The same with cinema, eating out, etc. Theme parks are a special day out, for most people a heavily organised yearly treat. Nothing else really compares to it, not even zoo/aquarium/national trust kind of trips. A trip to a theme park is seen as an expensive proposition (as Marc points out above) in a way that no other yearly outing is seen. It's not just entrance, it's the constant attempts to take your cash from you (I'm looking at YOU Camelot ;) ). As it's a yearly treat, people tend to just suck it up and pay out.

I really don't think there's anything quite on the same level as theme parks for this kind of comparison at all. You can't pretend it's educational for the kids. It's simply an excuse to have fun for an entire day and there's nothing comes close.

We'll also ignore things like the fact a new film can cost £200,000,000 to make so the cost of cinema tickets reflects this, footballers on £100,000 a week need paying for, etc, etc, etc... Deeply complicated issue and the end result is "if they're turning a profit, then they're doing alright" :)
 
I'm not sure people do visit theme parks less than other leisure activities who could be considered similar.

It's fallicious to group such leisure activities by cost, you should be doing it by type of attraction. Theme parks are a full day out, usually one you have to travel for. They are a single day holiday experiance. You group them with similar tourist-style attractions, like museums, zoos, aquariums, castles, and other places of interest.

Out of those things they are the only thing that could be considered "pure fun" and they are also the most expencive.

I recon theme parks as a whole are mostly visited by families, and the cost then is even higher.

This is why they are "once a year" things. Because they are effectively a holiday condensed into a day.

Theme parks that broke that mould in the last 10 years, like Thorpe, have done well of it. I'd be interested to know what Thorpe's attendance is compared to Altons.

I don't quite understand what the sudden influx of Resorts is, because they are only confirming the idea of a theme park as holiday, and that it is an experiance that cannot be condensed into a day. I suppose this allows them to raise their costs quite dramatically, and encourage people to stay for longer periods of 2 or more days in one go, since they are failing to attract people back more than once a year?

Just some thoughts. Not entirely convinced by them myself even.
 
Nice one Gavin, thanks for those stats.

Though, I'd argue that given Alton's central location, better reputation, wider audiance and status as a resort, it's not actually that much higher.

Thorpe and Chessington catch the audiance of the South East, who find it incredibly difficult to get to Alton because London is in the way. Alton can be, on a good day, just over 2 hours from North London. But from where I am, on the Kent boarder, it's closer to 4. Which is an unacceptable distance for a day trip to the average person.

EDIT:

Also, as I mentioned here... http://www.coasterforce.com/forums/view ... 234#710234

An issue with a lot of the smaller parks, that shall be their doom, is their terrible transport links.

Alton was smart enough to go "hang on, theres no transport links around here, we'll have to provide one". An external company dived on the chance with Thorpe, even though it already had transport links that other parks would be proud of.

Even just a description of how to get there on the website was provided clearly it would be better. I had to contact flamingoland and the local bus provider to try and find out what number bus went there a couple of years ago because it wasn't on either webpage. Flamingoland didn't even know. I replied to them saying "well until you do, I won't bother trying to get there."
 
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