This is pretty complex, and to decide if you like somebody as a person based on their choices as the MD of a company is impossible.
Do I agree with every move Colin Bryan of DMP has made? No, I think he's been off the ball in some places. In other places so astute it's painful. As a person, he's a fantastically friendly and engaging guy. Does it make his staff less lazy or the rides better maintained? Nope! Does it excuse the sewer system that is Excalibur? Not at all. However, at least you can feel that the company is being run by somebody who does care and isn't stuffed up his own backside.
Who was that guy ran Alton? Took over Rita era and brought us Thirteen? None of us who met him at the Corkscrew closing day liked him personally. He did take Alton at it's worst though and picked it up and shook it a lot. I'm not saying he solved all the problems there, but he certainly took Alton from it's lowest point ever and brought changes that have brought it back. Doesn't excuse Charlie or the Dung Heap, but he still managed more positive than negative.
Personal opinion and what the personality of an MD is doesn't affect their ability to run a park... Well, it may do, but it's not as important as you'd think. There are teams of advisers and management reporting and bringing ideas to the table all the time. A good MD will also get involved on the ground and this is where I think Amanda is good. She's the right kind of picky task master the park needed to get it out of the doldrums. She's come in and seen the place is a hole, with poor staff attitudes and the place is generally unattractive (some may call it "charm", but it's not).
So she's walked the ground and seen the place as it really is and made moves to fix it. It may not have involved new coasters or multi-million pound investment for thrill seekers, but she's on park and spotting problems then shouting at
somebody to get them sorted.
GT bucked the trend again and again by bold investments in rides. He failed with Valhalla (and possibly Southport too, but we'll never know the truth) which crippled the company rather than enhancing it as he did with Steeplechase, Avalanche and PMBO (plus others I'm sure).
In a time of poor world-wide economy, batten down the hatches is the key phrase, not "spend and they'll come". In this case, you need somebody like Amanda; ruthless and picky. Somebody to make crappy decisions and bear the brunt of bad mouthing with ease because there's more than a hint of arrogance there to deal with it.
Personally, I always think of Amanda as a spoilt, petulant child. She just comes across as one and always has. She's got no real respect for anyone, which comes down to the arrogant nature she has.
It doesn't make her a bad MD, or even a bad person if you know her (I'm sure). It's just that from a distance she's not "media friendly".
As far as Southport goes, what happened happened. These things do happen and the interest of the business always comes first. It wasn't what she did though, but the way it was done. There was no attempt to offer a life-line through a third party and she openly lied about the actions of PBB Ltd. If you are in a media situation as representative of a company and are asked a direct question you don't want to answer, you deflect or say "no comment". You don't just lie straight out. That's how you know she is arrogant and has no respect for people, you can't do that in that situation otherwise.
I think there was a lot going on behind the scenes at Southport we'll never know about. We know PBB Ltd. not only got to rip out everything off the site, but also made £7.5 million from it. Money Sefton council have never seen a penny of back in terms of future development of the site. Somebody was shafted good and proper there (the locals) while several people eithe rmade themselves rich, or just missed making themselves rich out of the deal (PBB Ltd. came out of it very well though).
Again, you can't blame Amanda for these actions. She made the company money out of Southport, a very large amount of ready cash, plus a new ride for Blackpool. She killed off a potential competitor to her park dead too. It's all stuff you can forgive for "the greater good" to a degree; but lying about it all as a company director is just wrong.
You could call it teething trouble or being a bit green and new to the job, but I think that's simply the fact that she hadn't learnt to curb her personality fully at that point. It still comes out now too and you see it, especially on Twitter.
She's not a bad MD (as average as them all I think in total), she's "fab" in terms of great entertainment but I don't think she's a particularly nice person to be on the wrong side of (which everyone is unless you are on her right side by invite
