You make a good point, and one that I've certainly neglected (and maybe
@Joey has too?) - maybe we should look a little closer to home first.
There's 2 major things to consider...
Culture
Company size
So, culturally the US just opens things really late. I've rocked up to KD at 8pm a few times on what should be peak summer evenings and there is no one there, despite the place
reportedly being packed in the day from staff. People do the same **** they do in the UK, where they go early and get burnt out (especially in the US heat!) and abort. But it's not just parks. You can go to a department store at like 8pm on a weeknight and it'll just be you and the staff. Why these places are open with no one in them is beyond me. It's stupid. A lot of people, including me, have this belief that the British public just have a "bedtime, work tomorrow" mentality, but I actually think the Americans might be worse. Sunday's are significantly quieter than Saturdays in the States at parks to a point of notability that just isn't present in the UK. The difference is simply that it has never been a thing and isn't an expectation in the UK for stuff to be 24/h. I agree, the UK park hours are abysmal... But if you open the parks later in the UK, the only people it benefits are those who have the stamina to stay later or who came later. You would STILL see the fall off in visitor numbers at the "conventional" times of about 4-6pm and you would still see people complain about how busy the park was. Unless you're a park who has a culture of
wining and dining at the park...
The mainland European parks that open late all have one thing in common. A huge focus on food.... Affordable, decent food. And it continues to baffle me why more parks around the world don't focus more attention on getting the balance right with food. That said, even if they did, would public perception change? Would people even notice that they could eat interesting, affordable food at Alton Towers for less than they could on the way home? It would require a HUGE marketing campaign and shift over numerous years that these companies would never invest in.
And that's the biggest problem.
Like Jim Sterling goes on and on about, companies aren't content with making enough money, they need to make all the money in the world ever. Each year, the amount needs to grow. And it cannot. It cannot grow forever. There is a ceiling. And they take those ceilings, those leveling outs, as failures. A huge company like Merlin has too many flipping shareholders and dicks in its mouth to risk innovation when it comes to how people visit theme parks. It can't "afford" to take a risk and pour a lot of money into something that won't reap the benefits for years, perhaps decades. Everything is now.
That's the real reason we can't have nice things. Merlin is too big and Brits are too boring. It's really quite that simple.