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WTF Merlin?

toofpikk said:
I vehemently disagree with you.

Totally hear your points about locations and land being diversified in it's use; all for that. But again, as I stated in my previous sentence to the one you highlighted, Oktoberfest at a theme park conjures up images of steins of beer, pretzels, and rollercoasters zooming round in the background.

Previous beyond-open hours events, including summer nights as I previously mentioned, and Ministry of Sound nights have seen at least a limited ride lineup open throughout the event. It seems like a total no brainer to me to do this?

Of course, this is a personal perspective and I wouldn't expect everyone to imagine the same thing as me, I just think considering the history of events held at Thorpe with open attractions, why of all events would oktoberfest be the one that they decide not to have any. Thorpe is my local park yet I haven't been in years; I'm pretty certain if I told my mates about this event and mentioned even in passing that the rides wouldn't be open, they'd laugh in my face and just say to go to somewhere in central london instead.
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Thorpe are still running the park hours Oktoberfest where people can have beer, pretzels and roller coasters zooming in the background though. This is just Thorpe tapping into a huge potential revenue stream utilising their abundance of space and social reach to create non park / ride reliant events. The concept of drinking heavily at parks is something that just doesn't resonate well in the UK, the park time Oktoberfest lacks the drunken atmosphere required to make it feel like a justified event.

I think the logic behind the no rides at this out of hours event is that market research has led Thorpe to rightly or wrongly believe that Oktoberfest is the most easily replicated event model for them to branch out into. Coupled with the fact their current day time Oktoberfest offering does not tap into the brand / Idea as much as it should and likely doesn't make them a huge amount of money. Theoretically Thorpe should be able to pull off a UK standard Oktoberfest night pretty easily, but I do agree that its a fine line to tread and will be a hard branding exercise to fully separate it from the regular Oktoberfest that currently takes place in the day.
 
toofpikk said:
I vehemently disagree with you.

Totally hear your points about locations and land being diversified in it's use; all for that. But again, as I stated in my previous sentence to the one you highlighted, Oktoberfest at a theme park conjures up images of steins of beer, pretzels, and rollercoasters zooming round in the background.

Previous beyond-open hours events, including summer nights as I previously mentioned, and Ministry of Sound nights have seen at least a limited ride lineup open throughout the event. It seems like a total no brainer to me to do this?

Of course, this is a personal perspective and I wouldn't expect everyone to imagine the same thing as me, I just think considering the history of events held at Thorpe with open attractions, why of all events would oktoberfest be the one that they decide not to have any. Thorpe is my local park yet I haven't been in years; I'm pretty certain if I told my mates about this event and mentioned even in passing that the rides wouldn't be open, they'd laugh in my face and just say to go to somewhere in central london instead.
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It sounds like you haven't really taken onboard the tiny scale of the event that they're advertising. It's just a very small event happening in the marquee, not nearly on the kind of scale of those events you mention, the kind which justify ride openings.

They are in fact still holding their usual Oktoberfest celebrations, which include ride opening, throughout September. And, as I'm sure you've experienced in previous years, the demand just isn't there to justify opening beyond 5pm in the Week and 7pm at Weekends for that event. Every time I've visited Oktoberfest, at Thorpe or Alton Towers, the parks have been fairly quiet, and most people have left by 4 or 5 in the evening. (Don't think I've ever done it at a weekend though, guessing it's busier then, hence the later 7pm close time already in place?)
 
Okay, so after a couple of days to digest the weekend, I'll post my thoughts.

Thorpe on Saturday, see the YAY Merlin thread, they got it right. The park was operating the best it has in years, it was an enjoyable day and how it should be, great work! It's the first time I've left in about 8 years without complaining and I'm genuinely pleased to see they're fixing some of the structural issues with that park and making it work again.

Chessington on Sunday. Not awful, but frustrating, particularly after the fantastic day at Thorpe the day before. So, it looks like they planned for a quiet day, and according to queue-times it was only at 34% capacity, but this lead to some very frustrating operations.

- Vampire not being fully loaded, so the queue was artificially longer than it should have been. I don't want to get anyone in trouble, but I did hear the station staff say something to the affect of "what is the person outside doing? Are they even counting?".
- Dragon's Fury not running at full capacity, so sitting at a 45-60 minute queue.
- Ostrich Stampede cycle frequency very low.
- Mamba Strike out of action (brand new ride, wtf!?)
- Restaurant staff leaving for their break with only a skeleton crew to serve at the Smokehouse. The staff left behind seemed to be as pissed off about it as the people in the queue. This was our second longest queue all day, behind DF. Got DLP flashbacks from that one,
- Tomb Blaster not being batched before loading, slowing things down. There was only one op on doing everything, so I can't bring myself to blame him for that.
- Zufari water cascade in the cave totally skipped. Didn't bother us, but there were some first-time visitors on our truck looking visibly confused by it.
- Park looking visibly shabby in some places, notably Dragon's Fury's queue. Shipwreck Cove, Transylvania and Jumanji (obviously) looked very tidy, so it was a stark contrast to the areas that didn't.
- The drunken cowboy in the pirate hasn't worked for years, rather than fixing it, it seems to have been removed. Minor one, but it tugs at my nostalgia strings for the opening season rides I had.

Now, I don't want to focus entirely on the bad, there were some good bits, such as:
- Most of the ops we encountered seemed to realise it wasn't so good today, and dare I say were somewhat frustrated themselves that they couldn't provide the guest experience they wanted to.
- The Lorikeets are always fun.
- The Tiger Rock ops were fantastic, as were the Gruffalo ops.
- Croc Drop ops were pretty good too, but hamstringed by the ride's capacity.
- Mandril Mayhem's ops, as above.
- Isn't Vampire's station looking stunning! I truly miss Bubbleworks, but it feels like they really care about this corner of the park. I'd love to see the Bat tunnel restored to glory one day, but I appreciate why that had to go.


On the subject of the Jumanji land, as I said on the MM thread, I think it's going to look fantastic once it's bedded in. The ride is way more impressive in person than in photos, there's lots of little fun things for kids to do and the ride is annoyingly fun. Just like the reboot films, part of me wanted to hate them, but I kind of like them... same for MM. Shame about that woeful throughput though. I'd hate to go on a busy day, especially when the normal queuing begins.

That's another thing too, when did these parks forget how to make a pleasant queue? Rides like Vampire and Nemesis have queues that feel like part of the experience and weave their way through the ride's course. Cattle-pens, switchbacks, whatever you want to call them, suck.
 
Tonkso said:
That's another thing too, when did these parks forget how to make a pleasant queue? Rides like Vampire and Nemesis have queues that feel like part of the experience and weave their way through the ride's course. Cattle-pens, switchbacks, whatever you want to call them, suck.
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Now this i agree with so much! A good themed queue makes the act of waiting so much more tolerable and as you say, can even add to the experience.

My son is disabled and it always makes me sad that on Vampire we have to enter through a crap back door rather than the graveyard, tunnel and Organ player section (though i appreciate the ride pre-dates accessible considerations).

Whereas The Curse at Alton is part of the ride itself (wonder who these rides all have in common ;))
 
I see Alton Towers have now resolved the glitch on the app so you can't view the queue times at all unless you're there :confused:
 
Lukas D said:
I know it's not exactly the same, but Queue Times usually does the trick for me for Merlin parks.
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I'll investigate that later, not sure how they obtain their data...

Nicky Borrill said:
You can spoof your location to trick the app into thinking you're at the park. Same thing Pokemon Go cheaters were doing...
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Ha true, feels like overkill! Still seems such a petty thing to do and odd how only one Merlin park has done it.
 
Bowser said:
I'll investigate that later, not sure how they obtain their data...



Ha true, feels like overkill! Still seems such a petty thing to do and odd how only one Merlin park has done it.
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If you have an Android device, it's really easy, it's just an app you install.

Sadly iOS is a little more locked down / secure so it takes a bit more effort... I guess if you have an iphone you could use a cheap android tablet for spoofing though, most households have one of those lying around.

There's only one reason for doing it, to have more control over publicity...
 
Nicky Borrill said:
As soon as rides are down for any length of time, it's all over social media, and in some circumstances, mainstream media. Often it's people not even at the park watching the app and reporting on it.
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Why would only Alton do it? Chessington has multiple major rides down every day. And can't say i've ever seen mainstream reports of rides being down considering it's a daily occurrence.
 
Bowser said:
Why would only Alton do it? Chessington has multiple major rides down every day. And can't say i've ever seen mainstream reports of rides being down considering it's a daily occurrence.
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really? If you don't mind me asking, are you not old enough to remember 2015 to 2019 in the industry? Alton Towers was in the national red tops almost weekly, every time a ride broke down. This faded a little in the last few years.

But that's not necessarily why I think they've done it, more an 'aside.' I thinks it's got more to do with the social media side of things. In the last few years you can't seem to scroll more than a few posts on any Merlin based online community without reading about ride availability issues, particularly at Alton Towers. Screenshots of the app shared almost daily showing multiple rides down at a time during operating hours. Posts on Merlin Annual Passholder groups along the lines of 'glab I'm not at the park today, look at the downtime" or "What's happening, crazy queues today, pleased I didn't go." are a very regular thing.

Maybe it's got nothing to do with this, but I can't think of any other reason why they'd do it. I suppose another possibility is to reduce server load, and increase app reliability by reducing the number of database queries made by people who really don't need to know how long the wickerman queue is when they're not at the park... But that theory is never going to be as interesting as a good conspiracy theory. :p
 
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Nicky Borrill said:
really? If you don't mind me asking, are you not old enough to remember 2015 to 2019 in the industry? Alton Towers was in the national red tops almost weekly, every time a ride broke down. This faded a little in the last few years.

But that's not necessarily why I think they've done it, more an 'aside.' I thinks it's got more to do with the social media side of things. In the last few years you can't seem to scroll more than a few posts on any Merlin based online community without reading about ride availability issues, particularly at Alton Towers. Screenshots of the app shared almost daily showing multiple rides down at a time during operating hours. Posts on Merlin Annual Passholder groups along the lines of 'glab I'm not at the park today, look at the downtime" or "What's happening, crazy queues today, pleased I didn't go." are a very regular thing.

Maybe it's got nothing to do with this, but I can't think of any other reason why they'd do it. I suppose another possibility is to reduce server load, and increase app reliability by reducing the number of database queries made by people who really don't need to know how long the wickerman queue is when they're not at the park... But that theory is never going to be as interesting as a good conspiracy theory. :p
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Ha, i'm early 40s but definitely don't remember that, although not a red top reader. Even the things you mention seem quite niche though, the percentage of people frequenting Merlin based online communities is surely a tiny fraction of their audience and enthusiasts of any type are always going to be the loudest complainers about the thing they love but i think the majority of people only pay attention when they're actively attending a theme park.
 
Bowser said:
Ha, i'm early 40s but definitely don't remember that, although not a red top reader. Even the things you mention seem quite niche though, the percentage of people frequenting Merlin based online communities is surely a tiny fraction of their audience and enthusiasts of any type are always going to be the loudest complainers about the thing they love but i think the majority of people only pay attention when they're actively attending a theme park.
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Yeh, it was a thing, it seemed, post Smiler incident, like every single routine breakdown got it's own news story. They're still doing it now, although not nearly as regularly... Sorry for subjecting anybody reading to this... (**WARNING** MIRROR NEWSPAPER LINK, HAVE EYE BATH ON STANDBY BEFORE CLICKING) https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/alton-towers-thrill-seekers-left-30466857

Across the biggest 3 facebook groups alone there are over 100k members. That's potentially up to 100k passholder 'families' represented, remembering not every passholder in each family will necessarily be a member, it could mean 100's of thousands of passholders represented. I think that's a sizable chunk of their audience. (it's probably not quite that high, as I'm guessing there are former passholders on there, as well as passholders in multiple groups, but whicher way you look at it, it's still an astronomical number for just one platform, and definitely a very sizable chunk of their audience.)

And your last point is exactly why they don't need to show queue times unless you're there. The only people checking queue times when not visiting are enthusiasts / passholders, and as you said, they're also the most likely to make a noise about them despite not attending, it's kind of my point too. Hell, I bet most casual / one off visitors don't even consider downloading the app until they're at the park.

Tell me, since you seem adamant that publicity has nothing to do with hiding the queue times from none guests, you must have a better theory for why they've done it, care to share?

It's all pointless anyway, we'll never know, if they are doing it for publicity reasons, they'd never admit that... haha.
 
I guess it's a mixture of both preventing people from spending money at the parks due to crowds ("look, ride X has a 90 minute queue, let's not go today!") and making sure as many people as possible have location tracking enabled during their park visit in the app so they can monitor visitor movement and spending patterns.
 
Lukas D said:
I guess it's a mixture of both preventing people from spending money at the parks due to crowds ("look, ride X has a 90 minute queue, let's not go today!") and making sure as many people as possible have location tracking enabled during their park visit in the app so they can monitor visitor movement and spending patterns.
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Ohhh I like that, first one kind of ties in with my theory, but hadn't even considered the second one, and definitely seems like something they'd do.
 
Nicky Borrill said:
Tell me, since you seem adamant that publicity has nothing to do with hiding the queue times from none guests, you must have a better theory for why they've done it, care to share?
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I wasn't trying to start an argument so apologies if it came across that way, that just seemed a surprising explanation to me when they aren't doing it across the board. Perhaps it's predominantly attached to The Smiler incident as none of the other Merlin parks have such notoriety in recent history that i know of. Or someone at The Mirror has a personal vendetta 😂

As i said i don't read tabloids (or Facebook) so i'm seemingly not exposed to it. Equally not something i've ever seen on other mainstream news or social media like Twitter, where i'd regularly encounter stories like people getting stuck on Rage at Southend or Thorpe Park leaving the Halloween music on all night. Long queue times or rides being shut still seems like a stretch for coverage though, whereas the example you gave of people being stuck is going to be covered by witnesses regardless of an app status.

My only alternative suggestion would be the same as Lukas above, trying to hide the atrocious queue times or ride availability from those savvy enough to check. Perhaps the other parks will follow suit soon.
 
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