JoshC.
Strata Poster
I get your point, and agree to a certain extent. Thorpe's level of investment in the 00s and up to Swarm was never sustainable. A coaster every 3-4 would never work long term when there's little other competition for such a thrill park in the UK. They'd either have to focus on trying to get the international market in (easier said than done), or slow down and do other things.
The trouble is that Thorpe don't have enough to keep people coming back yearly, and they aren't doing enough worthwhile 'other' stuff to gain attention. A big new coaster with particular quality would solve that problem to some degree.
This is something that frustrates me with Thorpe/Merlin. Swarm didn't positively impact visitor numbers because the park was off the back of their 2 best years ever, the Olympics affected numbers across all parks and Swarm's branding was weak and in a saturated market (apocalyptic stuff in 2012). But it stood the test of time and regularly scores as one of the best received rides in internal polls with guests.
DBGT was a huge risk. It opened mid-way through the season after several delays (when the ride was in early planning stages, it was expected to open in March and some financial targets were based on that). It had terrible reliability. And it just hasn't worked. Of course it's sensible to be wary after big investments after that, but you don't take a huge risk and then go 'well, it didn't pay off, I won't do anything ever again'.
Merlin are so narrow and rigid in their definition of success it's almost like they doom their major investments to fail.
The park aren't doing that well for visitor numbers. The data from the queue times website for Thorpe comes from the TEA figures (I believe) - the numbers there are provided by the parks/companies and they have no obligation to be truthful.There are a lot of statements of dwindling attendance... not true (relatively speaking). It’s not materially worse than Alton Towers’s decline and AT has had a major new ride since 2015.
As for low attendance from 2015.... there is an obvious reason why.
Alton Towers historical attendance data
Annual attendance figures for Alton Towers. Explore the popularity of Alton Towers over the years.queue-times.com
Some places (like Merlin) use it as a marketing tool. They can say their parks have increased when there's been big investment, held steady through bad times, etc. They can also use it to downplay some numbers because some people are silly: Thorpe's biggest year for attendance was 2011 - some people put 2 and 2 together and say the introduction of Storm Surge was genius because Thorpe had their busiest year ever as a result. Sounds stupid right? But that's how they fear people (read: investors) may react.
Obviously I can't back my numbers up and have no way of disproving what is out there. But to anyone who has visited Thorpe semi-regularly over the past decade - the park supposedly had 1.85m visitors in 2010, and 1.88m in 2018, according to that website. Did the park feel just as busy/popular in 2018 as it did in 2010? (Answer: no, because 2010 was MUCH busier).
The only restrictions the council have for Thorpe in terms of late closing are:
1) Rides have to stop running by 11pm
2) The Dome can only be open until 3am on a maximum of like 30 nights of the year or something (the usual license is midnight).
The Dome thing was a result of the nightclub events they used to run. It was met with resistance from locals, but in the end I don't think it ever caused any issues.
So there's no restriction as to why they can't stay open that late. But the issue is that when they do, people don't stay. Unless it's Fright Nights, people don't stay until 10pm. Love Island Lates was dead. The summer openings they've tried in the past haven't worked. People just aren't interested in what the park have offered for late openings, unless it's been Halloween season.
In terms of the VR addition, Galactica never really worked out. Same with Shaman at Gardaland. I doubt Merlin will go near VR rides any time soon. I'm sure when they can they'll remove it from Derren too.
But the actual retheme and branding from Air to Galactica was a HUGE success. They executed that perfectly. So I don't think Merlin/Towers see Galactica as a failure per se, as bottom line is they've got a stronger branded coaster out of it that makes more money (and they wouldn't have done the retheme without the VR). It's a shame they didn't go for space theme for Derren Brown's Ghost Train, which was considered at one point in the process.
What an oddly specific, yet completely unjustifiable, guess to call...
