Having been to Merlin’s three major parks (not including Legoland) over the past week, I’ve come back with strong opinions on all of them, and of Merlin as a whole.
Merlin’s strangehold over the UK theme park market is a shining example of why monopolies are uniformly terrible. I’m of the opinion that Alton Towers, Chessington, and Thorpe Park are all far too expensive for what are ultimately sub-par products — it is frankly infuriating that they can charge more than the likes of Europa Park, Phantasialand, Liseberg, Efteling, Walibi Belgium, Toverland, Parc Astérix, etc., only to offer lesser experiences in return. Even Heide-Park costs more than Hansa (though still cheaper than the UK parks) when half the park looks dilapidated by comparison.
Price aside, let’s start with Alton, since that’s the park I visited first: In terms of general upkeep, it is the nicest of the three parks, but it still has its problem areas. What sinks it is the horrid operations — I’m sorry, but Ride Access Pass is simply out of control and should be reined in. I waited FIFTY MINUTES for Thirteen ON FASTTRACK because TWO out of the five cars on the train were allocated for Ride Access Pass riders only, which is frankly ****ing absurd. Fasttrack in general seems to be treated as a secondary priority despite how much they charge for it (there is no point to using it on Smiler when Single Rider is that much faster), and I couldn’t help but feel my blood boiling to see how haphazardly it was handled on some rides (they didn’t even bother checking to see if I even had fasttrack on either Thirteen, Galactica, or Rita).
I tried to start the day on Wicker Man, but was told it wouldn’t open on time. That was understandable at that point, as not everything is always going to be ready, so I went over to Thirteen, only to be told it would be delayed also. Bit annoying at this point, so I went to Rita, which was finally running by ten minutes past ten.
Half an hour after the park was open, the following rides were still down:
- Wicker Man
- Thirteen
- Congo River Rapids
- Octonauts
- Battle Galleons
- Runaway Mine Train (which wouldn’t open until about 4 P.M)
- Hex (which would be closed all day)
- Raj’s Bouncy Bottom Burp
As you’ll see later, this would not be a coincidence, but rather a pattern. Spinball Whizzer still hasn’t opened for the season either, which would be another pattern with Merlin parks.
Because so many rides were down, the lines for the open ones (bar Oblivion, thanks to the by far best ops in the park) quickly grew horrendous. It took until about 11 for Wicker Man to open, and Thirteen I think didn’t start up until noon.
Oh, and the SkyRide was closed all day too, because there weren't enough closed attractions.
Quick aside on Curse of Alton Manor: I had to ride it twice because my first ride was ruined by the announcer constantly blaring ”please put your phones away” every ten seconds, which for reasons that are beyond me would cut out ALL music and sound effects for a good few seconds at a time, making it nearly impossible to actually enjoy the ride. My second ride only had it happen a couple of times, but the graveyard scene would be spoiled by a service light being left on.
So I walked away from Alton mostly frustrated. It was Easter Saturday, so I knew it was going to be crowded and I bought a gold Fasttrack to prepare for that, but it was barely worth it because of the poor ride availability and how Ride Access Pass’s poor implementation made things worse for everyone. I have nothing against RAP as a concept, but it’s clearly being handed out to far too many people and severely sags operations for everyone else, including those like me who paid a good chunk to avoid all of that.
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Onto Chessington: Ride Access Pass was less of a problem here, since limitations were put in place, but ride availability was somehow even worse. Scorpion Express would make the second coaster I came across that wasn’t open for the season yet, but I was willing to look past that as long as the other three coasters were running as intended.
None of them were.
Dragon’s Fury, Vampire, and Rattlesnake were all down. So was Croc Drop, Kobra, and Tiger Rock. Essentially, the park’s entire thrill catalogue wasn’t running when the park opened, which was ****ing absurd. The weather was lovely that day, so that couldn’t be used as an excuse. This is a maintenance and operations issue, and it would keep persisting as rides kept breaking down all day (Dragon’s Fury couldn’t stay open for more than half an hour at a time until they finally said **** it, and removed one of the cars from the track). Those who’ve read the ”Small News” thread in the past few days are probably already aware of the ”Safe Mode” put in place on Rattlesnake, which combined with the fact that it wasn’t open until like 2 P.M. made it nearly impossible to ride. I even had to wait through another breakdown just to get my one ride on it.
I was actually excited to get on Zufari, but it ended up being pretty underwhelming. A few giraffes, gazelles, one rhino, and then a water effect that took way too long to finally happen, and then the ride was over. Despite taking longer than six minutes to complete the course, I walked off thinking ”that’s it?” and wondering why Chessington even bothered implementing it. Maybe it used to be better at some point, but I found it as it was to be pretty lame.
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Thorpe Park. By this point, my expectations were rock bottom, especially since Thorpe is generally regarded as the worst of the three. Colossos was another coaster that wasn’t open for the season yet, because it apparently takes half a year to replace a single section of track, and the lack of communication from the park makes me wonder if Ghost Train’s vague ”Spring 2023” window will even be met. Surely, there’d be an opening date for that by now?
The weather at the start of the day was dismal. Standing in the middle of Amity Beach, shivering from the cold winds and hard rain, I figured I’d be running into more closed rides and terrible ops. I don’t understand why the Fasttrack kiosk is all the way back at Nemesis Inferno and not inside the dome at the front of the park, but after acquiring my wristband and making my first ride on the day on Nemesis I discovered that, to my honest surprise, all the coasters actually opened on time. Despite the terrible weather, Thorpe managed to do what Alton and Chessington could not. The Swarm did go down a couple of times because of heavy winds, but that’s understandable. It did seem like it was struggling to even make it through the course in a few spots. I don’t know if the weather scared enough people away so the RAP queues weren’t flooded, but I actually ended up having a good day at Thorpe.
That said, the park is a total dump.
It wasn’t just the weather that made everything look dismal and tired, as the park’s best days were clearly far behind it (Project Exodus can’t come soon enough, I suppose), and nearly every ride was in desperate need of a facelift. Swarm had a bad bounce going on regardless of seat, SAW had a few unpleasant jolts and was littered with broken effects, Stealth had a bad rattle in the back (but was pretty smooth in the front), and I would’ve assumed Flying Fish had been left abandoned if there weren’t people riding it, it looked that terrible. Tidal Wave kept testing all day but never opened, and a few smaller rides were also down, but nothing I was planning to go on anyway.
Walking Dead was actually a pleasant surprise, and the major flats were all running decently. Pretty sure if Rush, Zodiac, Quantum, and Vortex were all at Alton, they’d be taken out and replaced with another Retro Squad by now.
I again have to mention the price point. For a park that charges as much as Thorpe does, how does it get away with looking so dismal? The place made Bobbejaanland look like Europa Park.
Frankly, despite my good day at Thorpe, I am in no rush to get back to any of those parks in the near future, even if new investment is coming in. There’s frankly too many fundamental problems with each of these parks that could take years to fix even if they started today, and there are so many better places in mainland Europe I could be spending my time and money on and get a much better experience in return. Combined with how I feel about Heide-Park, I continue to be left underwhelmed with Merlin at almost every turn, and despite it apparently having the best reputation out of the five, my interest in visiting Gardaland at the moment is pretty low. Maybe all these problems I encountered was because it was Easter and early in the season, but I still feel like had I hopped over to Paris and gone to Disney and Asterix instead, I’d have a much better time at both. The UK Merlin parks just aren’t doing it for me.
