WTF Merlin?

[spicy]

Log into Facebook

Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.

www.facebook.com

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19wm13KCfN/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Shame to see AT history just disposed of like that if that’s what has happened here.

Looks to be a treasure trove of old documents of past projects etc just left open to the elements decayed and disposed of.

 

[StevenX]

Whilst there might have been nuggets of interesting information in those documents for enthusiasts, really, does this matter outside of extremely niche circles? The documents may or may not have been digitised and they were probably a fire hazard. Nobody knew they existed until now, and they have no real bearing on anything at this point. Having had to clear out documents like this myself as a lowly graduate structural engineer, I'm sympathetic to them getting shot of this stuff (and usually, they do actually either get digitised or sent to secure storage for a defined period instead of just disposed of). Alton do a lot of things badly and are deserving of criticism in many respects - this doesn't feel like one of them to me.

 

[toofpikk]

Whilst there might have been nuggets of interesting information in those documents for enthusiasts, really, does this matter outside of extremely niche circles? The documents may or may not have been digitised and they were probably a fire hazard. Nobody knew they existed until now, and they have no real bearing on anything at this point. Having had to clear out documents like this myself as a lowly graduate structural engineer, I'm sympathetic to them getting shot of this stuff (and usually, they do actually either get digitised or sent to secure storage for a defined period instead of just disposed of). Alton do a lot of things badly and are deserving of criticism in many respects - this doesn't feel like one of them to me.

I'm pretty sure I've seen British/European/Alton Archive (whichever one they go by these days) say that much of the archive is in fact not digitised, and they have had to cherry pick items they archive themselves privately as Merlin/Alton have very little interest in doing so outside of compulsory documentation and the park and broader company has spent the last few years just chucking away things they think are redundant.

From a professional capacity, you are right - the vast majority of these items serve absolutely zero purpose. But from a nerdy point of view, material like this is only a few steps away from being a brilliant memorabilia book, that parks like Disney and Efteling have managed to execute on a very high level. From a creative point of view, it may be a bit of a self-own considering how much nostalgia-baiting the park has done recently.