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Thorpe top this for me for reasons similar to the above. Rides are often operated well, especially the likes of Stealth & Hyperia and reliability has been better than from previous years. Towers contrary though has seen a noticeable decline in operations and reliability lately. Some rides like Thirteen still smash it but it’s not like how it was. Chessington is hit and miss, but I’ve seen some poor operations lately, with rides like Rattlesnake operating so badly now and too many rides on low or reduced capacity now. LEGOLAND is ok, but I still find it exaggerated where staff have to say “you’re secure” after checking a simple door or restraint once or even twice. It’s the most safety exaggerated park out there I’ve done!

I must be one of the few people who actually really likes Heide Park. Desert Race has get in the bin and be harvested for Stealth parts though.

Not my fault that place is crap and Desert Race not much better.

Poor Desert Race and Heide Park, both so forgotten about they don't even get considered for a Merlin plague...

Can only have one of Stealth or Rita running at any one time.

Hope this is OK to discuss here on the Stealth thread on the Thorpe Park Mania forum but Stealth is down again from today until Friday for more scheduled maintenance... Please stay with us Sweet Prince xox

Easy winner is Thorpe. Best operated rides, best opening hours and better reliability.

How have the queue times been at Chessington? Perhaps the demand isn't really there this season? (I have no idea) Attendance feels like it's lower in general at Towers and Thorpe this year. Don't know about Lego and Chessington.

I'm assuming that the 5pm closes in October will be changed. Otherwise that's a real cut down. Strange decisions from the higher ups.

It's even weirder given they're currently a whole area down (which you would expect has knock on effects to queue times, so cutting hours would lead to people getting less rides), and that Chessington are getting the most investment out of the Merlin parks currently. You'd expect them to be the crown jewel all round right now. Unless the fact that a third of the park is basically a construction site has reduced visitor numbers drastically, I don't get it.

Chessingtons opening hours for the whole summer holidays (and for the rest of the season) is 5pm. Same with Legoland. Going back, 6pm has always been standard, and for most weekends throughout the season. Infact a few years ago there was even a lot of 7pm closes in the holidays and weekends. Ouch.

The last few years, I'd say Thorpe park by a long way. Best ride availability, best throughputs and best opening hours. Crazy because going back 5+ years or so I would've always said Towers. 1 train ops on off peak days was standard at Thorpe, resulting in long queues even on quiet days.

It's certainly a fair concern. Given that Towers have already outsourced their Ents department, it will be interesting to see how Scarefest goes down this year and what changes are noticeable. Though Scarefest and Fright Nights are obviously very different events, it will at least give us some indication as to what the situation could be. It will be interesting how much creative control the park will retain for the event. They might still be able to design attractions, and just give operational outlines. They might be able to outline briefs and then leave things with the third party. Regardless, I don't just see it being handed over with Thorpe have next-to-no input and not being able to share that knowledge or passion, nor do I expect we'll return to lower quality outdoor mazes (not to say that outdoor mazes should be completely disregarded). I have heard murmurings at the very least that the park are seeing next year's Fright Nights as a 'big' one, due to it being the 25th edition. It's possible that's why there's no new maze this year (and so, less money spent on the event), so that they can go all out a bit more next year. Obviously take it with a pitch of salt, but I think for now, we're okay.

I am looking forward to this years Fright Nights and I think this year is going to be a great event. They have got it to a place where the event is consistent and has a range of indoor mazes and hopefully a few good scare zones and entertainment building on previous years. Smaller queues and more consistent experiences have been the trend over the past 4 years. I am worried however about next year in which RWS are going to take control of the event and experience. How much input does the park have into the event anymore creatively…. Thorpe Park is an outlier in which you can see this event is someone’s/ a group of people’s baby. The themes have been created by the same people which a consistent aim. Now it moves to another company which doesn’t have the same passion or knowledge about the event. I just hope we don’t go back to outdoor lower quality mazes again. It’s worrying as Thorpe doesn’t need an external entertainment provider as they basically only do fright nights.

Got to be Thorpe for me these days - they have had quite the turnaround over the last few years.

Thorpe comes out on top for me. Speaking across the board, availability is decent and throughputs are good. Towers do well with throughputs, but their availability feels a lot worse. Legoland comes next for me. They cope well with what they have. Chessington isn't awful, but they have a lot of low throughput rides and they struggle to operate them well.

Hi guys. Here in the UK, we have four Merlin parks: Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Chessington and Legoland Windsor. Operations are a contentious topic surrounding the Merlin parks, particularly as of late; people talk a lot about throughputs, ride availability and the like with regard to these properties. However, there’s arguably some variation between the four properties in terms of many of these metrics, so with this in mind, I’d be keen to know; which Merlin park is best operated, in your view? Which one performs best in terms of metrics like throughputs? Personally, I would put Alton Towers at the top of the pile. But if I were to rank them, I would say the following: Alton Towers - The park may not be perfect, but in general, I think it’s the one that seems to have the most consistently strong operations. Throughputs are broadly excellent, on the whole, with lots of trains running and quick dispatches, the staff seem generally good at batching people and encouraging guests to fill seats, and ride availability, while extremely inconsistent at best in 2023 and 2024, generally seems to have been a lot better this season. I would say that Alton Towers is broadly very good operationally. Thorpe Park - I have to say that I think Thorpe Park gets an unfair amount of flack for operations. From my experiences, the park are generally pretty decent at getting good ride throughputs; particularly as of late, there does seem to have been a bit of a throughput push at Thorpe Park. On my visits, rides generally seem to be running at full capacity and dispatching fairly promptly, for the most part. Granted, I don’t think the park is quite as slick as Towers in some regards; for instance, I don’t think they’re quite as proactive as Alton at batching and encouraging guests to fill seats. Nonetheless, I find that Thorpe Park generally do a decent job, and I don’t think ride availability is that bad either. On some rides, I would even argue that Thorpe Park like-for-like does better than Alton Towers; for instance, Stealth consistently seems to get a good peg higher than Rita in terms of throughputs, from my experience. Legoland Windsor - Here’s where I think things dip slightly. It might be down to a greater lack of intrinsically high capacity rides, but I find the queues at Legoland seem to move more slowly than at Thorpe and Towers. In general, I think the coasters seem to do OK, but could go faster. For instance, Dragon was doing a little over 3 minutes per dispatch on my last visit, which seems a little on the slower side for a simple lap bar coaster running multiple trains. Minifigure Speedway was also impeded by the same weird quirk as Mandrill Mayhem, where they won’t let you wait on the platform. Some of the non-coaster rides also seemed a bit short-staffed; for instance, Flight of the Sky Lion had one person running the whole show batching-wise, and it was resulting in a dispatch interval probably no quicker than 10 minutes or so. To be fair, though, availability seemed good on my visit and I don’t really remember anything breaking down. Chessington - Granted, I’ve only been once in the last decade, but Chessington definitely seemed like the Merlin park that struggled the most operationally on my 2023 visit. Most rides seemed very short-staffed; for instance, Vampire had one person who had to handle both batching and restraint checking, resulting in some of the slowest operations I’ve ever witnessed in a Merlin park (around 400pph on 2 trains…). This story continued across multiple rides. Croc Drop had one poor man running the entire ride on his own. Tomb Blaster had one poor man who had to batch, check and send the entire train. Dragon’s Fury was also strangely operated, taking a good 50% longer to send each car on average than Spinball Whizzer and only 3/4 filling most of the cars (?). To be fair, Mandrill Mayhem wasn’t doing badly at all for a 1 train shuttle coaster (around 3 minutes per dispatch), but most things seemed short staffed and quite slowly operated as a result. I went on a Sunday in September that was not obscenely busy, and there were many rides where the advertised queue breached 60 minutes (I saw Dragon’s Fury on 100 at one point!). But I’d be keen to know: which Merlin park do you feel is best operated? Do you agree with my ranking?

The actual operations at Towers are broadly always excellent. It's whether the rides are actually open that is Altons problem.

I have some throughput timings from my trip to Alton Towers on 26th and 27th July that I’d like to report! Across the two days, I managed to grab the following throughput timings: Galactica (Theoretical: 1,500pph on 3 trains/2 stations): 1,207pph (3 trains/2 stations, average of 4, 26th July 2025) Nemesis Reborn (Theoretical: 1,400pph on 2 trains): 1,163pph (2 trains, average of 5, 26th July 2025), 1,130pph (2 trains, average of 5, 27th July 2025) Oblivion (Theoretical: 1,900pph on 7 shuttles/2 stations): 787pph (5 shuttles/2 stations, average of 3 dual dispatches, 26th July 2025) (Note: This figure was obtained in a brief moment when the ride did not have a batcher, so the platform staff were having to multitask), 939pph (5 shuttles/2 stations, average of 4 dual dispatches, 26th July 2025), 644pph (4 shuttles/1 station, average of 2, 27th July 2025) Spinball Whizzer (Theoretical: 950pph on 8 cars): 631pph (6 cars, average of 2, 26th July 2025 (Note: While I got relatively few readings for Spinball, I had a longer timing that I accidentally messed up by missing one, and the longer timing had a very similar, if not slightly faster, average; ops seemed pretty consistent on here for the whole time I was in the area) The Smiler (Theoretical: 1,200pph on 5 trains): 882pph (4 trains, average of 10, 26th July 2025), 830pph (4 trains, average of 6, 27th July 2025) (Note: This figure was skewed downwards slightly by one instance of a larger guest who didn’t fit needing to be rechecked and evicted; the average of the other 5 readings was higher) Thirteen (Theoretical: 1,100pph on 3 trains): 1,272pph (3 trains, average of 7, 26th July 2025) (Note: This reading was skewed down by 1 or 2 instances of larger guests needing rechecking, as well as 1 instance where guests lingering from the prior train needed ushering off the exit platform prior to dispatch) Toxicator (Theoretical: 1,200pph): 482pph (average of 3, 27th July 2025) Wicker Man (Theoretical: 952pph on 3 trains): 970pph (3 trains, average of 10, 26th July 2025), 1,080pph (3 trains, average of 6, 26th July 2025), 991pph (3 trains, average of 7, 27th July 2025) Overall, I thought operations were broadly excellent across the weekend! In terms of a few specific thoughts that stick out to me: After a bit of a slip in efficiency last year, Nemesis seems to have returned to its pre-retrack form in terms of operations; they were brilliant on there all trip, with little to no stacking, and there were staff members hurrying people along on the platform and at batching! It has been a bit inconsistent on some trips in the past, but I have to say that Galactica was doing brilliantly last weekend! They were killing it on 3 trains and 2 stations; I rode it twice and didn’t stack either time, and whenever I was in the station, it seemed very common for there to be a notable gap between a train leaving my station and the train behind re-entering it. The train was frequently slowing down on the lift hill (because the train in front hasn’t cleared the block yet) too. Brilliant! The key throughput highlight of the weekend was probably Thirteen. Given that my 1,272pph average was skewed down by a couple of larger guests needing rechecking, I think it’s fair to say that the Thirteen staff were doing brilliantly! It was on 3 trains, and they were throwing the trains out; when they were on a roll, they were getting dispatch intervals as fast as 50s, and the vast majority of dispatch intervals were under a minute! There was a dispatch where the staff had checked the train so fast that they had to usher the guests still exiting from the previous train off the exit platform to dispatch. Isn’t that awesome? It was like being in Europa Park or Universal! That ride really is a queue muncher when it runs to its full potential! The one bleaker spot on the otherwise excellent throughput picture was Oblivion. When I encountered the ride on Saturday, it was lacking a batcher at one point; that 787pph figure is probably the worst I’ve ever measured on 2 stations, and it was almost solely due to the platform staff having to duck out from the platform to come and batch people at periodic intervals. They did regain a separate batcher later in the day, but even then, the operations were not exactly staggering, with the average still being above 2 minutes between dual dispatches. It was also only running one station on Sunday, which definitely isn’t ideal in the summer holidays. This is the one ride that notably doesn’t quite hit its potential; I think baggage is the key thing that stymies it, as it takes a long time for people to cross those long rows. If it had a baggage hold or fancy cages like Yukon Striker, I think the throughput on Oblivion would go up two-fold. Wicker Man was doing really well as usual, with frequent cases of a train going up the lift hill before the one in front hitting the brake run, but I do think it might now be time to dispense of the compulsory pre-show. I noticed that they were often having to wait for the pre-show to end before they could fill the airgates (the station queue was running out of people before the doors were opening to let a new batch in), which did seem to slow dispatches down in some cases. Overall, the weekend boasted broadly excellent operations, and no queue was very long at all! It’s weekends like this one that make me disagree with the common consensus that Alton Towers have dreadful operations; I’d argue that figures like these suggest that the park actually do very well on throughputs in general, with most rides running on full capacity and dispatching promptly!

fire, cash, times, money, queues, splash, trees, walking paninaro, paninaro, oooooooooh!

Why was the queue line extended outside of the original ride area? Makes the swcrion of path very narrow.

Revivng this question to tell you all that Fright Nights and halloween in general has essentially become the new summer, queues will be ridiculously high (I waited half an hour on the ride access queue for Hyperia, which probably had a 300 minute normal queue wait last year) and crowds will be absolutely packed. Alton Towers' scarefest also has the same issue and not even Chessington or LEGOLAND are safe from the long queues too, especially at half term. Simply put, if you're going to a major UK theme park this halloween, be prepared for the worst.

The Easter Egg culture for Merlin has become a lot. Realistically, sticking in an Easter Egg takes very little effort. Taking Toxicator as an example, it wouldn't have taken any real energy and time away from the creative team to throw in references to 1997, seeing that "Ripsaw" spelt backwards was "Waspir", and that could be used to spell something that sounded vaguely acidic in "Waspirium", a poster with "Can you cut it?", etc. It's a fun little nod. Designers putting their name on an attraction is also a trend which has been around a long time too. But there's now an innate expectation for Easter Eggs which has come from influencers and enthusiasts seeking them out and really pushing them. It erred too far. My favourite example of how far it went was how Survival Games at Thorpe Park features a prop of a severed penis (behind a fence, in a box, not in an obvious place, I believe), with a tag labelled "JS" on it, which stood for Jack Silkstone, an 'Easter Egg' to how Jack was involved in the marketing for it. Again, not something that takes up time, money or energy to create really, but extremely convoluted, and by bringing it to people's attention and encouraging them to look out for it, actively takes away from the experience. And that's the issue now. People fixate more on Easter Eggs and finding these nods and feeling clever than actually taking in the bigger picture. Going back to Toxicator, whilst all the references make sense and that, does Toxicator really fit and work with Forbidden Valley? Well, it's certainly changed the area more and continued to turn of it into X Sector 2.0.

Its cool to have an Easter Egg or two within a new or reimagined attraction (say for example, Piraten in Batavia having a survivor boat from the fire and a Roland Mack animatronic), but when the majority of the attraction becomes "DO YOU GET IT?" it misses the point somewhat as you feel like they're trying too hard to bash you over the head with references. The other issue is that the park has been so run down that a number of rides have needed a full refurbishment. Sub Terra came back out of necessity more than anything, Duel was in a sorry state since it opened, Nemesis was also refurbished out of necessity or be closed. Don't really think it's anything to do with nostalgia. Just those are the rides they could either redo over a closed season or needed to be done for reasons.

It's a very interesting one that's been touched on before in other topics. Apart from the excellent Wickerman, they've spent vast amounts of money over the last several years replacing the Haunted House, Hex, Sub Terra, Nemesis, Skyride and Ripsaw with... The Haunted House, Hex, Sub Terra, Nemesis, Skyride and Ripsaw... Yes they're all updated and in a couple of cases very different, but they're all essentially the same thing at the end of the day, and it's difficult to argue with that. Someone who last visited Alton Towers in 2014, over a decade ago, would realistically not see a lot of difference in terms of ride offering if they visited again tomorrow. In fact, there are fewer rides on offer. Don't get me wrong - I think its a very good thing that Skyride was saved, I think Curse is a vast improvement on Duel, and Nemesis' renewal and tart-up was a good thing to secure its future, but I agree with what you've said above. Realistically, to most people at least, none of it is truly new. It's neatly all been (granted, expensive) maintenance to existing attractions to keep them running... And the trouble is, they're not finished yet either. Galactica is crying out for a refurbishment and retime... so could that be yet another (all be it badly needed) large investment that needs doing instead of something truly new? It wouldn't surprise me, as it will probably be deemed worth investing in rather than scrapping. I think the truth is that Merlin has run nearly everything in to the ground, with little thought for the future. Although we all rode the wave of Merlin's success a decade ago, with new things coming in fairly regularly, their short-term thinking and obsession with only ever investing in a 'sure moneymaker' to satisfy the shareholders one year at a time has landed Towers here. The money that should have been spent on refurbishments and maintenance over the years was instead given to the top execs and the shareholders, and now everything's timed out at the same time, and is hoovering up all the money that would otherwise be available to invest in to new attractions etc. I'm very sad about the situation Alton Towers has been put in to by such poor leadership in the past. Clearly there is a lot of money being spent at Towers on getting things back on track. The recent renovations have mostly been excellent. But with more expensive fix-ups surely to come, and ongoing problems with reliability and aging rides elsewhere (Rita, Galactica, etc), they're not out of the woods yet. I hope there will be news soon on something truly new and exciting coming to Towers. They just can't keep replacing or re-theming everything for ever - even Disney have accepted that!