Leaderboard

Certainly a shame that Russ left. We'll never know exactly what he was responsible for, but he obviously served as a face for the park for a long period of time via Jack's videos, having a reasonable open Instagram page and being quite visible on park. He joined as a director at the park at a time when there were several directors coming and going at the park, before the current long-running stability we've seen. Regardless of what's happened at the high Merlin level, and the issues this is causing Thorpe and the other parks, I do think Thorpe's current success was built on stability at their leadership level. I'd expect that the role description is sort of all-encapsulating. In other words, it's not saying "Rethemes and lands are coming", but rather "If a retheme or a land was to come to light, it would be in the remit of the Creative Manager". I imagine that part of the reason the role was created is because the Entertainments Department is set to be outsourced, like Towers and Legoland. So the person's previous role, which was related to Ents, would change significantly, so it makes sense for that role to develop and make use of the creative skills they have. The big thing here is that there's now someone looking after the "creative maintenance" of the park. Hopefully that means ride effects. So hopefully there's some positive changes there (looking at Swarm and Inferno), and also moving forward, there's someone at Thorpe who can liaise with MMM to say "This is not a worthwhile effect we can realistically maintain, do not include this" (looking at the Hyperia splashdown)