Marc - there is so much more to wether or not a Business is being successful than, in the case of a theme park, its gate figure. If anything a park's footfall is a measure of how effective advertising is that year, what you don't know is the proportion of people who are return guests, or the proportion that are leaving pissed off.Also with regard to effects and things, they should be working as standard. Rides should all be reliable, standard. That shouldn't be some great achievement because it should all be working anyway, they are core expectations of guests. Lets use an analogy. Say I go into McDonalds and order a Cheeseburger, I expect it to have a bun, meat, cheese, gherkin, onion (or whatever the little square crunchy bits are, I forget!). Anyway, that's what you expect not if I got a £50 note in my burger (or more realisticly, free fries or something), then that would be going over and above what you expect, adding value to the product and vastly improving the consumer's perception of it.As for security and 'pikeys', I rarely many at Chessington, even when working on Rattlesnake which seems to be a bit of a magnet for them. Even then, they are generally well behaved and far outnumbered by family groups. I think wether you're willing to admit it or not, you know that the fact Thorpe conduct random stop and search on entry to the park, that they get extra support from local police forces at Haloween, says a lot about the place.Thorpe have also chose to appeal to a niche market with their product portfolio (the rides dear ), which may be a successful strategy in the short term, but long term I don't think they'll be able to maintain increasing visitor numbers each year. This is one of the main reason Thorpe will never overtake Alton Towers as the premier theme park in this country. Alton is an experiance, they have a wide variety of rides, shows, beautiful gardens and buildings, it feels like you're off on an adventure somewhere. It's the whole package, and it appeals to all the family. There are rides everyone can go on, there are rides that only the younger generations will like, so mum and dad can go potter round the gardens while they wait. That said they still appeal to groups of teens who visit for the big rides, Alton has broad appeal.I don't think I've structured this very well but hey who cares, I can't be arsed to read through it, especially as I expect very few people will read it all anyway. Plus I just can't be arsed, I know I'm right.