SteveJ

Gruffalo doesn't necessarily need to 'fit in' with the theme naturalistically, it is a Europeany concept and isn't too out of place. Hotel Transylvania (which was actually considered when the Gruffalo 'almost' pulled out in recent years) however would have been so crass. The Gruffalo Franchise may be the Merlin equivalent of childrens literature but at least it has more class and potential than an unsuccessful flash in the pan kids film. But will the Gruffalo ride be any good? Who cares? Children of a certain age bracket might do. Let's hope they have their own original idea to replace the fountains, keeping them would be rather insulting to be honest. One of the few reasons IL Bubbleworks was remained such a hit with children even after it was trashed is because the fountains were retained (the fountain room kept in a poor state but they are a fun novelty nevertheless)

hang on hang on, not trying to disgree for the sake of it, but there's no real excuse for having staff run along and tap people's legs. That's a bit far fetched. I agree there's no way to "realistically grab" peoples legs like the woman in the video, but having someone footstep along tapping people's legs is not remotely convincing either. Its just a cheap trick to make people jump that is unbelievably tacky when you can hear them footstepping around you. People can say what they like about the attraction on the whole, but whatever your opinion surely the "staff tapping knees" trick is always going to be ridiculous. It's one of the tackiest things ive personally experienced in all my visits to parks ever. Really I don't see any point defending it and if this were seen in any other park than at "cutting edge" Merlin, people would be laughing out the door. It should have occurred to the designers that if youre resorting to staff running up and down tapping guests knees to provoke a reaction, then youre doing something wrong. Think of a better idea altogether that makes use of the great potential the VR and ride has. Personally, when I first felt the knee taps, I thought the staff had just bumped into my legs by accident, until they did it the second time and it hilariously dawned on me and others. It totally broke any kind of immersion with the VR too and was plain ...weird However - the knee tapping seems to be the part that consistently makes people react the most. Which is ironic, probably a clear sign that you have not used your £30million correctly.

Bubbleworks proved quite an unexpected hit with teenagers too when it first opened, it was obviously a family ride but the madness, naughty humour and addictiveness of it leant to its wide appeal. Merlin don't do humour however, they need to maintain their 'serious business' persona as they say. Any kind of family ride they do is processed and corporate by nature.

Not realising it has actually been mostly broken and bodged for about 15 years, and that if they'd had some pride in it in the 2000s it would still be a brilliant ride. Its only when animations break and look shoddy, music skips, lighting gets played around with and nothing has any life anymore that it becomes "dated". Gruffalo will become dated and old much faster than BubbleWorks ever did. That being said, after 15 years of vandalism by Tussauds and Merlin, the ride needed to go. Merlin's take on BubbleWorks would have been a painful sight to see...

THAT's the way they're going to announce it? Facebook animal clues? God sake

Its exactly the same as whatever the existing Ninjago ride is at Billund, copied and pasted into whatever shape they've wedged it into Windsor.

At the cost of getting you on the ride? By the time you get on the platform, you really do just want to get on the ride and not be asked "How is your day going" for the 10th time by young adults who couldn't actually care less. Good staff can interact brilliantly and not let it affect ride operations or destroy the themed environment. One good thing Graham McGrath did do was ban operators singing over the ride PAs - funny for staff but unbelievably tacky. I remember well around 2007 The Vampire music (back when you could hear it and it played with oomph through more than 1 speaker) was constantly being muted one day by a clueless operator who was being funny by caling out "Ladels and jellbeans - may I have your attention!" and it was the worst thing in the land. Except I also remember staff being trained with the ethos that "People come here for the rides, but without staff the rides are just boring - its the interaction that makes their day". Ha ha 'the rides are just boring' and underpaid staff members chatting to you is apparently more worth the entrance fee. Fix the rides so they're not boring then. If the managers saw the same park 20 years ago theyd probably not believe their eyeballs.

Ignore ALL Merlin promotion & advertising and your enjoyment of rides will improve tenfold. And in all big companies in general really. If you look on the official webpage for DBGT not one image on there is actually from the ride. I find this pretty awful but its just the hyperbole way Merlin advertise things. Almost all their claims about the ride, are very carefully worded to sound good, but are in fact not at all what fans should have in mind when going on the ride. - The first thing they put out to the public is an exaggerated budget figure. They want to impress with money before even finalising what the ride will be, and a huge amount of that money goes on things not affecting the public's experience in the final ride. Merlin have made it status quo for many fans to be thinking about the big budget when they go into their attractions, I think this is wrong, fans should be thinking about having fun. - "World's firsts", "innovative", "next generation", "the future", all these things are purely hyperbole. Honestly. Even X No Way Out was heavily promoted upon opening as being "the future of theme parks across the world". These phrases are used all the time and have been for years, not just for theme parks either. Phones, computers, anything involving "technology" are always sold in this style. In reality, Derren Brown's Ghost Train just makes a bespoke use of a technology-based product that's currently trending. That's all that really is. -"Over a 1000 specialists" - Large amounts of contractors and tradespeople are always used on major attractions, Derren Brown would have had much more because of its bespoke nature - but it shouldn't matter to guests' experience at all. Using this as an actual strapline to the public is so on-the-nose and it doesn't necessarily mean anything about the ride itself. It can range from the ground surveyors, the concrete pourers, the structural engineers, architect, concept designers, scenic artists, AV installers, VR content production team, transit system engineers, research & development, animation designers, lighting, audio, carpenters, electricians, etc, like all major show attractions. It doesn't necessarily guarantee the ride is a success if you think about it. Merlin are a marketing-rooted company from the top down so they intensely focus their wordings, imagery, etc. But often, categorically, it is so very far removed from the rides they actually build. Ive avoided seeing all promotion to do with Derren Brown's GT since it began and just waiting for the actual ride to open, and it makes an enormous difference. I still don't like the ride but theres none of the false pretence, slowly wearing off novely and then big disillusionment that so many people are put through by Merlin's way of doing things.

You have just described a dark ride or themed attraction, which need not be 'rides' the whole way through, and Derren Brown's Ghost Train is nothing new. It is very bespoke, which is a good thing creatively, but just underused and poorly executed for what it is. It's fantastic you think it is a great experience and that you enjoy it, that's great. But then if you or others were to have ridden the kinds of dark rides or themed attractions that have been achieved in other parks (or even on a smaller scale right here in the UK 10-20 years ago), you'd perhaps see DBGT is a rather superficial attempt to do the same as those parks have been doing for years - dressed up with promotion as being cutting edge and world-leading. Themed entertainment is something Merlin apparenrlty just can't get their head around, despite it being in their company name. They say things like "highly immersive" and "psychological", and some of them in MMM do have a background in theatre design (which is what themed entertainment is rooted in). But then they come up with poor practical solutions to achieve those ideas like 'sit down VR', a pole with headlights on it for a train crash, shouting 'actors' to create panic without much real show FX and stingy scenic design. You don't need enormous budgets to make a great show that's really fun for guests, but a company as loaded as Merlin shouldnt have a problem if they really wanted to deliver the best show. Practices, ethos and achievements that have been used in the industry for decades to great results are abandoned under Merlin , they contradict themselves so often by running their parks as a big bunch of amusement rides with little understanding of 'themed' entertainment and show, only to attempt making really ambitious 100% show-based, immersive attractions like DBGT or Sub Terra without the experience or ability to pull it off. Perhaps the best example of this kind of attraction done so well was Kongfrontation at Universal, which DBGT is very close to in its format (except Kong used all-practical effects rather than A/V effects). And that was a whole 26 years ago they achieved that.

Sit in a room reading an instructions & risk assement booklet for an enormous amount of minimum hours on your own (Oh Smiler crash? Triple the hours they spend reading the booklets then!). Then work straight on the ride with someone rechecking the bars for you for another set of time, followed by someone ticking boxes with a clipboard watching you. Also take home a big booklet general to Chessington on the whole about health & safety procedures. 'Training' ought to be directed teamwork running rides with an instructional team, practicing efficiency, safety and awareness actually at the ride- practical training after hours, backed up by a theory test and assessment. Not the other way round, with the vast majority of training comprising of reading a frayed booklet over and over until the minimum hours are up. Practical training sessions after hours would cost in keeping staff longer than what the park has budgeted for though, so they don't do it. So instead staff learn through peer-teaching and booklet reading, with very little contact with team leaders.

Merlin would never remove a shop, as they see this is mandatory for new major attractions. This is also not possible under Merlin's policy of retaining all capital expenditure for a minimum of 4 years, only after 4 years would a whole shop be allowed to be removed. It's also highly unlikely anything significant would now be spent on the attraction because the project already went over budget by several millions of pounds. The revisions will probably be A/V improvements, detailing and new VR material (hopefully a total change). Also Flying Fish staff wouldn't know anything about Merlin Magic Making's plans.

Because of the perception of a minority of guests. Such " perception" would, of course, not matter if staff were trained better (practical training, NOT just more mandatory hours reading paperwork, which doesn't improve anything), stations and platforms were redesigned to now cope with the way they are being used, and there was more effective CCTV to prove against false claims. All that, although I see it as being essential, would cost them money and so they don't consider it, with the exception of better CCTV which did thankfully get implemented across Merlin parks. Last year there were also slew of complaints about bars not being checked or people being let on under the height limit, which were all false, but there were many threats from newspapers to publish such stories in the wake of the accident. Unfortunately this exploitation by some people also contributed to the policy that high throughput operations were "no longer safe", even though it is a ridiculous notion and any understanding theme park operator wouldnt accept that. However Merlin are obsessed with PR and so as long as guests perceive that slower operations = higher safety, then that suited them. In reality, most guests just want to get on the damn ride and have fun. The correct procedure would obviously be to take a step back and take a fresh sensible and core approach to park operations, for much better efficiency and pragmatism, instead of dressing up weird cheap & adhoc decisions as "improved H&S standards".

This did indeed happen in the wake of the Alton Towers accident. The policy briefed out to staff from top level management were "Guests no longer want to see high throughputs and low queues from our attractions, they want to see safety, even if it means a perception of safety by slowing operations down and looking more purposeful. And if there is any concern, slow the ride operations down." There was no clear way to implement such a thing, other than make it an excuse for more inefficient operations and longer queues, it was just more nonsense to try and put up a front about the accident. The actual physical things and procedures that made operations sometimes chaotic or mishandled (like up to 4 queues all feeding into a small station that wasn't designed for it, too many exit queues, too small platforms, adhoc staff procedures, difficulty of communication, poor quality ride throughputs by design, overkill of Fastrack, bodge job repairs on things like Skyway) were left unchanged, staff just became slower and that didnt help anyone.

Why does the ride need to have a 'storyline' at all? Why can't it be a fun show? The disjointedness comes from the bad post-hoc attempts to create a 'story', instead of any proper substance to the scenes or theatricality, when Derren Brown intended it to be just a fun, surreal experience.

Good, and had it been a professional standard ride and not yet-another project disaster, they'd love it far more!

The industry knows the entire ride is an embarassment and the muffled reviews from joe public, while still positive on the ride overall, is very telling considering this was supposedly meant to 'change the game' for theme parks worldwide and be an utter sensation. Except anyone whose ever been to a real theme park outside the UK or seen real entertainment, or been abroad, or even been to the same parks 20 years ago, will know it had no chance of doing that with the approach Merlin took. The whole ride needs reworking to stay operational and relevant without costing hundreds of thousands to regularly maintain and keep it contractually open. Except they won't be able to justify it to the budgeteers because there's little short term return, and theyve already lost millions from what they wanted due to poor budgeting and management. However its nothing cheeky or new to tweak dark rides, even significantly, and then advertise it as new and improved. In fact its not new to do that to whole shows, films or musicals. So there's nothing wrong in advertising this change, all we should hope it that they really go to town with it, and that it doesn't end up being a 'different' plug in VR show. Because that's so easy to do, it needs much more than that, or the VR element will be so outdated within a couple of months when everyone gets the real capabilities of VR in their homes (ie. not just sitting down looking at Play Station graphics). It could be fantastic. It could be a brilliantly fun ride. Come on Merlin, let's see what you can really do - if you just learn from your mistakes.

More or less correct. The train moves in a rectangular fashion, with two shuttle movements and two horizontal transfers to complete the rectangle. An enormous amount of engineering is involved. Shame the changes of location are so downplayed and therefore go over most people's heads, with no theatrics or delivery of the reveals other than if you pay attention and look behind you while being shouted at to get off. Otherwise it would be a fantastic illusion in itself (which was meant to be the whole point before all the VR stuff came along), and a brilliant attraction.

Yes, but just pointing out it wasn't as black and white as 'Merlin or Tussauds' for the sake of others. And its true that Merlin had an initial positive drive when they took over the seriously declining parks, and brought back standard 'themes' in its new attractions and things that had been massively cut like Entertainments. However it never reached near the standards they had before, while they focussed on going public and expanding into Asia and the US in the following years instead, their attention increasingly moving away from their longer established parks which is a real shame. The parks are now run in very poor states 'under the hood' as it were and departments are being scaled back again. The most uncomfortable thing is mostly how happy they are to treat their attractions as 'brands', and that so long as they superficially live up to TV adverts and PR, then everything's ok. Rather than being positive places of work and parts of the country's entertainments culture, Chessington, Alton Towers, Thorpe Park in its earlier years, longstanding & historical attractions like Madame Tussauds, Warwick Castle, the 50 year old Legoland Billund, have all become run as tourist traps driving for profit and whichever cliched brand suits them best, running off minimum salary staff, inexperience and no real enterprise. And I believe it shows hugely in the decline of the guest experience, no matter how many facades they cheaply repaint or 'major innovative investments' they impress shareholders with. Merlin would be perfect if it truly understood what themed entertainment is, if it kept its bottom line in check and knew how to properly manage parks and creative projects. It would be a diverse, big budget themed entertainment institute with some of Europe's best parks benefitting from its success. Instead, it is a selfish company run by ex-marketing directors with little true background in theme parks, who do things according to marketing conventions (even when it proves ineffective time and again), it relies on good looking, good talking management and satisfying its capital venture parent companies, they shun the heritage of their attractions and only care about "where they are taking the industry", entirely ignorant of their mistakes and the much more entertaining, innovative UK projects of the past.

There isn't nearly as much difference as people think between Tussauds and Merlin when it comes to such things. Tussauds was merged into Merlin, not replaced. A huge amount of the significant people who are now decision makers within Merlin were directors at Tussauds during this time, the studio lead designers that directed the work for changing Prof Burp's and Terror Tomb as mentioned (and many more poor quality changes) are still heads in Merlin Magic Making now, even DIC owned 20% of Merlin until its floatation in recent years. The company is still funded much the same way Tussauds was by the end of its time, with huge influence of multiple private equity firms and shareholders. The only significant difference is that Merlin uses more heavy branding and persuasion, both customer-facing and internally to shareholders/staff/industry, and more money than Tussauds did.

Legoland Windsor has declined a lot it was built, but it's not so obvious perhaps. It's being run as a generic theme park with Lego IP themed areas, according to whichever toy sets sell the most, against its original intention to be another kind of park altogether. The 'Heroes Wanted' stuff was just flavour-of-the-day branding though, it wasn't the park's original ethos, and the Lego Group was in other difficulties at that time, hence the sale to Merlin. The original Legoland parks are better funded & managed than the "resort theme parks" Thorpe, Chessington & Alton Towers, etc, because the Lego family have a large share in Merlin and some influence over how Lego attractions are run, the original & best Billund park is thankfully somewhat protected in that sense - the others not so much. Anyway how Merlin operate the Legoland parks is a whole topic in itself and not relevant here

You missed the point of my post Interesting though the 'SECOND TO DISNEY' claim that they hit every single staff member with before you get through the door, is kind of meaningless. Merlin is more like 10th rate in terms of a good attraction operator, Disney and Universal would laugh at Merlin's always dysfunctional and contrived attractions and they are mostly a dead-end company to work with, as many former Merlin people will tell you. However Merlin's core company values are based entirely around a massive will to surpass Disney as fast as possible, so they can claim they are "the biggest" by whichever way they choose to measure it. This was directly stated even to ground level staff numerous times in the last years, that their main efforts are currently to open up new prefab Legoland parks around the world until they can claim the top spot. In their words, theyve turned the theme park industry from "a cinderella industry driven by showmen politics" to "serious business". To everyone else, theyve just used big capital ventures to exploit a once brilliant craft industry for profit gain, and putting branding before quality in order to create a lowest common denominator appeal for big international dominance. Not a company worth caring for. Shame it had to be the likes of Chessington, Legoland, Thorpe Park, Alton Towers and historical attractions like Tussauds that got their souls sucked out for the Merlin empire, but then they had already been left in a state by Tussauds under DIC & Charterhouse. Independent parks are now infinitely more fun and better value.

Yes DIC bought Tussauds in 2005 and took it from bad to worse, to a point where Chessington almost shut down in 2007. Before that the company had been sold to a different parent company Charterhouse, with a very different relationship to how they were with Pearson through the 80s and 90s. Pearson suddenly selling Tussauds to Charterhouse spelled the end of the UK parks best years in many ways, I believe it was because Pearson itself got a change of manegement who didnt have interest in continuing to invest in Tussauds. At this time Merlin went from a small, industry-disliked operator of tourist trap aqauriums, to then owning major parks and brands globally, by getting on so well with their own capital investment companies in order to be granted the funding. Merlin grew so quickly by selling off large percentages to their investors, in order to buyout well known existing brands like Legoland and the Tussauds parks, purely in a global quest to become the dominant and largest valued company in the industry. Using theme parks as their stepping stones in Nick Varney's 20 year quest to be important

Merlin bonuses for salaried staff are notorious amongst many people who work/worked there. Not just downtime, but ipad survey scores and attendance figures too. This is amoral when the ipad survey questions are so vague and don't relate to individual departments, yet affect everyone, and attendance figures are often set greedily high which can get hugely affected by things not under anyone's control like weather. There is high pressure to get the bonus when people are already severely underpaid well under the average salary for high pressure and high responsibilty jobs.

Because, in their view, there's nothing wrong with it. The proper care of the show presentation, animations, audio, lighting, etc are all "nice to haves", in other parks the ride would be closed and an improvements scheme called. A proper one with professional show technicians and contact of its designers. Not getting one or two people to do menial improvements if they have the time, or a H&S refurbishment masquerading as a "transformation" with a few cheap alterations.

This is a very wrong assumption. For all visitor attractions, let alone Alton Towers, emergency response training and procedure is essential. Alton Towers and all Merlin parks operate a high risk assessment and emergency response procedure. Everything from (in Thorpe Park's and Legoland's cases) airplane crashes from the nearby air ports to parkwide evacuation for chemical/terrorist/fire incidents is written down and plans made. Every single attraction also has access to an internal emergency hotline, either a designated telephone number to the park's operational base or an emergency radio channel. This would call the relevant duty staff to the scene who should then have called the emergency services within minutes, such a ride collision would have been obvious, as well as the park's internal response procedure for a coaster crash set in motion (which in this incident wouldn't have been much help considering they were stuck above the ground). 17 minutes for an emergency call to be made is appauling by all accounts. It sounds like a lack of communication from the frontline or lack of staff awareness of the proper procedures (which is the fundamental part of why the whole thing happened)