What is happening to Alton Towers?

I’ve mentioned previously that Alton Towers hasn’t had the best season with issues of ride availability across the board. In addition to that the major transport ride, The Skyride has been closed all season for extended maintenance and the ‘back for 2024’ return of Hex came about 1 month before the end of season.

In today’s news it has been reported that a consultation is underway exploring the scrapping of the Merlin Magic Making team at Alton Towers. This is terrible news for the staff involved and also for Alton Towers as a whole.

In this blog I’ll briefly explore what’s happening at Alton Towers and what I think needs to happen.

The Decline of Alton Towers

I last went to Alton Towers back in 2017…I live in Essex so it’s around 4 hours to get there and whilst I really want to try out the Wicker Man which was being built at the time there has been nothing else to tempt me there.

And it seems I’m not the only one to have stopped attending Alton Towers regularly. It’s no secret that park attendance has dropped since the tragic Smiler accident back in 2015 and with many rides being removed in the last ten years and very few being replaced the offering at Alton Towers seems to be getting more and more sparse.

The last couple of months of this season has seen multiple coasters go down for hours at a time (a recent vlog from Theme Park Worldwide showed only two roller coasters operating for an extended period at one point).

In addition to that staggered ride opening has been introduced for the last part of the season and with today’s news around the potential redundancies of the entire Merlin Magic Making team it seems that Merlin, who run Alton Towers, are trying to save money left-right-and-centre but sadly, at the expenses of the hard-working staff and Alton Towers as a theme park.

With plans submitted for a new permanent stage area at Thorpe Park alongside designs for a hotel surfacing online plus big developments planned at Chessington (blog to follow) it seems Merlin are directing all their investment South.

This potentially makes sense given the Universal Studios UK project in Bedford which we should hear more about soon but it’s incredibly sad to see Alton Towers, which was once the premier park in the UK being neglected.

Have we been here before?

Whilst I don’t think Alton Towers will close all of this does feel eerily similar to the decline of previous parks that did later shut in the UK. I remember following various updates as American Adventure fell into decline which saw the park making cuts to save money but these cuts ultimately creating a vicious circle which led to less visitors and ultimately the park being permanently closed.

I’m no businessman and certainly don’t hold the purse strings but it does strike me that Alton Towers need to do something dramatic to reverse their fortunes and the bad press they’ve got around operations and the quality of the resort over the last few years and making financial cuts doesn’t seem to be the way to reverse the parks fortunes.

What needs to happen at Alton Towers?

To put it simply, in my opinion, Merlin need to invest some serious money in the park. Whilst new rides are desperately needed (especially flat rides) first and foremost their efforts need to be on ride reliability and availability. The downtime experienced by guests has been getting progressively worse over the last few years and unlike anything I’ve seen in a theme park before.

The park also need to copy Thorpe Park and add some ‘sparkle’. Whilst I believe all the Merlin parks had some sparkle project money during closed season last year Thorpe Park went all out and this year everything felt well-looked after and fresh especially Colossus with a large part of the ride having had a repaint (and hopefully the rest getting the same treatment over winter). I’d love to see Alton Towers at least clean (but ideally repaint) Galactica/Air…which I think may happen with speculation growing about a re-theme.

From there Alton Towers needs to invest in new rides and attractions and whilst they do need more flat rides a new roller coaster will be the best way to draw in guests. Project Horizon, despite gaining planning permission for a 2025 opening doesn’t seem to be going ahead at the moment but is desperately needed. Drayton Manor, just up the road, have had a great season with more people coming to the park to try out their new Gold Rush coaster and re-imagined Wave (formerly Shockwave). The presentation of Drayton Manor is also excellent at the moment and is a park I’ve visited both this year and last year despite it being a 3 hour drive each way.

What does the future look like?

At the moment the future for Alton Towers isn’t looking good. I really hope Merlin do look at how they can invest more and bring this park up to the standard it really should be. As it stands, this isn’t a park even on my agenda to visit until I start hearing positive things about it…a good start seemed to have been made with the opening of Nemesis Reborn this year but it does seem to have been a downhill journey form there.

We’ll see what happens in 2025!