Examining the approach to COVID-19 safety at Merlin theme parks

By Escapism Project, 16 May, 2021

16 May 2021

Examining the approach to COVID-19 article banner

Merlin Entertainments is one of the largest theme park and attractions operators in the world, and in the UK is the dominant operator in the visitor attractions market. For a company billing itself as second only to Disney in terms of visitor numbers, you would expect their approach to COVID-19 safety measures to be comprehensive and consistent across the company. But is this actually the case. We examine some examples of measures at some of their UK Resort Theme Parks.

First impressions count. At many attractions, a guest’s first impression comes when they park their car in the attraction’s car park. It is here that we find the first example of inconsistency in safety measures. When attractions first re-opened in July 2020 following the first national lockdown, guests were directed to park in alternate bays leaving a clear gap between each car (these gaps would be filled by other cars later on). This was a simple, but effective, measure, allowing guests to easily maintain distancing as they left their vehicles and gathered what they required for the day ahead. Fast forward to April 2021 and this policy has seemingly been abandoned with cars now being packed in with no spaces being left between vehicles. This leaves guests with two less than ideal choices – get out the car and be forced to be within half a metre of the people in the next vehicle, potentially exposing yourself to infection within minutes of arriving, or sit and wait in your car for your neighbours to depart, and therefore delaying your own start to the day. It’s not clear why Merlin has abandoned what was the sensible approach they had to car parking in 2020, especially as the virus is still very much circulating, and with variants which are much more transmissible than those in circulation last year.

The next safety measures you are likely to come across will be those used to encourage social distancing. Things like floor markings, signs asking you to keep left, and one-way systems. For the main part, these are all clearly marked out, although you could perhaps argue that in the case of pathways where you are asked to keep left, more could be done to enforce this. For example, at Alton Towers Resort, the Mutiny Bay area of the theme park has barriers down the middle of pathways and marshals ensuring guests keep to the left. Yet this seems to be the only place these are present leading to more of a free for all elsewhere. Sadly, it seems that without staff enforcing these systems, guest compliance with the measures is low, rendering them rather pointless.

Keep left markings entering towards Fountain Square.

Social distancing is also meant to be observed when waiting in attraction queue lines, with floor markings again clearly indicating where guests should stand whilst waiting. Guest compliance with this seems to vary hugely from attraction to attraction. At Chessington World of Adventures Resort, guest compliance was generally high with the majority of guests maintaining the required distancing. It was a different story at Alton Towers and Thorpe Park Resort, with guests in most queues doing little to no distancing. Although it could be argued that staff can have little control over guest behaviour, you only have to look back to last season to see that there are some things staff can do. During 2020 there were frequent announcements in all queue lines asking guests to keep to the markings – a seemingly small thing, but something that did seem to help make people more aware of the need to maintain their distance. This year, nothing. No announcements could be heard in the queue lines and the seeming result has been queues with no distancing, something which also has the knock-on effect of making a quoted 30 minutes queue time turn into 60-90 minutes due to the queue time estimates being based on a socially distanced queue.

Another issue in queue lines is where their snake like designs can lead to guests passing within centimetres of each other. Many parks such as Disney and Universal parks have installed Perspex screens at any and all points where this close contact could occur. Within Merlin theme parks however, the approach appears to be less consistent. In some cases, Merlin have done a good job of ensuring queues have adequate screening, with Croc Drop at Chessington World of Adventures Resort having integrated the queue line screens into its design, and other rides ensuring any potential crossover points have some form of screening in place, even if it’s a simple wooden fence panel. This isn’t always consistent though, with Zufari in particular seeing an inconsistent application of the screens.

An example of the queue line barriers in the queue for Dragon's Fury at Chessington World of Adventures. The barriers are in the form of temporary plastic sheeting stretched across wooden frames.

Alton Towers Resort shows even larger discrepancies in their addition of queue line screening. The large cattle pen of The Smiler, arguably a place where it would be easy for the virus to spread, has no screening at all. Similarly, Galactica’s extended queue has no screening forcing people to stand at times within half a metre of each other. In other locations at Alton Towers, there seems to only be screening between the fast tack queue and whichever queue happens to be next to it. It is a similar story at Thorpe Park Resort, with little to no screening at all in the cattle pen queues of The Swarm, Nemesis Inferno, and Saw: The Ride. Whilst you could argue that Thorpe Park Resort have staggered the social distancing marking on the floor in an attempt to avoid people standing next to each other where lines snake next to each other, in reality this does little with many choosing to ignore the floor markings, thus creating the very opposite of a COVID safe environment.

Oblivion queue line barriers only for fastrack

Barriers in the queue between the Fast Track and Ride Access Pass queues on Wicker Man at Alton Towers Resort

Across Merlin’s resort theme parks, there is a policy that all those aged 11 and over have to wear masks on all rides and attractions (unless they are medically exempt, in which case they can obtain an exemption card to show to ride hosts from each resort’s respective Guest Services). Compliance and enforcement of this policy however varies wildly. Whilst on some rides and attractions ride operators and hosts will actively watch for guests removing masks and, in some cases, stop the ride until masks have been put back on, on others, staff seem to let the removal of masks slide and carry on without enforcing the Resort’s policy. You would have hoped that there would be a consistent approach to this issue across Merlin’s attractions, however it would seem that once again enforcement very much depends on the staff who happen to be working on any given attraction. Whilst it may not be practical, or indeed safe, to stop a ride once its cycle has commenced, you would hope that at the very least the ride operator would make an announcement telling guests that they have to put their masks back on.

Although the national Covid-19 restrictions may be gradually easing, there is still a need for places like Merlin Entertainments’ attractions to maintain high levels of Covid safe measure to ensure that all those who visit are able to minimise their risk of catching the virus whilst at an attraction. As with any element of health and safety, a risk assessment will have had to have been completed, then subsequently evaluated on an ongoing basis throughout an attraction’s operational period and adjustments made if measures recommended from these risk assessments are not working. Typically, should it be found that guest actions were causing a health and safety problem, measures would be adjusted to mitigate that. It therefore asks the question, why does this not appear to be happening in the case of the Covid-19 safety measures?

As the national restrictions are further eased, it will be interesting to see how measures at Merlin Entertainments’ attractions change in response, and indeed how the public’s behaviour changes too. Based on what has been seen since the first attractions were able to re-open for 2021 on 12th April, it would seem that Merlin Entertainments needs to do a lot of work on improving both the implementation and consistency of measures.