 Merlin Entertainment is a company known largely for many theme parks located in several different countries. Established in 1998, the company owns many well-known theme parks such as Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, and Hyde Park Resort, among others. In this video, just as I did with Six Flags, Cedar Fair, SeaWorld, and Hirschend, I'm going to look at many of the Merlin Entertainment theme parks and give my thoughts as to which roller coaster I think could be the next to get removed from each park, as this is something that was requested by many people for me to cover. Technically, Merlin owns 16 full-fledged theme park properties, but I'm only going to be covering the five main properties as the others are all Legoland branded properties, of which I have little or no knowledge of, and many of them are also relatively new, and they aren't focused on thrill rides at all, so I will be skipping the Legoland parks. As far as the main five parks I'm going to be talking about in this video, I'm not as knowledgeable about these parks compared to some of the other parks I've talked about in this series, so I do want to remind everyone that these are purely my predictions and not based on things I know as fact or have heard from the parks. So, let's dive in. Alton Towers in the UK is a very historic park with a great history and has had many revolutionary roller coasters in their lineup over the years. Choosing one here that I thought would be removed soon was a bit of a challenge because I could see a few going soon. Those specifically are Rita, Runaway Mindtrain, and Spinball Wizard. The one I ultimately selected though is their 2005 Intamin Accelerator coaster known as Rita. From what I've heard, this ride is not received very well and it doesn't fit in with the park or the area that it's in that great either. The theme has been reworked a bit over the years to attempt to make it fit in better with its surroundings, but it seems that has just never been achieved quite how the park wanted. Rita looks very okay but is nothing great and it really doesn't do anything notable it seems besides maybe the hydraulic launch which honestly pales in comparison with the other Intamin Accelerators out there. You have this park that is full of many revolutionary rides such as Nemesis, Oblivion, and even Galactica, and this one just has never been received nearly as well as most of those other rides have and that is why I ultimately chose Rita for Alton Towers. Chessington World of Adventures is a park that is currently home to four roller coasters, perhaps most notably the 1990 aerodynamic suspended coaster Vampire which was retrofitted with Vakoma floorless trains for 2002. As rare as these suspended coasters by Arrow are nowadays, Vampire being one of only five left in operation, I decided on Rattlesnake, a 1998 mock rides wild mouse model to get the axe next at this park. This is an older ride at this point and likely isn't as popular and I could see the park maybe sacrificing this potentially for another cheap modern family style coaster that would honestly just be so much better. Chessington is a small family park with no real major thrill coasters and they likely won't receive any major coasters so they'll probably stick with the current coasters they have for quite some time. With Vampire having those Vakoma trains maybe they can continue to maintain that for longer than many other parks have been able to maintain the Arrow suspended coasters as Vakoma is still alive and well as a company. So for all of those reasons that is why I chose Rattlesnake for Chessington World of Adventures. For Italy's Gardaland I had to make a call between two Vakomas the park currently has. They are home to one of the very first SLCs called Blue Tornado which opened in 1998 but I decided on Shaman known as Magic Mountain until 2016 which is a standard Vakoma MK1200 model which opened back in 1985. It is the basic layout being the double loop and corkscrew iteration of the design. This is just very old at this point and I can't see it sticking around for long. This ride did receive the newer style Vakoma trains with Vesterstraints for the 2009 season so maybe they'll try to keep this going for a few more years but for me this was the clear pick for the next major coaster to go from Gardaland. Hyde Park Resort in Germany has quite a solid collection of roller coasters, probably the best out of all the Merlin parks in my opinion. Out of Hyde Park's current nine roller coasters I was struggling between a few of these. I did consider Desert Race, a clone of Rita at Alton Towers and Bobon which is a 1994 Mach Bob sled coaster but I ultimately went with the 1983 Big Loop which is yet another Vakoma MK1200 model featuring two vertical loops and corkscrews, this one having a slightly different layout than the one at Gardaland. This one is pretty much the same story as Gardaland's Shaman. It is just a very old model that doesn't hold up with today's coasters including many great rides in the same park such as the Intamin Prefab Woody Colossus and the B&M Wayne Coaster Flugedur Demonen among others. Fun fact about Big Loop, it has the Vakoma trains that Alton Towers defunct Vakoma MK1200 called corkscrew operated with later in its life. Those corkscrews, of course, can still be found at Alton Towers as you are entering the park. At the end of our list of Merlin parks to discuss, we have the UK's Thorpe Park. Thorpe seems to really like their horror themed rides, one of those being the Walking Dead The Ride. This is a small Vakoma indoor coaster that opened in 1996. The model is known as a Vakoma Enigma, and this ride previously went under the names X No Way Out until 2012, during which time it ran backwards, then was simply known as Just X until 2017, where it then received a re-theme for the 2018 season to be based around the hit TV series The Walking Dead. This is yet another coaster that is just older and likely no longer very popular at this point, despite receiving a re-theme just a couple years ago. I could see this ride biting the dust in the next few years to potentially make way for a more modern thrilling ride, maybe even something else horror themed. I don't really see any other coasters being removed from Thorpe Park anytime soon. What are your thoughts, and do you agree with my picks or do you think we'll see some other coasters going first from each of these parks? Be sure to let me know your thoughts and also check out my other videos from the series if you haven't seen them yet, which can all be found in a playlist on my channel. Be sure to like this video, subscribe, and like my page Coaster Daddy on Facebook, and follow me at Coaster Daddy Official on Instagram. Thanks so much for watching. This is Coaster Daddy. Bye.