Photography by Josh Edgoose
It must be a bonus to enjoy theme park thrill rides when your portfolio includes Alton Towers, Heide Park in Germany and Gardaland in Italy.
Chris Bird MRICS is the vice president of global property at Merlin Entertainments, which runs attractions all over the world, such as Thorpe Park where Modus met him on a sunny September morning.
A chartered valuation surveyor, his career began with Savills in China before he passed his APC in Hong Kong while working for Colliers. In that role, he visited a range of Asian countries including Myanmar, Mongolia and East Timor for hospitality-based valuation work. “I got a lot of exposure to a variety of projects,” he says.
After Colliers came a role with Merlin Entertainments, initially based in Hong Kong, then the US and now the UK where he lives a short drive away from Merlin’s Chessington World of Adventures. Despite returning to the UK, his focus is global and involves looking after more than 130 Merlin attractions in 20 countries.
One of the early challenges in his latest role involved compiling a comprehensive digital portfolio of all Merlin’s global real estate that included leasehold and freehold properties, old and new. “It was a real discovery of everything we had, creating a database to put it all together – it took the best part of a year to wade through the documents and get everything where it needed to be.”
Merlin was formed in 1999 by a management buyout of Vardon Attractions and has since grown through a combination of developing its own sites and acquiring new ones to become the second biggest theme park operator in the world after Disney. “It’s quite broad, you've got multiple countries, multiple legal systems, multiple leases and a relatively small team to keep track of it all,” says Bird.
Visitors riding the Collossus rollercoaster
A difficult year
The COVID-19 pandemic was a difficult time for a company whose business involves attracting large numbers of people to indoor and outdoor attractions. “We were 95% closed, at one point I think we only had one attraction open,” says Bird. “That was a short, sharp shock. But things like Sea Life aquariums don’t stop, we still needed to be active and running them because they've got to look after the fish”.
When the numerous lockdowns ended and everyone could go out again, it created a wave of enthusiasm for entertainment coupled with people having money to spend, that led to “a year and a half of quite strong recovery,” he says. “Now we're in this quite fluctuating market. It’s just a bit more volatile than it was after that peak in demand.”
One tried and tested method of boosting visitor numbers to a theme park is to build a high-profile new ride, especially a rollercoaster. Which is precisely what Thorpe Park did in 2024 when it opened Hyperia, the UK’s tallest and fastest rollercoaster at nearly 72m high and reaching a hair-raising 81mph. “It’s the first ride that has made me close my eyes in a while,” says Bird.
It was built on the site of Logger's Leap, a ride made famous in the early 1990s by a royal visit from Princess Diana and her sons William and Harry. However, all rides have a lifespan, says Bird, and it was time for Logger's Leap to make way for a new attraction. Making space for new rides by replacing old ones is doubly important at Thorpe Park (which welcomes 1.5m visitors a year) because it’s surrounded by water and can’t easily expand its boundaries.
“It's a constant evolution of the park. The rides last 10 or 20 years. As they reach the end of life, you either choose to redo them or put something else in. Hyperia had a huge impact on Thorpe Park because it was such a special rollercoaster with some unique features. It brought a lot of people back to the park.”
Chris Bird MRICS in front of Colossus
“You've got multiple countries, multiple legal systems, multiple leases and a relatively small team to keep track of it all” Christopher Bird MRICS, Merlin Entertainments
Hyperia reaches speeds of up to 81mph
Keeping an eye on London
With so many sites in the Merlin Entertainments portfolio, does Bird have a favourite? He thinks about it for a moment and says: “Probably the London Eye.” It was originally known as the Millenium Wheel and sponsored by British Airways who sold ‘flight’ tickets for it. Now, the Eye is as much a part of the London skyline as any of the older surrounding structures.
“It was only supposed to stand for five years, that's how they got it approved,” he says. “There was so much opposition to it at the beginning, and then it got through and now it’s 25 years old and you can't imagine it not being there. I’ve been involved in getting the required planning approvals for it to remain there for another 25 years.
“If you think of its neighbours, it's a bit of a miracle they got it built opposite the Houses of Parliament and Ministry of Defence – it’s surrounded by Grade I listed buildings.”
The London Eye also kicked off a spate of other global cities (including Singapore, Las Vegas and Dubai) trying the same thing – installing a giant Ferris wheel-style viewing platform in an urban centre – with varying levels of success.
Chris Bird MRICS, with the Swarm rollercoaster behind
Industry trends
One trend that Bird is currently seeing in the leisure and hospitality sector, especially in the US, is an increase in residency or pop-up attractions in shopping malls. This is partly driven by the effect of inflation on capital expenditure – making large projects even more costly – and partly because there is a lot of vacant retail space that can be repurposed to attract visitors.
“Merlin is piloting short-term, capital expenditure-light attractions such as Super Neon and WONDRA in US shopping malls, offering immersive, themed experiences as a response to rising construction costs and changing consumer preferences,” he says.
A major advantage of indoor attractions like these is evading weather conditions that can cause problems for large outdoor theme parks. “Two years ago, we had a hailstorm in Italy with golf ball-sized hailstones right across the park that caused a lot of damage. People had to abandon their cars because the windscreens were completely smashed.”
Other weather-related challenges include opening a new branch of Madame Tussauds, full of waxworks of famous faces, in a warm location like Dubai. “Your HVAC can't fail, because they will melt,” says Bird.
While he has no desire to return to the pandemic era, it did make digital ticketing the norm, which is very helpful when managing crowd sizes, predicting footfall across the parks and cross-selling other Merlin attractions.
Bird says the key aim of Merlin Entertainments is to bring families together for a fun day out, “immersed in a great experience, away from devices and creating memories”. Which sounds like a fine ambition, whether you’re operating the teacup ride or you’re group property director of the whole operation.
