Those who know me well know I’m all over Twitter like a tramp on chips, another big passion in my life is Theme Park, so much so I went on Honeymoon to Alton Towers! Anyway – it’s great to see Thorpe Park, Alton Towers, and Chessington (the Merlin owned UK ‘Big 3’) all have their own Twitter Accounts where they reach out to their customers and fans. Twitter is a great way of connecting with your customers, and it’s extremely commonplace to find most large companies on Twitter. This makes me warm and fuzzy, knowing that there is always a (normally) friendly representative of said company out there in the ether to help.
Another thing that is rife on Twitter (and indeed the Internet) is rumour, and hoaxes. Seemingly a week doesn’t go by without a celebrity ‘dying’, or there being a ‘bomb scare’, usually these rumours and untruths are quickly quashed and life goes on.
So today I watched Twitter come alive with rumours of a death at Thorpe Park, apparently a harness on a ride hadn’t been secured and someone fell out of a ride and died. Clearly it was a load of rubbish, and most of the rumour spreading was done by teenagers. Teenagers can be full of shit, we all know this, I’m sure you all had someone in your class at school who had a reputation for talking bollocks, to the point it seemed more and more ridiculous with each word they uttered! The same people you’d probably find in the queue line of said theme parks swearing that ‘once, when I woz on that roller coaster jumped off the tracks and we all died’, anyway..
So with teenagers being the main perpetrators of this rumour – did Thorpe Park (@thorpepark) reassure people all was well, and nothing bad had happened? Well – not really – this was their blanket response to about 20 peoplewho had mentioned said ‘death’ –
‘There have been no incidents @THORPEPARK today. Rumours of a death are liable and the source is being investigated’
Right.. obvious spelling mistake accepted – (liable – libel) – isn’t that a little bit of a threatening thing to be saying to your followers? Especially to teenagers? These young adults are just reporting what they’ve seen in their Twitter feeds or Facebook feeds, they aren’t deliberately trying to damage Thorpe Park’s reputation, or question the park’s safety? Surely a better way of phrasing it would be –
‘We’re happy to confirm there have been no such incidents at Thorpe Park today – we’re not sure where this has all come from!’
There really is no need to be shirty and threatening to your customers past, present and future..
Image taken from Thorpe Park’s Press Logo page
I Tweeted @ThorpePark this morning to ask what the rumours were liable for ….. I didn't get a reply!
Really surprising considering Alton Towers execution of Twitter is really good. Perhaps their community managers need to get together and do a skill swap!