I am writing to you in order to lodge a complaint. I think you should treat my letter with the highest priority; I very rarely complain, as it means that I have to go to the post office to buy stamps, and the queue’s too long because there are too few staff on duty, and I have to ride a bus to get there and it’s always disgustingly hot, and the engine’s too loud. You might think to yourself that these are the words of an old git with an inflated sense of self-importance and too much time on his hands, but I should warn you that I could come round to the office tomorrow and have you fired.
The matter in question concerns one of your theme parks, by the name of ‘PC world’. Upon receiving your brochure through the post, promising that PC world was “where state of the art technology and cutting-edge service meet”, I promptly decided to take my two grandsons.
They were so excited when I told them, and as we pulled into the car park they had their little faces pressed up against the window, each hoping to be the first to spot a rollercoaster or a log flume. They could barely contain themselves as I walked to the pay and display machine, and made sure that they were wearing suntan lotion (an important precaution, since it was a fine day and I had assumed we were to be spending the best part of it outside). As we walked in, I was immediately struck by the large quantities of items for sale. Now, I’ve heard about getting tourists to ‘exit through the gift shop’ before, so I assumed that it entering by it was the done thing. After wandering through the aisles for about twenty minutes or so, we still could not locate the exit. I asked one of your staff for directions to PC world, but he just laughed and said that it was here inside. Well, you can imagine my disgust – a theme park solely indoors? Does PC world want children to spend their time in darkened rooms?
The facilities left a lot to be desired. The single ride, ‘The Escalator’ was a slow and predictable rollercoaster, and although there were very short queues for entry, one could only ride it so many times before the magic wore off. I noted that despite there being a camera placed quite conspicuously in the path of the ride, we were never offered the chance to buy our photograph. I’m not sure whether you were innocently but incompetently missing the commercial trick, or whether you get off on collecting photos of children, but neither option leaves me impressed. Nor was I impressed by your dining facilities; when I asked a member of staff about food, he led me to an aisle filled with blenders, toasters, and those JML products that promise to dice your vegetables while steam cleaning your wife thin. While I’ll concede that the sight of thirty-odd toasters in orderly rows did have a certain charm to it, I was expecting to find something edible.
Your hired actors also left a lot to be desired. For a start, they never once approached my grandchildren on their own, I had to actively search them out. Once I had stopped them, the characters were ill-defined and scripts repetitive, they just said things like “Sorry, we’re just looking at laptops” or “I don’t work here”. The decor was also lacking; just because you’ve got a wall of televisions like David Bowie in “the man who fell to Earth” doesn’t mean that you can ignore all the other walls.
You can rest assured that we won’t be making a return visit. Next time I have the grandkids, I’ll be taking them to ‘Kingdom of Leather”.
Yours disappointedly,
Mister Arthur Grant
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