Pros
The management definitely makes an effort to appear caring. Unfortunately, senior management is too "busy" to really spend any time getting to know their teams. I appreciate that they have duties to perform, but our business is very slow. Make time for your team. The Magic Pass is nice. Although unlike entertainment competitors in the area, employees have to use their complimentary passes to grant themselves entry into their own venue if they want to visit as a guest. This has resulted in most of the team I manage not being able to experience our attractions for themselves for fear of running out of passes. This is counterintuitive to me, as it is vital to ensure your employees have good firsthand experience of your attractions, so that they can convey the experience to the guests. There are no consequences for poor performance, so it's nice to have that safety net. It does demotivate most of the management team when very obviously underperforming managers (in metrics, team relations, finances, etc.) are given chance after chance to stay with the company. Very good work/life balance for some. The Merlin Way provides some guidance on what the expected culture is. Unfortunately, with the Midway venues their isolation from each other creates wildly varying application of those values.
Cons
The Human Resources is the worst HR department I've ever encountered. This isn't because of any malicious intent on their part, just a general lack of knowledge about policies and procedures which leads to being unintentionally unethical. They're friendly enough, but there's no consistency from person to person, and they spend a large portion of time on wild goose chases involving hourly employee complaints that can be boiled down to "he was not nice to me" or "my manager won't let me skip my shift tomorrow without consequence." The weirdest part is how little they back management and how much they back hourly employees. They don't support us when we make a decision to terminate someone, or look for "loopholes" to not go through with it. When employees resign, their manager is always to blame regardless of the reason. We have discovered that this is because their annual bonus ties in with our turnover rate - which seems like a humongous conflict of interest. They have also altered employees' time cards after the pay period was over to "fix errors" without consulting the employee or their supervisor. Senior management does not have time for you, period. Which is curious considering how not-busy we are. I have been with the company since we opened the Orlando attractions and have not had a single one-on-one or discussion about my performance. At this point, I wouldn't even mind being yelled at for screwing up. There is just literally no feedback, and the front line managers are treated like ghosts. Managers are required to wear the uniform of the team in Orlando. All other Merlin sites allow them to dress in business attire, but not ours for some reason. This makes me feel like I'm running a fast food joint. It also does not help resolve guest situations as they never believe you when you tell them you're the manager. Senior management stated multiple times prior to opening that they would also wear the uniforms - but this did not happen. The compensation is not competitive with other offerings in the Orlando area.