jon81uk
TS Member
Not sure if this has been mentioned, but one of the things that JW mentioned eons ago, was now that Merlin was growing into a larger company there was more chance of them being able to split the cost of a large dark ride, such as spider man (his example), between a number of parks, the majority of the costs are on the programmiing and films, so only need doing once. So why not have a 50M ride going into Alton, and 10 other merlin parks around the world?
There isn't 10 other Merlin parks though but they are already putting similar rides in other parks.
Gardaland and Thorpe Park both go wing coasters 1 year apart, Alton Towers and Chessington both got spinning coasters in the same year (that was Tussaud's not Merlin). For Legoland, it is even more obvious they do this as they already have the same themes in the parks, for example the Haunted House that opened in Denmark is also trying to go into Windsor.
Trouble is, other than the Legoland parks, Merlin don't have a strong "brand" of theme parks, Alton, Thorpe, Chessington, Gardaland and Heide parks are all very different places. But I am sure if they did go for something on the scale of Spiderman, at least 2 parks will get it (probably Gardaland and Thorpe again or Alton Towers and Heide park).