Drayton Manor Park

[Themeparkplanet]

Done the haunting today for first time this season. nice to see the updated projectors, also I was told the male portrait was replaced, maybe it was at the time but it’s still there as off today but harder to see now idk if that’s cause they made it darker or the higher quality projection has made it harder to see through

 

[Mi-Nigle]

I just read that in my head in one breath, now I need a lie down.

 

[DistortAMG]

As for future plans currently the Excalibur lake has been totally been drained. You can see all the turntables is still in place. Now I know the ride wont ever come back as they make a fortune out of the Halloween and Christmas event but they could be planning on removing the old theming.

IIRC, the Excalibur lake is regularly emptied most closed seasons, it is filled by the stream that runs through the lake but is invisible when the lake is up to lake level. It would not surprise me if they are planning to remove the scenery though, most of it is in a really bad state now after rotting for decades in the elements.

A poor show for the start of the season, but they seem to be getting rides open at a pretty decent pace.

I wonder what we can expect new from the park next. Clearly not the great return of Pirate Adventure that so many were absolutely unarguably certainly opening this spring.

 

[JAperson]

I wonder what we can expect new from the park next.

See this is difficult to know because Looping has effectively build the park back up ride wise, but they now don't exactly have many great plots of land to use. Also they have invested a decent amount over the past few years, I'm wondering if they are planning to take somewhat of a break, if you look at their other big parks, they don't tend to get major investments anywhere near as often as Drayton has. Sure Drayton is probably their flagship park, but I don't think we will continue to see as big investments as we have done.

 

[Secret Weapon]

The staff on The Wave and Air Race seem to move in slow motion.

I don't understand why, as there aren't even that many seats to fill.

I suspect part of the problem is that:-

(A) The seats on Air Race are quite far apart, so it takes a while to check each one (unlike Maelstrom, where everybody is next to each other)

(B) The fast track users board from the opposite side of the track, and not having a prior baggage hold also hurts

But, even with these issues, the staff are still extremely slow, and far worse than those at the local funfair that I just visited earlier this week!

 

[Alfredo]

I think it's a bit strange to have wave front row queue on the right rather than the left since the left side would go in front of the right queue

 

[John]

The front row queue has been like that since the Shockwave days. I have no idea why they set it up that way. On the plus side, with throughput being so low the front row queue can often get you on the ride no slower than the main queue would, as it's often shorter but only moves at half the speed if there's a long exit queue.

As for ops, at a local funfair they need rapid turnaround times to maximise revenue. At an extreme example, if the ride runs twice as often you can sell twice the number of tickets. This isn't a major consideration for most parks (see also - BPB ride throughputs falling off a cliff since wristbands came in)

 

[Maelstrom]

I was there this week and while had a good day, operations as documented were slow. One of the biggest issues was number of staff allocated to operate each ride. We didn’t go on the wave, maelstrom or stormforce due to the person I had took, at an age isn’t ready to ride those yet. However outside the coasters and stormforce most rides had 1 operator, this just makes loading and unloading incredible slow. Rides like Thor, Loki, wave swinger etc should have two.

Goldrush is still on 1 car and 3 staff operating. we waited an hr in a fairly short queue, plus the amount of people using the fast track and accessibility queue meant half a train each time was from the main queue. It got to 2 hrs in the afternoon. Maelstrom - Atkeast half the seats out of action, did have more staff operating it but meant an advertised 2 hr queue.

rapids where closed despite being advertised as back open, stormforce had reopened maybe they switched the staff over as the weather was very good and decided to only open one water ride.

What I will say the staff we encountered operating the rides where all very friendly and generally where operating the rides as quickly as they could on their own.

 

[TPC]

Are there still the staggered openings from opening weekend? And if so, which rides are opening later?

 

[Maelstrom]

Are there still the staggered openings from opening weekend? And if so, which rides are opening later?

didn’t notice any planned staggered openings on wed, Gold rush didn’t open at 10.30 due to an issue but was open by 10.45 ish. Likely to be different on week days now outside the hols though.

 

[Alfredo]

I don't know if I said this already, but one time in the queue for stormforce, they put people on each boat and then waited for like 3 or 4 boats to be back at the station before they started loading again making the queue incredibly slow, and when we finally did get on the ride they stopped the first lift hill for around 10 minutes to space the boats out

 

[DistortAMG]

See this is difficult to know because Looping has effectively build the park back up ride wise, but they now don't exactly have many great plots of land to use. Also they have invested a decent amount over the past few years, I'm wondering if they are planning to take somewhat of a break, if you look at their other big parks, they don't tend to get major investments anywhere near as often as Drayton has. Sure Drayton is probably their flagship park, but I don't think we will continue to see as big investments as we have done.

Of course it is difficult to know, but being in the middle of Staffordshire close to another major theme park and a whole host of other substantial visitor attractions, I think they will need to invest sooner than later, due to the sheer amount of things in close proximity competing for peoples time and money. If they do not, they will very quickly become irrelevant and end up back in a similar situation that got the park sold in the first place.

For these reasons I do not think what the company has done with their other parks is necessarily an indication of what they may do here. I am unsure of the amount of visitor attractions in close proximity to their other parks, but I can say with certainty that there is a large amount relatively close to Drayton. Then with Drayton also being their flagship park, they may treat it different. What I do not think they can do however, is stand still for long. A season or two sure, but not much more after that.

 

[Themeparksandy1981]

IIRC, the Excalibur lake is regularly emptied most closed seasons, it is filled by the stream that runs through the lake but is invisible when the lake is up to lake level. It would not surprise me if they are planning to remove the scenery though, most of it is in a really bad state now after rotting for decades in the elements.

A poor show for the start of the season, but they seem to be getting rides open at a pretty decent pace.

I wonder what we can expect new from the park next. Clearly not the great return of Pirate Adventure that so many were absolutely unarguably certainly opening this spring.

I know they partly drain it every year but this was completely drained and the last time I seen the lake that empty it was during the construction, like with Pirate Adventure which is nearly fully cleared now they could be also removing the Excalibur theming at the back as In a interview with Victoria Lynn she did say in a interview that they looked at expanding the park at the side and round the back of the pirate adventure building.
I wonder if we see another Thomas Land Expansion for the 2028 season as it will be 20 years old.
Can also see another coaster been installed for 2030 as part of the parks 80th anniversary and 10 years since the looping group took over.

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

I don't understand why, as there aren't even that many seats to fill.

Never helped by one row forever remaining out of action on The Wave.

What I do not think they can do however, is stand still for long. A season or two sure, but not much more after that.

Well there's no sign of anything new for 2027 yet, so this is already looking rocky.

 

[Mick]

Drayton has imo a good line-up for its target audience, and any immediate future investment would be better spent on things such as creating an app, having live queue times easily accessible, and taking steps to increase ride capacity, reliability, and operations.

 

[owenstreet7]

Drayton has imo a good line-up for its target audience, and any immediate future investment would be better spent on things such as creating an app, having live queue times easily accessible, and taking steps to increase ride capacity, reliability, and operations.

I would say any future ride investments should focus more on capacity and reliability

I would say the demographic should focus more on the Family-Thrill market with the idea of adding something between Gold Rush and Wave for thrills in terms of coasters and complementing the existing line up for both families and the upper end of the target market.

 

[DistortAMG]

Well there's no sign of anything new for 2027 yet, so this is already looking rocky.

Very true, what would that be? 2 seasons without anything major when we get to 2027? We are quite early into the season I guess, so we wouldn't necessarily see anything yet construction wise for next year - I also do not think they got the immediate return they expected from Gold Rush, this is just a hunch, but it is hardly surprising when you open your major new investment over two thirds of the way into the season.

Drayton has imo a good line-up for its target audience, and any immediate future investment would be better spent on things such as creating an app, having live queue times easily accessible, and taking steps to increase ride capacity, reliability, and operations.

Attraction throughput, guest experience improvements such as a mobile app and queue time boards are almost essential in this day and age, but these should not come at the cost of mainline attraction investment, they need to happen in tandem with them, not instead of them in my view. People will not re visit because of queue boards or a new app, but they will re visit from a new attraction and will be more likely to return if their day was made better via ride counts, with ease of access to essential information that helps make your day better, through an app and queue time boards as a few examples.

 

[flyingguitar]

Drayton has imo a good line-up for its target audience, and any immediate future investment would be better spent on things such as creating an app, having live queue times easily accessible, and taking steps to increase ride capacity, reliability, and operations.

I think they really need to invest in some good opperations, I have heard for years about how poor the opps are at drayton, and if they don't stop this I think people will eventually stop comming or be turned away due to the low capacity.

you can point at BPB, but merlin (atleast AT and TP) and many other companies (such as cedar point) focus on capacity trying to get high throughput.

The systems may need to be added (such as a system to determin throughput) and training to get them up to par whilst doing it safely

 

[Secret Weapon]

I would strongly recommend that Drayton invest in tall metal fences in order to reduce queue-jumping as well

It seems to be out of control at Drayton Manor during school trips, and far worse than at other parks

 

[John]

The park already collects hourly throughput numbers for all major rides. It's not an automated system - numbers are simply logged on paper by ride staff but I have no idea what the park actually does with the information.