Drayton Manor Park

Well seeing how Tussauds were initially looking at other sites before just buying towers (going as far as putting in for planning permission at one site) it was certainly very close to happening.

Had a go at making Shockwave on PowerPoint using the freeform shape tool

Stormforce is quite fun to make on PowerPoint as well... except for the amount of lines and overlaying shapes that you need which is a real pain.....


This kinda shows how many shapes I had to group together


It'd be great to see SF10 have a bit of an upgrade. Especially on the meander section after the waterfalls. It'd also be great if they fixed the smoke machine inside the oil rig as well. I've never actually seen it work so I assume it didn't work long after 1999, but it's a very cool effect that would be great for concealing the backwards drop.

I think there will be a new Family coaster on the site of G-Force or a retheme of G-Force as the problem was with the train not the track.
All season there’s been a fence round the front of the building with planning for your future fun banners on there and in the past when Drayton closed a ride it was removed during the closed season. I also saw some management and Maintenance staff looking and taking photos of the Splash Canyon area and there been a lot of work going on round the back of the pirate adventure ride. They cleared a lot of land round the back as this was a storing area for spares and old theming and on Sunday I saw workmen on cherry pickings. They also started to repaint the pirate adventure building so it’s hard to know what the parks plans are for the 2020 70th birthday season.

We're in the area for our annual trip to Carter's. Considered Drayton today but ultimately decided we'd rather do something else (ended up being a trip to the Chasewater Railway and antiques shopping).

That said, before going to the fair we did go to the Grill Inn for tea. Not bad... We waited quite a while for our order to be taken and it was wrong when the food arrived but pizza for me and salad for the lady were both pretty good.

We'll go back to the park, one day.

Today I have heard off a reliable source, that the majority of the Pirate Adventure internal scenes of the ride were ripped out and destroyed, over the winter season. Making more room for storage that the ride warehouse was being used for. In their words 'its just a huge empty space now'.

Sad news I know. Pirate Adventure as we know it, is no more and never will be.

While it was SBNO for many years, the attraction is now gone. I was unable to acertain if the actual transit system had gone or not, as that would indicate if they had any future plans for the building as a boat ride.

The trouble is, when they start using buildings as big as that as a storage warehouse, the park and its infrastructure will grow to utilise it, so from experience in other fields, unless they replaced the building elsewhere, with something else for storage of what's currently being stored in there, it would be very difficult for the park to just give up on such a large backstage storage space.

Although it should be noted that it is not impossible and there has been a lot of activity seen around the building recently, I wonder if we will see something here shortly?

Next please.

What a downer, they did pretty well to get that under the radar considering how much there was inside it! And no indication of a replacement.

It got negativity from fans as just a Disney rip off, which it was in lots of ways. But sad what happened to one of the park's staple rides and a massive dark ride (we don't see many like it in this country) that families enjoyed for a long time.

The scenery in the ride would be coming upto nearly 30 years old and not maintained the best, if they did want to re open it, I think ripping it out and starting again would be the first step. But personally, I think we may be clutching at straws there. I think going forward though it should be utilised as park space rather than backstage space.

Wierdly they have re painted all the front and old entrance to the ride recently this year. Although, removing that would leave a huge bare gap in the park and would look out of place with a green warehouse. So I guess if nothing else it makes sense to keep that up to keep until they decide what they are doing, to keep the park looking fresh, as the old entrance and frontage is very well blended and in a very prominent position in the park.

It was a good ride, but it seems to be developing a mythical status...!

If there was a significant amount of effort involved in having it reopen in its current form, I understand why they wouldn't battle to do so with their current woes. It was more of a cult favourite than a landmark attraction.

Pirate Adventure was doomed as soon as they painted over the sign on the facade. Those doors have been closed ever since and many people have no idea there used to be an attraction there.

However saying that, I visit the park regularly and also know people who work there and there is a surprising amount of people who do ask about the state of Pirate Adventure and if it will ever return - obviously most of us can guess what the answer to that question is.

The ride has been closed for 4 years now, a very long time for a ride to stay closed if it was going to reopen in the future. It saddens me to say this, but I am 100% certain that Pirate Adventure will never reopen.

Rick said:

It was a good ride, but it seems to be developing a mythical status...!

If there was a significant amount of effort involved in having it reopen in its current form, I understand why they wouldn't battle to do so with their current woes. It was more of a cult favourite than a landmark attraction.

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Ok but people enjoying the attraction doesn't equal "mythical status" (assuming you meant that sarcastically), anyway I only heard (adult) fans hate the ride for being "a Disney rip off".

It was a landmark ride in as much as it was giant and very detailed, Chessington/Thorpe/Alton never had a dark ride quite like that. It's the families who enjoyed it, it's been around a long time pre-internet so not going to get a good measure of people's enjoyment of it by looking online.

It's had its time for sure, but it was a good. Having it closed instead of a fun new replacement is sad. Seems like the park are in real trouble?

Been following the pirate adventure work for the past 2 years I think it is looking more likely that they have used sections of the ride as storage ground as 2 years ago the back of pirate adventure was used as a storage ground and now the boats,part of the buffalo and former theming has been removed and the land round the back cleaned and a fence go round the sides of the former Jungle cruise lake. Now them things needed to go somewhere but the former boats could now be sorted in the maintenance area.

Maybe it was good in its heyday but last time I rode Pirate Adventure it was truly atrocious and would have needed a tremendous amount of money spending on it to bring it up to any sort of standard.

It was the H&S new laws that needed to be put in place. The Bryan family had the money available but it went missing so the work didn’t take place and it wasn’t given a safety certificate for the 2015 season.
The motors were on there last legs when I took my daughter on it Oct 2014.
The entrance been open a few times last year so staff were storing the HB toys in there. Also I noticed the Halloween and Christmas Decorations.
I think they do want to keep the theme of a the pirate cove as they wouldn’t have rethemed the bumper cars to another pirate theme.

TakeYourMedicine said:

Ok but people enjoying the attraction doesn't equal "mythical status" (assuming you meant that sarcastically), anyway I only heard (adult) fans hate the ride for being "a Disney rip off".

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By mythical status I was suggesting that people might be remembering it as better than it was. As @Rob mentioned, in the later days it was a fairly uneventful trip around a damp warehouse.

Rick said:

By mythical status I was suggesting that people might be remembering it as better than it was. As @Rob mentioned, in the later days it was a fairly uneventful trip around a damp warehouse.

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In later years I guess yes! Maintenance of stuff like this is one trick parks havnt really solved in this country. Surprised to hear it has been entirely ripped out though if it's true, because they'd be starting from a blank canvas now and that's much more expensive

TakeYourMedicine said:

Surprised to hear it has been entirely ripped out though if it's true, because they'd be starting from a blank canvas now and that's much more expensive

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Probably makes perfect sense if you're wanting to take your guests on a cruise around the Isle of Sodor.

Rick said:

Probably makes perfect sense if you're wanting to take your guests on a cruise around the Isle of Sodor.

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Pirate Adventure will never be turned into a Thomas Land ride, it's well outside the boundary and would cost huge amounts of money. I think they would struggle to make a Thomas themed boat ride to be honest.

Alton Haunted House was as big, as good, and as detailed as Pirate Adventure, even in the early days when all the bits worked.

rob666 said:

Alton Haunted House was as big, as good, and as detailed as Pirate Adventure, even in the early days when all the bits worked.

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But there was no water!

Haunted House was brilliant and original in the 90s I completely agree, but the scenes were definitely not as grand/large as Pirate Adventure. At least in architectural terms. Pirate Adventure includes huge fortresses, town like structures, and the ride covers a larger area in sq feet. As for these rumors far as I understand the rides theming has most certainly not been destroyed, I'm not sure where these rumors are coming from, but I'd treat anyone spilling out so called information about the ride with a pinch of salt . What goes on inside the showroom buildings is secretive and must remain secretive unfortunately out of respect for the park.
I think it being seen by some people as a 'Disney rip off' only started to happen once the lack of maintenance was clear, fitting in to their confirmation bias or perception that the ride always existed in that state, when it was actually an outstandingly good looking ride in its earlier days. A lot of things admittedly were copied from the Disney book, the goat scene being the more obvious one But the given how limiting the design brief was back then, and also given the lack of time they had to construct it ( it was described as an utter nightmare to build before in opened in Jul 1990), I think they delivered on a cool British pirate spin. It's audio was recorded using tape on a 5 inch reel to reel recorder and included exclusive music tracks made for each scene within the ride, which IMO is much better than the singular yo ho yo ho that you have in Disney. It also had a subtly told storyline (pirate in the entrance area reading a book about the 'pirate adventure', village raiding scene where they set the town on fire, pirates escaping from dungeons and fighting colonial troops, retreating to treasure caves after the plunder finished etc) and as I believe I mentioned a while back, a very cool pepper's ghost illusion in the finale segment which I'm sure you all remember was destroyed in the mid 2000s by a fire and not replaced.