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Oakwood Discussion

Enter Valhalla said:
...Also, do we know for definite that Oakwood didn’t have the rights to the Roald Dahl stuff? That’s a pretty big accusation to throw at them, without proof.
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Not widly reported, outside of a few lines from the "Life" section of the Daily Mail print edition:
ROALD DAHL’s fanciful tales have enchanted millions of young readers over the years, but an adventure park’s decision to name a rollercoaster after one of his books, James And The Giant Peach, is headed for a bumpy ride.
Oakwood Theme Park in south Wales opened a ride called Flight of the Giant Peach and an area called Dahland without any authority from the Roald Dahl story Company, set up to run his literary estate after the author’s death.
his grandson Luke Kelly, who is managing director of Dahl’s literary estate, has issued a high Court writ against Oakwood Leisure. It accuses the company of infringing its trademarks, passing off, and copyright infringement. ‘We’ve no comment,’ an Oakwood spokesman tells me.
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https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-mail/20180220/282192241462974
 
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I've kind of always wondered why oakwood isn't owned by bluestone resorts, for a short period i thought bluestone was the accommodation for oakwood. It would make great business sense to make it part of the resort with free entry etc. This seems to work really well for other theme parks like flamingo land and crealy. Obviously I've no idea about bluestones financial position but if this park ever goes up for sale, it would surely be considered. Either that or used as expansion for the resort.
 
Yes it was a colossal mistake that caused the park considerable embarrassment. The 'pumpkin' that forms part of Creepy Crawler's queue line still has a peach stone in it...

Whoever was responsible for that clanger absolutely didn't know what they were doing.
 
I can't find anything online, although I'm sure The Roald Dahl estate took Oakwood to court over not owning the rights/permission to use their IP.
 
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Is this park actually going to open in 2025?

There is nothing confirming opening dates or ticket price / availability on the website.

Even the recruitment pages just say ‘check back in the new year for 2025 recruitment’. And there has been no activity on their Instagram page since before Christmas.
 
Coaster said:
Meanwhile, they've closed the following:

- Drenched
- Bounce
- Brer Rabbits Burrow dark ride
- Spooky 3D
- Mini golf
- Moon Landing drop slide
- Clown coaster
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The major rides are a big hit, but what it also shows is that they’ve lost quite a few indoor attractions. With the weather in south wales as it is, you need things that people can do on holiday when it rains. Not only the rides but most of the covered queue lines (Megafobia, Bounce etc.) have gone over time, and the big canopy over the New Orleans area. The Neverland walkthrough has been closed for a few years too. In addition over time we’ve lost the theatre with the shows and the Caribbean bar area they used for After Dark and Mardi Gras. Now some of that was being phased out pre-Aspro. But as a total of small cuts, there is hardly anything to do in the rain now. I know when we were kids, finding something to do in wet weather was a challenge. Some investment in covered entertainment would be good. Even fairly cheap stuff like dodgems or covered flat rides would be a great addition.
 
AT86 said:
Is this park actually going to open in 2025?

There is nothing confirming opening dates or ticket price / availability on the website.

Even the recruitment pages just say ‘check back in the new year for 2025 recruitment’. And there has been no activity on their Instagram page since before Christmas.
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Funnily enough, they announced their 2024 opening a year ago today (28th February), so I wouldn't say it's odd to have heard nothing yet. They usually open in April, so I would expect an announcement within the next few weeks if they intend to reopen.

Removing two rides suggests they will open this year at some point (otherwise they may as well leave the whole park SBNO). If we see more being removed, maybe more is going on...
 
James said:
Funnily enough, they announced their 2024 opening a year ago today (28th February), so I wouldn't say it's odd to have heard nothing yet. They usually open in April, so I would expect an announcement within the next few weeks if they intend to reopen.

Removing two rides suggests they will open this year at some point (otherwise they may as well leave the whole park SBNO). If we see more being removed, maybe more is going on...
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Fair enough, Easter is late this year too so I guess that may delay any new season announcements, it was the lack of recruitment activity that surprised me the most, I would have expected something to have started ready for the new season to give time for training etc.

Combined with what looks to be the careful removal of some rides (as opposed to scrapping/pulling them down) I wondered if there was some asset stripping going on. I could well be putting 2 and 2 together and getting 5 though :)
 
I believe that last year (or possibly the year before), they didn’t open for the Easter holidays, and the season started at the end of May, so we could be seeing that again.

My bet is that they’ll do a Lightwater Valley and position themselves as a small rides park, kind of inconvenient since they’ve just partially re-tracked Megafobaia, but it seems like that’s the only way they can justify removing two big rides.
 
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Enter Valhalla said:
I blieben that last year (or possibly the year before), they didn’t open for the Easter holidays, and the season started at the end of May, so we could be seeing that again.

My bet is that they’ll do a Lightwater Valley and position themselves as a small rides park, kind of inconvenient since they’ve just partially re-tracked Megafobaia, but it seems like that’s the only way they can justify removing two big rides.
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I think retracking Megafobia would be why they may not do a full extreme Lightwater Valley style approach.

I can certainly imagine a more Drayton Manor esque approach where the focus is more on family rides but I don't see Speed or Megafobia going away. I think they'll more likely remain like how (Shock)Wave and Maelstrom remains at Drayton Manor.

Although it is possible that a new Drop Tower, Gyro Swing and a modern Vekoma STC and Family Boomerang combo suddenly turns up but that's a wild chance.

I'm thinking that the best thing forwards would be to get a package from someone like Zamperla and bring in some of their flats, get rid of that god awful Pinfari, get a brand new signature coaster from a quality manufacturer such as Gerstlauer or Vekoma and look at the old Flambards line up as they have quite a few quality rides around. Things like a Dodgems and a Wave Swinger would be safer investments to bring in (Merlin have those running spare right now).

It is possible that Oakwood could've already bought out some of the bigger rides in Flambards line up such as Skyforce, Skyraker and Hornet. It might explain why there's a lot of movement at the park with ride removals.
 
I’m just not sure at such a seasonal location, unless they can secure an IP, whether a kids focussed park would be successful. In their latest accounts they mentioned that the months running with only small rides whilst Megafobia was being retracked were the reason for their poor turnover.

I’ve been trying to look at whether there is a positive to the removal of Bounce and Drenched, where it doesn’t lead to the further decline of the park. It is noted in their accounts that the loan they took for Megafobia does need to be serviced by 2026. Perhaps the way to do that is to sell those rides. Also in a bit of a ‘Six Flags’ move, they have done so by getting rid of the two rides that have caused the most problems. Both rides have had on and off issues and also are the most expensive to run. Bounce had a whole new substation put in when it was built to power it, with the compressors being expensive to run. Drenched must cost a fortune to fill and operate given that (when it was open) it only operated in the height of summer after 2pm. Just maybe, getting rid of some high cost rides and paying off a debt can keep the rest going a bit better. But probably only if there is something ‘new’ and cheaper to operate to not put the visitors off further.
 
The park is over an hour away from the closest major city (Swansea) and nearly 2 hours away from Cardiff. This distance from Cardiff puts it in a similar category as legoland, Drayton manor and crealy. Unfortunately it's just in the wrong location and without HUGE investment to make it worth a 4 hour journey for most of us it's never going to be heavily visited. It had its day when it was adding big attractions, but it's clear that without doing this every couple of years, visitors will not come back.

I think a family park with a couple of stand out attractions could work like Drayton. A lower operating costs is needed to sustain all the cost pressures likely to hit this year. A solid day out for the family whilst on holiday in south Wales has to be what they target, and as others have said, Folly Farm seems to manage quite well at this.
 
I may be reading too much from this, but when you look at Aspro Parks official website, click on the theme parks section and Speed is the banner photo. Maybe they’re just slow to update, but if Oakwood was closing, that would surely have changed by now.
 
Even if the park does open this year, it's not a great look to have two of the biggest attractions gone and no major investment elsewhere in the park.

People will just assume the place is winding down and won't bother coming back.
 
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