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[202X] Project Horizon (SW9?): Planning Approved

The planning permission thing isn’t an issue either imo, they got it relatively easily and by all accounts far quicker than what they were expecting. Maybe they expected to be back and forth with it for a year/18 months so the current time limit doesn’t particularly suit what they had in mind anyway.

Plus, they got it that easily there’s no doubt in my mind they’ll get it again. So maybe that’s why they’re not rushing it through.

All anyone round this way is talking about is the impact Universal could have on Towers, and how it could negatively impact the villages/staff who work there. Staffs moorlands council will all be on the same page as those who live here.

Tbh if anything I think they’ll actually find it easier to get planning permission for potential projects (within reason) over the next few years. No one wants it to close/suffer.
 
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Is submitting Planning Permission costly or is it free I don't really know the process to well other than its required in certain areas because if the let it lapse then it could either cost them big or nothing
 
Hid said:
Is submitting Planning Permission costly or is it free I don't really know the process to well other than its required in certain areas because if the let it lapse then it could either cost them big or nothing
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It’s not cheap but that’s mostly due to paying companies to do the leg work for them, actually sending it to the council isn’t expensive as far as I’m aware. Either way it’s really nothing in the grand scheme of things for a park like AT.
 
To swing the topic back to LHAT, he has taken a far more anti-Towers bias of late so will report on many of the park's faults so him saying that PH is cancelled when nothing has been said is am example of this.

Honestly there has to be a line drawn regarding certain YouTube/social media accounts having a certain stance that easily can be taken as gospel so we must be careful on rumours and such.
 
I don’t think it’s been canned. They are just focusing on the areas which need it more, such as refurbishing the older attractions and making the place feel fresher.

They don’t need a new coaster, they need to refurb and add in more flat rides.

The planning is currently available until 2026 so until that lapses and they don’t extend, we won’t know for sure.
 
I’ve said it before, but I, perhaps controversially, think that cancelling or delaying Horizon significantly is a terrible idea.

Yes, I’m not denying there are other gaps in Alton Towers’ lineup to be filled. But at the same time, we are knocking on the door of it having been a decade since Alton Towers’ last major new ride investment. 7 years have already passed since Wicker Man, and I think that in order to maintain interest in the park, they need to have major new things every now and then. People rhapsodise about the 90s and how good the experience was back then, but the key piece of the puzzle that got people to the park in the first place was those many statement ride installations in short succession. The Haunted House, Nemesis, Oblivion, Hex, and before that things like the Congo River Rapids… these were big hitters that showed that Alton Towers meant business! Without those statement ride installations, the park would not have been half as prosperous as it was back in the day. Major ride installations sell and inject a feeling of momentum into a park, and I think that’s maybe missing at Alton at the moment.

I don’t deny that the last few years of revamp projects and such have been good and necessary. It’s brilliant that things like Alton Manor and Nemesis Reborn have been done. However, you do get the feeling that Alton Towers is primarily living in the past at the moment more so than it ever has. As good as the above were, they were revamps of existing staples rather than something meaningfully new. Even Toxicator, despite being a new ride, is exactly the same as Ripsaw in the eyes of the casual visitor; so many comments on social media have been to the effect of “It’s just Ripsaw in a different colour!”. If you’re not invested in Alton Towers as we are, it would look as though the park has stood still for a number of years now, and that’s not a good impression to be giving off. I fear that if a major new ride installation does not come soon, the park will slip into the same sort of rut that Thorpe Park did in the late 2010s and early 2020s before Hyperia was installed, where the lineup began to feel stale to the casual visitor and the park felt a bit directionless and like it wasn’t really going anywhere.

And as much as people say that Horizon is “just another coaster”, I feel it would provide something meaningful to the lineup and fill a hole. It’s an indoor coaster, which would fill a gap in terms of both the coaster lineup and bolstering the park’s overall number of indoor attractions, and I also feel that it has the potential to be a more family-friendly ride than some of the Big 7, with a 1.2m height restriction at most being likely. This would help to provide more for that squeezed “too big for CBeebies, too small for the big coasters” demographic!

People on here are dismissive of major rides, but I think they really do inject a sense of momentum and excitement into a park like nothing else can. One thing you cannot deny is that even the likes of The Smiler and Wicker Man in the later Merlin years got people excited, which I feel has been lacking from the park a bit as of late.
 
Nemesis Reborn was a large CAPEX investment, easily as expensive as Wickerman, which people seem to forget. I know it doesn't feel like it as it's practically the same, but that would've been the shiny new coaster had it not needed a re-track.

My hope is that with this new CEO at the helm, Merlin are taking a step back to come up with a more long term plan for the parks.
 
MaxPower said:
Nemesis Reborn was a large CAPEX investment, easily as expensive as Wickerman, which people seem to forget. I know it doesn't feel like it as it's practically the same, but that would've been the shiny new coaster had it not needed a re-track.

My hope is that with this new CEO at the helm, Merlin are taking a step back to come up with a more long term plan for the parks.
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True though that is, that’s not how people will perceive it. As expensive as Nemesis Reborn inevitably was, it is just the same ride in a different colour to the casual visitor, and I think that’s reflected in its hype level and attendance impact versus that of Hyperia in the same year.

It’s not a lack of investment per se that I think Alton Towers is suffering from and will suffer from if it continues down its current path. I think it’s the feeling that the park is standing still. As much as Nemesis was a big investment and Curse and Toxicator were not insignificant either, they very much feel as though the park is rehashing the past.

Alton Towers was a park once known for big hitters and paving the way with exciting new ride installations, but in the last couple of years, you do get the feeling that the park has been missing something new and exciting. I don’t deny that the refurbishment projects have been good and the addition of Toxicator is valuable, but these are not trailblazing, exciting ride projects in the vein that the park was bringing to the table every few years in the past. They represent the park standing still rather than moving forwards, whereas I think a new shiny major ride would give off more of an impression of forwards movement and momentum.
 
I would like something done with The Dungeons building, 4D Cinema and Nickelodeon Outta Control before Project Horizon comes as going to that ride will feel strange if there is just empty buildings along the way. The Dungeons Boat Ride needs to be used for something
 
You’d like to think they’re not putting operation Universal into motion now that’s looking likely to go ahead. They’ll have 6 years to sort things out, I’d like to think we at least have a couple of major investments before universal opens, potentially one the same year that universal is due to open.

Try and steal a little bit of their thunder at least.
 
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