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Bear Grylls Adventure Birmingham and LDC Birmingham

Merlin have published this press release earlier today.
Bear Grylls to open an epic £20M adventure centre in Birmingham next year
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Or a green screen photo opportunity, complete with pre and post upselling.
 
A couple of new visuals have been released.

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For a Merlin Midway attraction this actually looks pretty good! MMM have really been stepping up the theming game with recent projects!
 
Bump!

Birmingham’s Legoland Discovery Center has been open a little while now, I think the Bear Grylls thing is still under development. Theme Park Workdwide have a video up if you want a general look around:



I feel this is a good time to share my views on LDCs in general.

Firstly the attractions signature ride, Kingdom Quest, is fairly impressive for what is a very compact dark ride. If you are familiar with Ninjago and Laser Raiders at Windsor this can best be described as a hybrid between the two on a trackless ride system. You use a Laser Gun but some targets are physical while others are screen based. Being trackless the cars push towards and away from the scenes, making the ride feel much larger than the space it actually fills (at a guess I’d say no bigger than a tennis court).

My other thought are about the overal concept of a Discovery Centre. Over-saturation is a word often used to describe Merlins love for Midway attractions. However the LDCs are different because they are not linear walk through experiences. For the most part the attraction is a large open play area with activitys branching out from a central point. There’s a strong focus on Lego and I could easily picture a younger me spending all day at such a place jumping between the different activitys.
Then you have Miniland which makes it very clear that this is a local attraction for local people. In Birmingham There’s no attempt to display structures from around the UK, all the landmarks are Iconic Birmingham buildings, with only Warwick castle (good old cross-promotion) being from another city.
Honestly I could easily picture an LDC appearing in every major city without them devaluing the others. They are not places children would travel across the country for (like Legoland in Windsor) but they would love to have their own locally. Also who wouldn’t want a miniature version of their own city built from Lego!
 
Another piece of news is that Merlin have now put an advertising station for The Bear Grylls Experience by the turnstiles at Alton Towers! I didn't take a close look, but it was some sort of "preparation"-type thing!
 
ringo said:
They’ve got some advertising thing in the plaza at Towers, wasn’t staffed when I saw it though.
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They were handing out leaflets yesterday, too. The experiences range from £30-120 per person. The complex opens on 1st October.
 
I've been working on BGA since the start of the year and can honestly say the level of themeing there is among the best of all Merlin attractions. It looks absolutely incredible inside.
 
RicketyCricket said:
I've been working on BGA since the start of the year and can honestly say the level of themeing there is among the best of all Merlin attractions. It looks absolutely incredible inside.
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Promising words indeed; thanks for sharing @RicketyCricket! While it doesn't look like my kind of thing, I'm sure Bear Grylls will be really impressive if Wicker Man is anything to go by! I reckon Merlin are going to really step up the theming of their attractions over the next couple of years to keep our parks on the world stage!
 
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