• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

Drayton Manor 2013 Topic

If that image is anything to go by, Drayton's Burger Kitchen looks slightly better than Merlin's attempt. But you can of course make most food look nice in a photo. Hand made burgers do sound nice, I'll be sure to try it assuming I visit this year!

:)
 
KingNemesis said:
The grill inn at Drayton Manor is very nice, it is situated just outside the park so I don't know if G.P who have not came to the park can visit (See Map below), I ate there when I stopped over in June. Had a lovely rack of ribs between me and my girlfriend for starter and I had a burger for main and overall enjoyed it. The only issue is that they had CBBC playing out loud on the several TV's in the area which was a little annoying to say the least, don't know if it's a feature for the families so little Johnny can eat his burger whilst watching his favourite CBBC program or whether it was put on by mistake...

Location of Grill inn

http://tinyurl.com/d2snx7u
Click to expand...

I can second this. The Grill Inn is nothing short of fantastic. When we went the place was empty bar myself and Joel, which was a massive shame, as it's a brilliant menu. The food was all very well presented and high quality, and the staff were lovely. They couldn't do more to help it seemed :)

Apparently Drayton's Burger Kitchen is going to be located in the restaurant that's built into Pirate Adventure, so it'll be a fair sized eatery, and one of the parks main food outlets along with the fried chicken restaurant and the pie one. I'll certainly try it when I next visit. Over the past few years the quality of park food has massively improved at Drayton :)

A bit lol at the name though :p
 
Drayton Manor 2013 Topic

Tiny bit more news on the monorail. You will be able to disembark inside the redesigned Thomas shop, and it is expected to open in June. I believe construction has already begun :)
 
Wasn't the restaurant by Pirate Adventure already a burger place? I've never eaten there because it looked distinctly unappealing when it was Love To Eat branded, but I might give it a go now.

Are the Love To Eat places and pizza place by the Zoo any good? I remember wondering where to eat when I first visited for Sandwich meet 2011, as the LTE stuff all looked a bit iffy. I have no idea why I settled for a hot dog (a food item I don't care for anyway) when on hindsight I should've gone to Humble Pies!
 
Love to eat chicken is good enough, quite good for Drayton Manor anyway.

Humble Pies are my favourite by far. Need to try out the Grill Inn though.
 
News from Screamscape regarding Drayton's new Thomas Land ride:

2013 - New Attractions - Rumor - (4/23/13) Drayton Manor showed off some details about the new Winston Monorail ride coming to the park, expected to open by late June or early July. The ride system is coming from Zamperla and each of the 7 cars will also have a removable canopy that will be put into place in the colder months of the year and come into play especially when Thomas Land is open for the Christmas holiday season. Check out the video below for more details and artwork.
Click to expand...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spzpk5HcIbE#ws
 
I'm really delighted about this! Not particularly about the ride, but that they've added the ability to convert the ride for winter usage!

It shows a real thoughtfulness about infrastructure, the need for special events and guest comfort. If only more rides could somehow alert to become more comfortable depending on the weather.

What on earth was that meeting anyway? Some kind of enthusiast group? I don't recognise them, and at the end it didn't look like enthusiasts...
 
Seen apocalypse and g force from a distance today whist driving I wanted to go :(
 
Drayton Manor 2013 Topic

We tried the grill during the easter holidays. As mentioned before, general public can go. Was nice, slightly busy. Abit miffed when a large group of children went and sat by us in the conservatory and started eating their sandwiches :/. Didn't have to wait for long as we were seated.

Pirate Adventure is still there......however it needs extreme TLC :-(. Also ground to a halt as they overfilled our boat and only started moving when the boat behind us caught us up and bumped us along!
 
Re: Drayton Manor 2013 Topic

So my source was right about pretty much everything? :p I will make a note of this trusted ally
 
It looks really nice and should be another great addition to the park. Also this explains the changes to the food place, as it seems the new rides station is on the first floor of what was the old restaurant.

Also that manager guy seems nice.
 
Going on the 18th may can't wait apocalypse stand up floorless here I come
 
Really impressed with Drayton Manor today.

The park extended three times, finally settling on a 7pm close - with such amazing weather!

I have to hand it to them too - with regards to upkeep. The amount of painting that's been going on is fantastic. I'd go so far to say that the park is looking immaculate at the moment, aside from a couple of areas.

Drunken Barrels tilt was back for the first time in a long time, new signage in a few areas and even the staff attitude was pretty good today, with some real friendly folk on Maelstrom, the man on Flying Dutchman and the guys on SF10.

Really good stuff!

:D
 
I did not think this deserved it's own topic, but while trawling the internet I found a concept video for Excalibur, that was used before the ride was actually built. Thought some of you might find it interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hmiYXB1M_U#

The brief was to revamp the rather tired Jungle Cruise ride at the theme park. The ride system (based on underwater cables) was provided by BEAR GmbH of Switzerland, while the theming and mechanical effects were the responsibility of the team at Farmer Studios here in the UK (where I was working at the time in a cross-discipline role as designer, animator and scriptwriter). Here are some highlights from the previsualisation video I produced as part of the concept development process:

The Excalibur concept – the result of much brainstorming between me and my colleague Tony Archer – was a ‘Knights of the Round Table’ story appropriate to the park’s location in the heart of England. The twist was that we’d tell the story from the point of view of a family of dragons being persecuted by Arthur and his gang of knights, who are more concerned with redeveloping Camelot than preserving the ancient dragon homelands.
Given the ride’s slow pace, we decided to tell the story by means of a lavish audio drama, which was produced in surround-sound and featured plenty of groan-inducing puns aimed squarely at the target audience of families with young children. The resulting audio track was split into chapters and recorded on solid-state sound stores located in each individual boat. Infra-red sensors along the route triggered each successive chapter at the appropriate time. The soundtrack was designed to run seamlessly without a break but, in the event of stoppages, the infra-red system put the story on temporary hold and ran a loop of ’holding music’ until the boat got moving again.
The challenge for the scenic and engineering teams at Farmer Studios was to theme the enormous lake location within a relatively tight budget. The scenery and effects we put in included a castle tower and submerged mechanical effects including thrashing dragons’ tails and – of course – the sword Excalibur rising out of the water (while the Lady of the Lake moans about how heavy it is). At the climax of the ride, the boat enters a dark cavern inhabited by Cantata, a full-sized animatronic dragon … not to mention her fire-breathing husband!
The video I’ve posted here is an early CGI previsualisation of the Excalibur ride. For the technically-minded among you, I created it by building a 3D model of the ride track in 3DSMax, using data supplied by BEAR. It’s therefore an accurate replica of the actual ride, in terms of both layout and timing. I then ‘themed’ the ride with additional models using the concept designs as reference. The models are fairly crude because the whole thing was constantly evolving as the project progressed. In the end, it proved so useful that we used it to choreograph the animation of the various animatronic effects – including the big dragon at the end.
This version of the previsualisation is a ‘highlights’ edit featuring selected moments from the complete ten-minute ride. The soundtrack is one of the early audio edits.
The Excalibur project was directed by Nick Farmer and project managed by Dan Tippetts. I think most of the supremely talented folk at Farmer Studios worked on the project at some stage, including Tony Archer, Simon Mitchell, Jim Bishop, Simon Hearn and about a million others …
Click to expand...

The person that created this video (Graham Edwards), was a big cornerstone in the rides development. He was also responsible for the creating the script on Nemesis: Sub-Terra.

http://grahamedwardsonline.wordpress.com/
 
The new Winston attraction is really coming along now:

984298_535973106466837_18565123_n.jpg


As much as I dislike Thomas Land, I do appreciate that it's bringing the punters in and catering for a particular market. Unfortunately, it's also having a bad effect on the rest of the park...

While I love Drayton Manor dearly, it's pretty noticeable this year just how bad the park really is in places. The queuelines are filthy with the floors covered in gum. Many of the attractions look sad and tired. The floor around the entrance to the Apocalypse bunker is suffering from a very bad case of rot, and the broken station windows on Shockwave still haven't been replaced. The moronic staff are back in full force, too.

Very disappointing in contrast to last season.
 
Drayton Manor have announced they are planning a second Hotel! They have come up with a 5 year pan for the council and includes a second smaller hotel. This is due to demand for first hotel that has seen 150,000 nights stayed at the hotel by guests and is also making good profits. The new hotel will be a 3 star and cheaper to stay at (91 rooms) and will have a Spanish style look.

Also the park reported that for their last season feb 2012 to feb 2013 was their second best in their history with 1,120,000 guests. So even with bad weather not all uk parks did bad last year! Plus they didn't add anything new

Hopefully a new coaster is in the 5 year plan. Glad the park is doing well especially as a family run park and hotel had been a success.

You can read full details here- http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/new-drayton-manor-hotel-plan-4864424?tabPane=Comments
 
The past few additions that Drayton Manor have made have been really nice, the park remains well-priced and with a hotel it's starting to become more and more attractive to greater numbers of guests.

If the park add a new headline attraction that's somewhere between family thrill and thrill (or both if they can afford to), Drayton Manor will soon be biting at the heels of Thorpe Park if Merlin can't sort it out fast enough! :p We already know that the park are interested in a launch coaster or a wooden coaster, but I wouldn't mind a simple Intamin off-the-shelf megalite that's got good landscaping and theming. They're supposed to be among the best coasters out there and they're not custom, so Drayton wouldn't be shelling-out as much either.

Anyway, this development sounds good and I can't wait to see what they have planned! Glad to hear they're doing well too, despite other larger parks struggling to attract the amount of guests that they should be getting.
 
I agree and would love them to add an Intamin Mega lite, they do have a good relationship with Intamin, with many rides purchased from them in the past (shockwave, Splash Canyon, Apocalypse, Maelstrom, Bounty and Druken Barrels) and I also think it would be the perfect ride for the park. However I don't expect them to install one, as I expect them to go with a more family based launched Coaster. I think a ride similar to Juvelen will be most likely and fit in well on the Buffalo area.

Their was a documentary recently which featured an interview with someone at Vekoma, in the office it was filmed in at Vekoma, you would clearly see an overhead shot of drayton manor with plans for a coaster around the Buffalo/lake area. With the station area looking like it was where the chip shop is. This backs up rumours a few years ago saying the park were planning a world first Vekoma launched thrill coaster with the station taking the place of the chip shop. The image can been seen in this topic from coaster force-

http://www.coasterforce.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=34363&start=84
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top