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Drayton Manor Park

pjanvil said:
Maybe I'm missing something but why can't Drayton afford to do rides on a scale they used to in the past eg Pirates Adventure/Shockwave. The park gets over 1m visitors a year which is way more then many European parks which do get big rides and impressive theming. For example Walibi Belgium had 855,000 visitors in 2019 and has impressive theming on some attractions such as Popcorn Revenge and had a massive new rollercoaster in 2021.

I know we compare Drayton to Towers down the road but Drayton based on its attendance is a big park, so I don't understand why they can't afford comparable projects to similar sizes parks based on attendance.
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I’ll admit that I often have similar thoughts, but I don’t think Walibi Belgium is entirely comparable, as Compagnie des Alpes, a big corporate firm that owns both larger theme parks and numerous ski resorts, owns and funds Walibi Belgium, whereas Drayton Manor was family-run until very recently. And in fairness to Drayton; intentions and plans under the Looping Group very promising at the moment!

That does raise a wider question of why small and mid-tier UK parks often struggle so much compared to similarly sized equivalents abroad, though. Drayton got 1.2 million guests per year in 2019 and was commonly perceived as “struggling” prior to the Looping Group buyout, whereas parks in Europe that are attaining similar figures, or even only attaining 6-figure guest numbers in scases, are commonly throwing up rides that give even the Merlin parks a run for their money. Sticking with your Belgium example, I think Plopsaland de Panne still only gets 6-figure yearly attendance (their figures are perhaps Drayton level at best, from what I can gather), yet they just built Ride to Happiness, a pretty extravagant ride in terms of both hardware (Mack are pretty expensive) and theming, and a huge hotel, and there are no obvious signs of financial trouble at Plopsaland, from what I can tell.

You also have other places in Europe with similar stories; Toverland, a park aspiring for 1 million guests, built the lavish Avalon and Port Laguna areas, including Fenix, a brand new B&M coaster on a scale rivalling Merlin. Linnanmaki, a park that is supposedly no larger than Drayton in guest figures, recently built Taiga, a huge Intamin Blitz Coaster.

It does make me wonder why the UK parks struggle so much financially compared to their similarly sized foreign equivalents. Is it something to do with living costs in Britain being more expensive or something?
 
Well if you think about it the looping group added more rides/refurb attractions in 2 seasons then the former owners did in they last 8 years of operation. I think that’s how they see the market as they not added any new attractions at the Safari park in 3 years but have invested heavily on the Safari part and the lodges.
The green belt land where the new area is going only got permission in 2020 to build on.

As for the Pirate Adventure it can’t go back to its former life as most of it was stripped back to its wooden frames but from pictures we know the ride system is still in there as of Jan 2020.
 
Matt N said:
I’ll admit that I often have similar thoughts, but I don’t think Walibi Belgium is entirely comparable, as Compagnie des Alpes, a big corporate firm that owns both larger theme parks and numerous ski resorts, owns and funds Walibi Belgium, whereas Drayton Manor was family-run until very recently. And in fairness to Drayton; intentions and plans under the Looping Group very promising at the moment!

That does raise a wider question of why small and mid-tier UK parks often struggle so much compared to similarly sized equivalents abroad, though. Drayton got 1.2 million guests per year in 2019 and was commonly perceived as “struggling” prior to the Looping Group buyout, whereas parks in Europe that are attaining similar figures, or even only attaining 6-figure guest numbers in scases, are commonly throwing up rides that give even the Merlin parks a run for their money. Sticking with your Belgium example, I think Plopsaland de Panne still only gets 6-figure yearly attendance (their figures are perhaps Drayton level at best, from what I can gather), yet they just built Ride to Happiness, a pretty extravagant ride in terms of both hardware (Mack are pretty expensive) and theming, and a huge hotel, and there are no obvious signs of financial trouble at Plopsaland, from what I can tell.

You also have other places in Europe with similar stories; Toverland, a park aspiring for 1 million guests, built the lavish Avalon and Port Laguna areas, including Fenix, a brand new B&M coaster on a scale rivalling Merlin. Linnanmaki, a park that is supposedly no larger than Drayton in guest figures, recently built Taiga, a huge Intamin Blitz Coaster.

It does make me wonder why the UK parks struggle so much financially compared to their similarly sized foreign equivalents. Is it something to do with living costs in Britain being more expensive or something?
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Your right. Plopsa de Panne is very comparable to Drayton in terms of attendance (around 1.2m) and they got Ride to Happiness considered to be one of the best rollercoasters in the world. I would say their ride offerings (before Ride to Happiness) is fairly comparable to Draytons. Will be interesting to see how Ride to Happiness has changed their attendance since I think a lot of thrillseekers visited the park for the first time as a result.
 
Benjamino said:
just to add on to this in the video it doesn't look like the test track thing is there and something else that backs this up is this tiktok Drayton posted this on their tiktok and it looks like a new building due to the reflection in the window and they just replied to my comment saying it is a new catering outlet https://vm.tiktok.com/ZML2AuFfJ/
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I think that's the old gift shop, the reflection is the refreshment booth outside Accelerator.
 
Wilko said:
I think that's the old gift shop, the reflection is the refreshment booth outside Accelerator.
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to be honest i thought that at first but then i looked at the fly uk video and it didnt look like the layout for that test track was there anymore yea it is the old gift shop
 
pjanvil said:
I was listening to this Podcast https://www.looopings.nl/weblog/188...-Park-vertelt-over-recente-bouwprojecten.html from the ride operations head at Europa Park and they talk about the rebuild of Pireten in Batavia. Interesting in relation to Pirate Adventure they mention the fact the ride was no longer manufacturered an that it wasn't in the catalogue anymore, however the ride operations head says "But it was in the unofficial catalogue" but they basically had to relearn a lot about the ride system again. I'm wondering if the rebuild of Batavia has given Mack rides the knowledge they had previously lost to be able to restore the ride system of Pirate Adventure (maybe to a different theme) and support it going forward. In other words the rebuild of Batavia makes it more likely that Pirate Adventure ride system can be restored then before.
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I imagine it's more a case relearning how it was done back when they built Piraten, not the inability of being able to build something like it. How much difference is there between it and say the water bits of Poseidon? They also build other boat rides too still.
 
If you’re willing to pay the bill, you’ll always be able to find someone, original manufacturer or otherwise, who’s willing to put the R&D time into scoping out a complete system rebuild and overhaul.

But it all still comes back to the first point; someone needs to fund it. There comes a point in the life of every mechanical asset where it is BER - Beyond Economical Repair. If you’re generating the revenue of Europa Park and Mack Rides you may be willing to sign off such levels of investment on less economical or vanity projects in the spirit of excess, novelty, nostalgia or status. Drayton Manor, and I would probably argue Looping Group too are, I suspect, not quite in the same boat.
 
Ian said:
If you’re willing to pay the bill, you’ll always be able to find someone, original manufacturer or otherwise, who’s willing to put the R&D time into scoping out a complete system rebuild and overhaul.

But it all still comes back to the first point; someone needs to fund it. There comes a point in the life of every mechanical asset where it is BER - Beyond Economical Repair. If you’re generating the revenue of Europa Park and Mack Rides you may be willing to sign off such levels of investment on less economical or vanity projects in the spirit of excess, novelty, nostalgia or status. Drayton Manor, and I would probably argue Looping Group too are, I suspect, not quite in the same boat.
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will be interesting to see how Merlin deem The Haunted House - a nostalgic project?? Or will they just scrap it when the time comes
 
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Jb85 said:
will be interesting to see how Merlin deem Tje Haunted House - a nostalgic project??
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Now You're talking!!!!

IDK, we start a petition to bring back The HH....?

Fund the Retrofit?

....
I'm out of Ideas, sorry.

If Europe park could, so could Merlin... I think... maybe we'd have to bribe them or something IDK. But a super interesting topic nevertheless.
 
I watched the Accelerator TikTok video which was filmed last week and Pandemonium queue and fencing is still in place and also is test track.
Also for a new area which is supposed to be opening In 7 or 8 weeks time not a lot of work has been done.
 
Themeparksandy1981 said:
I watched the Accelerator TikTok video which was filmed last week and Pandemonium queue and fencing is still in place and also is test track.
Also for a new area which is supposed to be opening In 7 or 8 weeks time not a lot of work has been done.
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Not a chance of it opening then - be more like June
 
Themeparksandy1981 said:
I watched the Accelerator TikTok video which was filmed last week and Pandemonium queue and fencing is still in place and also is test track.
Also for a new area which is supposed to be opening In 7 or 8 weeks time not a lot of work has been done.
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The accelerator tiktok will have been pre filmed in the beginning of December or something like that because that was just after it was removed and they have a habit of pre filming them and not posting them for like another month later
 
Drayton clearly was struggling hence going into Administration. Does anyone have any insight into why a park which continued to receive over 1m visitors a year was in such a bad financial situation? I know the obvious answer would be Splash Canyon but financially they never paid the fine because the company went into administration before that and it continued to receive 1m+ visitors a year even after that? I know the floods/covid would have had an impact but it was more like that was the straw that broke the camels back so I'm more curious about what led to the poor financial situation leading up to 2020.
 
pjanvil said:
Drayton clearly was struggling hence going into Administration. Does anyone have any insight into why a park which continued to receive over 1m visitors a year was in such a bad financial situation? I know the obvious answer would be Splash Canyon but financially they never paid the fine because the company went into administration before that and it continued to receive 1m+ visitors a year even after that? I know the floods/covid would have had an impact but it was more like that was the straw that broke the camels back so I'm more curious about what led to the poor financial situation leading up to 2020.
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Lots of reasons.

Lack of investment into new attractions.
Lack of onsite entertainment.
Poor F&B offering
Better value at other UK parks
Rise in cost of living
 
The biggest reason was debt I understand, they where still attracting decent guests numbers but debt repayments ultimately eat away at the revenue and any potential profits are then wiped out. This then makes it harder to continue to invest in new attractions etc without getting even further into debt (if the banks willing to lend you any more).
 
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the hotel said to have crippled Drayton somewhat? I definitely seem to remember something being said about the hotel generating them a huge amount of debt, which was what caused the relative drought of non-Thomas investment to begin.
 
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