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Drayton Manor Park

Does anyone remember the truck ride which went through trees etc.... I think it was near drunken barrels. It had no seat belts and was really fast.
 
That's the snake train alright!
DW, I believe the animatronic animals do work, and I saw the giraffes moving last year, but they are not often turned on nowadays. There used to be more animatronic elephants outside the rainforest cafe entrance behind the totems as well :)
 
You got it, and yeah, he had a red Drayton cap. And as for skyflyer, that was opened in the late 80s by the late John Pertwee :) D'you remember when back around the time Apocalypse opened, Skyflyer was given a bit of a makeover to look similar to the Apocalypse colors? They should of done that with Pandemonium, even though admittedly Pandemonium has a really cool appearance.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
Reading this is all really interesting.

Sounds like there used to be a real buzz around Drayton Manor back in the 90s.

What went wrong?
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It changed its focus completely to the primary kids market with Thomas land.
Simple as that.
The new bit has been very successful, as has the hotel.
Think they realised they couldn't compete with the Towers, so changed focus.
 
It’s as simple as that really. They’ve switched to catering for the Junior market which they badly needed in the 2000s once Robinson’s fruit shoot land started to age (they had a batch of 7 zamperlas added in the late 90s but many of the rides there went as far back as the mid 80s). Investment wise, they were a medium business and couldn’t keep up with Tussauds so switching to the Junior and Family market placed them in a much better position. After the hotel, and Ben 10, they are now finally starting to put their focus on the wider park to rejuvenate it.
 
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Picked up this at Drayton Manor today, cost £1 and is 88 pages of history on the Bryan family and the park.

Fantastic day at DM, really sunny and got on plenty of rides.
 
Dogdangling said:
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Picked up this at Drayton Manor today, cost £1 and is 88 pages of history on the Bryan family and the park.

Fantastic day at DM, really sunny and got on plenty of rides.
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1 Pound?!? I bought that book for a hell of a lot more than that back in 2006... argh ;)
Off memory, that book features pictures of many of the famous grand openings of rides at the park, and also at the end is the concept art for the Hotel (which ended up exactly as it appears) and the water park.
 
Oh, I've got that book. I brought it for £2 quid a few years back.

It's a good read. Although the only notable thing is at the end when they say something about that they're always saving money for a new major addition, The book is like 6 years old yet but there's still no major addition. :(

Surely there's something in the works for the next few years...
 
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