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Drayton Manor Park

Matt N said:
My family and I went on Shockwave, Air Race, Accelerator, Buffalo Mountain Coaster, Apocalypse and Troublesome Trucks! Do bear in mind that it was the summer holidays when we visited.
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Without going off topic too much, this is poor. I've visited on a faffy Towers Street meet on an August bank holiday Sunday before and managed around 20 rides without really trying.

But I digress. I always loathed riding G-Force, but I appreciate it a bit more now having ridden the likes of Formule X. It's a shame to see Drayton lose yet another ride, after the closing of the rapids, removal of the chairlift and non-operation of certain sides of Apocalypse. I'd hope to see them build a much needed thrill coaster, though the pessimist in me can't see that happening for a long while yet. Their target audience for any new/rethemed attraction seems to very much be families with young children.
 
Surely a £4m loan for a version of Lech would pay itself for Drayton right now?

I’ve been to Drayton twice in the last few years (once was the day after my mates wedding in Derby and the other was after staying at ATH but it was closed the next day) but as a 38 year old guy there’s nothing to get me back again.

Apart from my demographic, families come in many sizes and although Thomas Land is great up to a certain age, there’s not a huge amount for the older brothers and sisters in the family unit now. Which means Drayton can only attract a certain section of the family market.

Setting thrill seekers and enthusiasts aside, it needs a new thrill ride to maintain its share of the family market.
 
G force, even though its absolute pants, is going to be missed when the coaster line up is already so poor.
You have to wonder how long Shockwave has left too. Standups are no longer being built and aren't that popular anyway. It's also quite rough too these days.

I still missing Pirates Adventure and Excalibur personally and they have never been replaced. The big wheel went as well as 1 or 2 other rides. And then theres the rapids ride which obviously is a sore point right now.

I don't like saying it but I really think I may have visited this park for the last time. There's not enough there for me to warrant a 4 hr round trip anymore.
 
I'd love them to be able to afford one of the new Vekoma models, like Lech Coaster, but I don't even think they can stretch that far. A second hand coaster is obviously a possibility but these rarely bring in the punters. There are some exceptions of course but generally second hand coasters tend to be more trouble than they are worth.

My guess is they will replace G Force with a flat ride or maybe some family rides, look to get the rapids back open and maybe continue to spruce up older attractions which they have been doing successfully over recent years (Haunting)

I don't see a new coaster coming any time soon sadly. :(
 
No tear will be shed over g force but I do wonder what will become of the park. Their ride lineup (excluding Thomas land) is diminishing faster than Alton’s

Real shame - do they have the finances to get through these troubled times? Or do we have another UK park on the verge of bankruptcy
 
Around £4 million for Lech Coaster does seem insanely cheap. I expect it would cost a bit more in the UK because construction costs would be higher, but still a remarkably good value coaster that would benefit a lot of UK parks.

Drayton Manor have done quite a few events over the years including their first attempt at a food festival this summer. They seemed to do quite a bit of publicity for it.


As you say MakoMania there is limited costs in putting an event like this together for Drayton Manor, plus if each of the stalls at it does some advertising then there's a lot of free publicity around the local area. I hope it worked out for them.

I wonder how it was financed. I suspect Drayton Manor would have taken a percentage of sales, but perhaps the stalls paid a fee for being there. It seems to have been organised by a third party events company so along the way I'm not sure how the money would be shared out.

The are two problems with this kind of event. Firstly, with over 30 stalls (which was advertised) on top of the park's own food outlets, they'd have had about 45 food outlets including restaurants and take aways. Even if Drayton Manor can't actually loose money on the hired in stalls because they're charging a set amount or royalty, if the weather's good and the park's busy, but there still isn't enough custom for some of the stalls to make a profit, then presumably they'd struggle to sign them up the next year.

A more likely problem is that a big portion of the people use the food festival stalls rather than the park's stalls. The festival stalls make lots of money, but the park has to share the profits with the stalls and the festival organiser, whereas if they sell food from their own outlets they keep all the money. Not to mention that running over 30 extra food stalls is expensive, and somewhere along the line they'll need to cover the costs of that, even if it's reflected in the size of royalty they can collect rather than paying them directly.

It's good to say Drayton Manor trying something new though, and I do like the food festivals they do at some of the American parks. To make it worth doing it'd probably have to bring in a lot of people to offset the money they missed from their own outlets, but I hope it did bring in enough people to make it worth their while doing it again next year. Probably the biggest goal behind doing events is to sell more season tickets.
 
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Even if G Force has some problems you'd think that it probably would have at least some second hand ride value, particularly as it is still quite new. Even taking into account deconstruction costs I'd expect them to come away with some kind of a profit from selling it. If they are definitely getting rid of it will be interesting to see whether it appears on some second hand ride websites soon. Unfortunately I expect any profit they do make from selling it will end up being used to pay the fines they're likely to get for the rapids accident.

I wonder whether some kind of interactive zoo exhibits could be a sound investment. I don't think they have anything like Lorikeet Lagoon at Chessington? A few of the smaller American parks have done well out of free soft drinks. I don't think that's an option in the UK because of concerns about people's health, but perhaps there's some kind of an equivalent. Maybe if every visitor got one free voucher for a softdrink and a popcorn or a whippee it would be a strong selling point.

It is, however, hard to think of struggling theme parks that have been turned around without a significant investment.
 
Yes the park partnered up with the 'Big family festival' last year and this was marketed quite heavily, particularly along the A38 and on some of the boards around the ring roads in Birmingham (saw quite a few Drayton adverts in central Brum a couple of days ago actually). This year they did the Food and Crafts, and also did a smaller scale event for Easter.
We will await their financial statement at the end of the year, but I strongly doubt that they are in as bad a position as some are suggesting. As Dan says, Drayton are recognized by local authorities as extremely important to the local economy, providing almost 1000 jobs and 24 million in consumer spending. The park have made money during most years leading up to this year also, its just the fact that these profit margins, whilst relatively consistent, have been rather small in scale, and on the hundreds of thousands. It appears that the worst fears about the impact of what happened last year, however, have indeed been true, and much like Alton Towers, the accident has had a profound impact on visitor attendance, but as many of us predicted last year, Drayton would not be able to cope with this nearly as much. I doubt the decision to remove/scrap/store the chairlift was taken lightly, and the same goes for G-force.

With the rapids, lots of info has been circulating, some very good, some not so good, but with the removal of G-force, refurbing Splash Canyon and giving it gated boats like on Congo RR is now extremely important.

I agree that investments will be needed no matter what, I'm just a little sick of watching once great UK parks dwindle when our neighbors are rebuilding burnt down dark rides, developing prototypes for exciting new coasters which used to be our forte, and making a world stage for themselves. Wickerman was the real exception, it was a high quality investment and many of us predicted that it would turn out rather well in the end. I doubt we will see anything like this in the future though, and the upcoming Dungeon at Alton Towers confirms this. Maybe a decent coaster at Thorpe park at best, though planning restrictions are a load of tripe even there. It's all so bleak.

It really isn't a problem limited to Drayton, its part of a wider, industry wide issue, and reflects on the tastes (or lack of) of the general public, pathetic red tape and planning laws, and the lack of competition and risk taking that is now becoming a major issue. Drayton with all of its refurbs earlier in the year made me think that perhaps it was the last bastion of UK theme parks making that extra effort and investing to improve guest experience rather than focus on dividends. Now I'm beginning to revert to the older stance I had, that we badly need a new theme park in this country.
 
Good riddance to G-Force. Hopefully the same wrecking ball can swing into the direction of Shockwave as well.

I really do want to see Drayton succeed, they've nailed the family aspect on the head but they need to bring in something for thrill seekers that isn't just a cheap flat ride pulled from the scraps of a Zamperla catalogue. As amazing as it would be to have something along the lines of Lech (or even Formula for that matter... just anything from Vekoma!), their financial situation just doesn't seem to be up to scratch to pull something of that scale off. A real shame.
 
The park needs to take a risk to get people in. Speculate to accumilate. The risk could go either way but the park can't just carry on with it's head just above the water. Removing rides to cover the costs, otherwise there will be nothing left and no reason to go back. I would be all for stretching the budget for a decent vekoma like a firestorm or bemuda blitz. I think it would make a good statement of intent. You don't need an RMC or a B&M to pull the GP in. Just market the hell out of it and make it look nice.
 
Rob said:
If Drayton cannot afford a repair to G-Force and are subsequently removing it then there is no way on earth that they can afford a nice big Vekoma thrill coaster.

:)
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That depends! Not having the funds to carry out maintenance is one thing, but that maintenance not being economically viable is quite another. Merlin obviously have the funds to keep Slammer going for all of time, but have stopped doing so not because they have no money, but because doing so is simply not worth the cost.

The park is clearly not in the greatest finncial possition but with G Force being the steaming turd it is, this might just be a very sensible business decision. Is it worth, in terms of financial return and guest satisfaction, spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on? No. Does not mean they haven't got access to those funds for something else though.

They need to use Thomas success as a springboard into the medium thrill in the same way Paultons has done with Peppa Pig. With shockwave, apocalypse and a couple of decent thrill flats they are in a decent place if they flesh out the middle ground properly.
 
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