• 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 Park

DiogoJ42 said:
Well this is at least the third story The Haunting has had. The last one was something about the vicar being a vampire, though you couldn't understand a word he said. The one before it was .... errr... the same thing minus bats...? (Anyone care to jump in here?) :p
Click to expand...

There were vampires? Completely missed that one!

The curse brings back vague memories and would agree that it definitely didn't feel as sinister as I remembered, either that or I don't scare as easily as I used to.

They definitely seem to have tried to make it more child friendly although I'm not sure how successful that has been as, quite a few families in our group left in the room with the vicar before reaching the mad house.
 
owentaylor121 said:
Absolutely not! The park is looking fantastic, I think that's completely unfair to say that, when they have just refurbished The Haunting, adding a high ropes corse and added the new zoo addition, plus many different things around the park like new food outlets, etc.
Click to expand...
There have been improvements, sure - but in terms of rides the main park of 2016 is almost unchanged since 2011, when Ben 10 was introduced. Air Race was installed but Excalibur and (probably) Pirate Adventure have gone.

Thomas Land is the beating heart of Drayton Manor and the reason it continues to prosper. ROI on £1m in Thomas Land would be phenomenal compared to the same in the main park.

Both areas serve a purpose, but Thomas Land is where it's at in terms of the park's identity.
 
Rick said:
There have been improvements, sure - but in terms of rides the main park of 2016 is almost unchanged since 2011, when Ben 10 was introduced. Air Race was installed but Excalibur and (probably) Pirate Adventure have gone.

Thomas Land is the beating heart of Drayton Manor and the reason it continues to prosper. ROI on £1m in Thomas Land would be phenomenal compared to the same in the main park.

Both areas serve a purpose, but Thomas Land is where it's at in terms of the park's identity.
Click to expand...
I didn't say Thomas Land wasn't though? I know that Thomas Land is what keeps the park going and is the main draw to the place, but I still think it's completely unfair to say Drayton only focus and care about that area of the park.
They don't need to add ride after ride to show they still care about the park, the amount of maintenence and upkeep that has gone into the main park buts most other UK parks to shame IMO.
 
Improvements are one thing, but in this industry big capex projects are a good marker in terms of how a division is performing within the company. Look at the investiture at Chessington vs. Garda or Heide.

I'm not suggesting the park is abandoned, in fact I think we are both saying the exact same, albeit in different ways.
 
He does use a few "illegal moves" every now and then, just to warn you.
<insert something Drayton related here>
 
Did Drayton for the first time in six years yesterday (not going to count that waste of time Christmases event I made the mistake of doing a few years back), just like to share a few opinions of the place.

Park operations:
Finally found a place worse than chessington for operations. Park advertised as 10:30 opening, so we decided to wait five minutes for g-force, only for the ride op to run out and tell us that it won't be opening for 10:30. Since we had been watching shockwave testing (and g-force hadn't tested yet), we thought it might be quicker to go over to shockwave and come back to g-force later. We were greeted by another ride op, who told us shockwave will open 10 minutes late. 40 minutes later, the first train dispatched (special mention here goes to the lad in the queue who opened his bag, to have a large bottle of vodka roll out, which he insisted was water). Later, operations didn't seem to get much better, with pandemonium, the staff seemed to have absolutely no idea what they were doing, and the op on haunting was on the phone through the preshow.

The haunting
Was expecting good things, or at least decent after the refurb. Throughput was clearly not thought about when Drayton decided to put one member of staff on this ride, meaning that the queue moved once every ten or so minutes. The preshow wasn't bad, hard to see the screens but that's minor. The next preshow room was decent, went on a bit, but nice. Could have been a bit shorter, but I'm guessing that if there was more staff that this room would beto allow more groups through while one group is in the madhouse itself. As for the madhouse, Drayton have overdone the UV, and it lacked any finale like hex.

The rides
Some quite good rides here. Could have definitely sed some single rider queues as I was called forwards often for apocalypse and others. Stand out ride has got to be apocalypse, though I was impressed by maelstrom and shockwave to. Can't explain why, but the bounty is by far the most terrifying pirate ship I've been on. Left my seat several times. Ben 10 had a more powerful launch than I remember, and drunken barrels was fun. The worse rides: wild west shootout was a waste of time and pandemonium to ages to load, and the haunting was just bad.

Overall, a good day. Won't be returning for a while. Nothing to bring me back. Just hope air race is open next time


And as much as I hate to give the mail clicks, I found this. Can't help but compare that to the woman not allowed on smiler as she had one hand. Not really news if it could have been a danger (and yesterday I did see a lot of people walk off the lift hill of stormforce 10)
 
G-force always seems to open late without fail. There was only a couple of hours left of the park open when it finally started running the last time I went.
They seem to have a lot of problems with shockwave and stormforce 10 as well. Was very disappointing the last time I went and I'd hoped they'd clean their act up this year
 
Don't think any of the rides were open before 10:45, coasters, rapids and maelstrom around 11ish. Stormforce didn't open until about 12 (even then, only a few full boats were sent before it closed again for a while.absolutely shocking, if it happened at Towers I can't imagine what the reaction would be.
 
That's really not good, the same thing happened regarding rides opening late a few weeks back but I hoped it was a one off!
 
Leah said:
the bounty is by far the most terrifying pirate ship I've been on. Left my seat several times.
Click to expand...
i 100% agree with you- once i sat at the very back and literally felt like i was going to fall out! it's one of the best pirate-ship rides in the UK, one of my personal favorite flats at the park (after Maelstrom, my main favorite, and no, i haven't conquered Apocalypse yet- one day, hopefully!) edit- this also explains why it's listed as a "thrill ride" on the website.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top