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Drayton Manor Park

Themeparksandy1981 said:
It is a shame for a ride originally opening in 1976 and closed in 2001 for it to be replaced with Excalibur which was always hit and miss with what worked and lasted to the end of the 2011 season.
I hope with the looping group getting the safari pizza show back up and running they repair or replace the fisherman in the queue line and the life guard at the top of Stormforce 10 1st drop to work again.
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Well the original Henry Freeman animatronic is sadly gone, which is a shame because Farmer Studios animatronics were built to a completely different standard. way more labour hours and hand sculpting were put into their props. Nowadays theme park props are mostly done on Cnc or 3D printers. Which unfortunately means lower quality a lot of the time.
They went under only a couple of years after they did Stormforce 10.

Is it even worth restoring the current fisherman animatronic though? @Themeparksandy1981 ? He was done on the cheap, I think around the time that the RNLI sponsorship deal ended. A lot of the refurb jobs were cheaply done around that time. See Haunting and Sheriffs Showdown as a prime example. Even though I personally like Accelerator and its theme, a lot of that was just Ben 10 cladded over.

DistortAMG said:
All of those investments were made by Colin. He was the MD of the park from the 70's. He was the ultimate decision maker up until past 2010.
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Not really, most of those investments you mention were down to Richard Pawley, not Colin. Richard left the Drayton board to join Simworx in the mid 2010s, and you will notice a big change in investment after that time period (debt from the hotel probably played a part in that too).

Pawley was the powerhouse behind the big Drayton ride capex projects, going back to Pirate Adventure/early 90s. He worked with a lot of the designers & manufacturers in ride development stages. The Bryans focused more on entertainment & general operations.
 
Sauron97 said:
Not really, most of those investments you mention were down to Richard Pawley, not Colin. Richard left the Drayton board to join Simworx in the mid 2010s, and you will notice a big change in investment after that time period (debt from the hotel played a part in that too).

Pawley was the powerhouse behind the big Drayton ride capex projects, going back to Pirate Adventure/early 90s. He worked with a lot of the designers & manufacturers in ride development stages. The Bryans focused more on entertainment & general operations.
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They were down to Colin. Colin was the managing director. Colin, along with his parents ultimately gave any project the green light or not. As they controlled the finances and had ultimate control of the park.

I totally agree he was the diving force behind making them happen. But ultimately, non would happen unless the Bryan's made the finances avaliable.

I guess in a sense we are both right, as Richard Pawley, not to be confused with Edward Pawley, was a key driving visionary in building some of the large attractions of that era. But his visions would only go so far without the money money being made avalaible by Colin and his parents.
 
Yeah that's true, financially, and on paper at least. Although the Pawley's held shares in the business too during earlier years, it's worth pointing out. But yes, I get your point, and agree, Colin was MD after all. I was more talking about the investment & ride development decisions themseleves, than financial control.

When it comes to investment decisions, given that they were a private family business, it's quite hard to know who had the most overall leverage. A lot of them had separate skills and talents which were needed for the park to operate. One thing is for sure though, losing Richard Pawley hurt them badly. He was a brilliant beacon of talent at the park, and was a major force in turning Drayton from a fairground in to a park with major rides and a nationwide brand.
 
I think the best decision they did was buying the Thomas IP as much as the looping group has invested in the Adventure Cove and Vikings area Thomas land is the main draw to the park.

Sauron97 said:
Is it even worth restoring the current fisherman animatronic though? @Themeparksandy1981 ? He was done on the cheap, I think around the time that the RNLI sponsorship deal ended.
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Yeah not really as the queue doesn’t get that busy for it so many just not notice him. Which is a shame as when he did work he was quite an impressive animatronic. They could at least repair the the man who launched the boats as all that moved was his arm.
 
I've had a email from them about a short break stay which will also include a silver fast pass.

I didnt think they offered any fastrack of any description there ?
 
Relife said:
It's quite amazing work has yet to start on the new coaster, all the good weather wasted especially for foundations. Not a chance this will open before summer next year.
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There is a chance as we don’t know anything about the coaster - the size, type how much ground work is needed etc. while they might be planning a Spring or Summer opening rather than start of the season at this point there is still time for a coaster to fully constructed for Easter.
 
Dave said:
If that was the case wouldn’t all theme parks be experiencing the same trend? As far as we can tell that’s not the case.
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Quite simply because people are spending there money at bigger parks for one off yearly trips rather then perhaps people in the Midlands doing both Alton Towers and Drayton. It's obviously the cost of living crisis.
 
Dave said:
If that was the case wouldn’t all theme parks be experiencing the same trend? As far as we can tell that’s not the case.
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Maybe it’s because people were excited by Vikings last year and the new rides boosted visitor numbers whereby in 2023 the park only added a little kiddie flume that’s it’s hard to get too excited about. I’m sure that when the new coaster opens next season it will bring a lot of people in to the park.
 
You do wonder why the rush to remove Apocalypse if they didn't need all this time for ground work. Apocalypse was removed in a couple of weeks with some ground clearance after that but nothing seems to have happened in the construction site for months. They could even have kept it for part way into this season perhaps until the end of summer holidays if they didn't need that much time. I notice the foundations have all been left in place. Do we think they might reuse this for a replacement drop tower with the new coaster?
 
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