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Is there a future for second tier parks in the UK?

AstroDan

AstroDan

TS Team
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The management are clearly lying about considering its future.

You let it rot. Idiots.

Paultons aside, our second tier parks really are crap aren't they. Look at what the small to medium sized parks in France and Germany are doing and it's staggering to see what LWV are doing.

Team Edit: The start of this topic consists of posts moved from the Lightwater Valley topic. As the discussion is moving into a general discussion about the state of second tier parks in the UK, we've created an individual topic for discussion to continue.
 
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It's actually pretty depressing what passes for a 'theme park' in this country these days. Devon is full of them: Crealy, the Big Sheep, Woodlands. All style themselves as 'theme parks' and yet the best any of them has to offer is a couple of kiddie coasters.

I've started to think that this is just what the majority of people in this country seem to want - just somewhere to take their preschool-aged kids to amuse them for a few hours. Enthusiasts aside, unless you have children under five it seems that the concept of going to a theme park doesn't seem to occur to a lot of people as an enjoyable activity. Proper parks - i.e. those with decent thrill rides - seem to just be targeted at teenagers and once you hit twenty it's expected that you'll stop going to parks until you yourself are a parent and then all you'll want to do is hang around Cbeebies Land all day. Within that landscape, it's not surprising that the regional parks seem such sad affairs.
 
AstroDan said:
The management are clearly lying about considering its future.

You let it rot. Idiots.

Paultons aside, our second tier parks really are crap aren't they. Look at what the small to medium sized parks in France and Germany are doing and it's staggering to see what LWV are doing.
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I'd argue Poultons and Drayton are decent second tier parks. Lightwater Valley is clearly third tier who's main competitors are now Gulliver's. The idea that Kids don't want exciting fast rides is a myth, I worry for the future at Lightwater Valley. I certainly don't have any intention of visiting in the future.
 
Relife said:
I'd argue Poultons and Drayton are decent second tier parks. Lightwater Valley is clearly third tier who's main competitors are now Gulliver's. The idea that Kids don't want exciting fast rides is a myth, I worry for the future at Lightwater Valley. I certainly don't have any intention of visiting in the future.
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Drayton Manor remains solid for families, but don't be fooled. They have gone from installing Intamin flat rides, drop towers and thrill coasters 20 years ago to leafing through the Zamperla catalogue and painting them pretty colours. Way better than what is going on at LWV but it is hardly comparable with what we see at a litany of European second-tier parks such as Nigloland, Le Pal, Fraispertuis City, Hansa-Park, Tripsdrill - the list goes on.
 
Now that it's been mentioned, come to think of it, second tier parks in the UK are crap aren't they? Living where I do, I thought it was just a west country thing but a quick look through the websites of some of the places I've never been to (like LWV) there's very little on offer in the rest of country that stands apart from the likes of Brean and Crealy.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, the second tiers have Intamins, B&Ms and Macks. Outside of Paultons, Flamingo and possibly Oakwood it's pretty much a handful of Zamperla flats and some slides and that's your lot.

Mind you, looking at the top tier in the UK, it's quite fitting I suppose.
 
Matt.GC said:
Now that it's been mentioned, come to think of it, second tier parks in the UK are crap aren't they? Living where I do, I thought it was just a west country thing but a quick look through the websites of some of the places I've never been to (like LWV) there's very little on offer in the rest of country that stands apart from the likes of Brean and Crealy.
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You've never been to Scotland then...makes the offering down south look like you're spoiled for choice.

Regarding roughest UK coaster now that Ultimate is no longer with us, I'd likely say that PMBO was the roughest I've been on as late, more so than Smiler which IMO found actually rather fine for the most part though it with lap bars would have made a world of difference but I'm rambling here.
 
Matt.GC said:
Now that it's been mentioned, come to think of it, second tier parks in the UK are crap aren't they? Living where I do, I thought it was just a west country thing but a quick look through the websites of some of the places I've never been to (like LWV) there's very little on offer in the rest of country that stands apart from the likes of Brean and Crealy.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, the second tiers have Intamins, B&Ms and Macks. Outside of Paultons, Flamingo and possibly Oakwood it's pretty much a handful of Zamperla flats and some slides and that's your lot.

Mind you, looking at the top tier in the UK, it's quite fitting I suppose.
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I’d argue we have quite a few fairly decent ones. Paultons is excellent, Flamingo Land looks decent, Oakwood is fairly decent, Drayton Manor is decent and seems to be on the up, Fantasy Island looks decent with its two big Vekomas, Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach has the Roller Coaster, Pleasurewood Hills looks decent, Adventure Island looks decent, Dreamland Margate has the Scenic Railway… I could go on!

Admittedly, our non-Merlin parks don’t generally seem as prosperous as those abroad with the possible exceptions of Paultons and Drayton, but I don’t think that can necessarily be blamed on the parks themselves. Given that many of them seem to be similar, I’m not sure it’s necessarily down to one individual park’s strategy.

I do almost reckon that the relative lack of prosperity within many of our second tier parks could be worthy of a discussion in itself, but from memory, I already made a topic…
 
There are of course lots of factors at play as to why second tier parks may perform better abroad than in the UK, but in the case of France, which was mentioned earlier in the thread I would imagine that geography plays a big part.

As a country with a similar population to the UK it’s a good comparator, but bear in mind France is twice the size in terms of land mass. For your average theme park visitor that perhaps wants a family day out you are more likely to visit a more local park than have to go to the effort and expense of booking days off work, paying for hotels etc in order to travel to the top tier parks - and for this reason these local parks achieve higher attendances and have the money to invest in better attractions etc.

In the UK the likes of Alton Towers are more accessible to people in terms of travel distances and so the local parks lose out, and the downward spiral of less guests = less investment kicks in.
 
AT86 said:
There are of course lots of factors at play as to why second tier parks may perform better abroad than in the UK, but in the case of France, which was mentioned earlier in the thread I would imagine that geography plays a big part.

As a country with a similar population to the UK it’s a good comparator, but bear in mind France is twice the size in terms of land mass. For your average theme park visitor that perhaps wants a family day out you are more likely to visit a more local park than have to go to the effort and expense of booking days off work, paying for hotels etc in order to travel to the top tier parks - and for this reason these local parks achieve higher attendances and have the money to invest in better attractions etc.

In the UK the likes of Alton Towers are more accessible to people in terms of travel distances and so the local parks lose out, and the downward spiral of less guests = less investment kicks in.
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That doesn’t explain, however, why some parks in Europe seem more prosperous with less guests than the similarly sized UK parks.

As an example; Toverland built a B&M coaster and huge new entrance area in 2018. This followed a big expansion with a Mack spinner and rapids ride in 2012 and a huge GCI woodie in 2007. In spite of this, they only hit 1 million guests for the first time in 2022, and prior to that, their attendance record was 862,000 in 2019.

By comparison, Drayton Manor was said to have received 1.2 million guests in 2019, beating even Toverland’s current record by a good 25%, yet the park was widely perceived as “struggling” and “on its last legs” in 2019.

It truly is baffling…
 
Matt N said:
I’d argue we have quite a few fairly decent ones. Paultons is excellent, Flamingo Land looks decent, Oakwood is fairly decent, Drayton Manor is decent and seems to be on the up, Fantasy Island looks decent with its two big Vekomas, Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach has the Roller Coaster, Pleasurewood Hills looks decent, Adventure Island looks decent, Dreamland Margate has the Scenic Railway… I could go on!
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Out of that list 4 are seaside parks (so just kind of ok but not worth a full day at), Pleasurewood Hills hasn't got a lot going for it, Oakwood been run into the ground for years (and has a few similarities with LWV).

Fantasy Island is a bigger seaside resort in a dumpy area where half the actual park is a dodgy marketplace. The Pyramid is weirdly nice but again only worth a few hours.

Flamingoland let's itself down with awful operations. The zoo is good though. Park itself is a big mishmash of ideas and a lot of focus on the caravan site they have as well.

All in all the second tier parks are generally rubbish. Drayton didn't exactly have a good selection of rides. Blackpool lives in its own little world and Paultons is the only one that seems to be striving to be better.

Perhaps many consider the days of Camelot and American Adventure as warnings. But that we've had about 3 parks close in my lifetime makes me wonder if the appetite is even there at the moment.

The Dutch and Belgian parks are probably better examples to look at though in what they are doing to improve themselves.
 
I can add that Loudoun Castle did have ambitions to go places and even in the final years was making great strides to become a true 'themed' park but just had a lack of money to really do much and perhaps its location was a little out of the way compared to M&D's which you have to admit is probably the best location for any UK theme park in terms of accessibility and had that park been run well by something like Paulton's then it not only would have been one the best theme parks in the country but actually getting pretty good visitor figures.

Looking back on Loudoun wasn't just its location as it had a 1980's Alton Towers feel about but the poor marketing which really killed it as had they made the most of then they would have likely still been here, maybe following a path as what Paulton's is on right now and to give you an idea of how badly marketed or lack thereof of the place that when it closed, those in nearby Kilmarnock weren't even aware there was a theme park on their doorstep in the first place let alone that it had closed which really says a lot of how much bad luck it had suffer with the only over note about being the tragic accident which only made matters worse.

Suppose really that Loudoun is likely not the only one to suffer from that though I'm aware marketing costs can be expensive which can likely eat into a park's budget which is likely is key to get people through the gates so it really is a double edged sword. You throw money at new big rides that while good no one will turn up or the other fact that you do promote the park to get the attention it needs yet have no new attractions to get people excited about for going in the first place, a dilemma indeed.
 
I disagree it's a geographical thing when compared to the likes of France. The poor Celtic nations seem to be the worst serviced with large parts of Devon, all of Cornwall, some parts of Wales and most of Scotland being many hours drive away from any of the higher tier parks in the country. Granted they're all reasonably sparsely populated but so is much of France? And many of the parks in France aren't very far apart from each other.

I don't think it has anything to do with there not being a large market for coasters, thrills and theme parks in the UK. There's a massive appetite in my experience.

Last year when we asked our elderly neighbours to put our bins out whilst we were away, we told them where we were going and they told us they'd been to both Phantasialand and Europa. Someone I work with was telling me the other day about their retirement plans for Spain in a few years time and she was telling me about Portadventura. A family friend got a PA trip as a Christmas present. I have 2 work colleagues in DLP next week and 1 off to Florida in the summer. A holiday request came through a few weeks ago that simply read "Efteling trip" and it turns out she's a passholder. Interviewing someone today, the interviewee spent 10 mins telling me about how beautiful Tokyo Disneysea is. I met a guy in the pub before Christmas who had just come back from a purpose made trip to Energylandia.

There's of course economic factors and I think local authority planning plays a massive role in this too. But I don't think it's an appetite for it from UK punters that's the problem. I think it's a lot to do with the big player Merlin having such a monopoly. And when the big boy company that dominates the market delivers such poor products that would hardly qualify as "Top tier" in many other countries, that's what the standard of the UK industry becomes.

Although I'm hoping there's a little place in Hampshire right now who are planning to disrupt the status quo.
 
Matt.GC said:
I disagree it's a geographical thing when compared to the likes of France.
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On this subject is France's second tear of parks very good? To me they look no better than ours, actually in some cases I think ours are better but that's objectively as I haven't visited any French parks.
 
JAperson said:
On this subject is France's second tear of parks very good? To me they look no better than ours, actually in some cases I think ours are better but that's objectively as I haven't visited any French parks.
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Nigloland's pretty good.
 
Nigloland is like a mini Europa Park.

Le Pal looks really good.

Walygator is a dreadful place.

Think France is very hit and miss overall. Lot of tatty fair like parks in the south.
 
The situation with the second tier parks in the UK is no different to the headline parks. We peaked in the 90s and none of our parks (except Paultons) have been able to grow beyond that since.
Its incredible to think that in the early 2000s Alton Towers was a better park than Europa*. You could even make the case that it was the best park in Europe. But its been coasting on that reputation for years and I don't think the UK public have realised that.

*At the very least the lineup had a broader appeal.
 
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I think the big difference with European parks to Uk parks is Merlin Entertainments and the Annual pass when you can visit around 30 attractions across the uk.
I had a Drayton Manor pass since 2017 but it’s less than 30 mins away.
I think it’s unfair to say the Devon parks are rubbish and I been going to Watermouth castle since 1988 and they add new attractions when they can been family run.
When I went to Milky Way 5 years ago it may not had lots of rides but everything was included in the price with shows going on all the time.
Going to Crealy last year which I thought was excellent and cost only £20 each and you got a free return visit within 7 days. My kids really enjoyed themselves which is the main reason to visit the parks.
 
Fraispertuis City isn't even a second-tier park in France, yet it has an abundance of charm and personality that the likes of our second-tier parks simply cannot match. It's very much their version of our former American Adventure. However, it's having money pumped into it to make something quite special at the moment. Even Slagharen, the Dutch version of American Adventure, has been done quite well. I've always thought that parks focusing on one theme were needlessly backing themselves into a creative corner, but as with plenty of things these days, the Europeans are showing us how it's done properly.

There is no comparison between second-tier parks in the UK and abroad. We are repulsively inferior.
 
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