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London Entertainment Resort: All Discussion

I'm refusing to be too optimistic about this project until construction is well underway. Anyone who has read Tales from the Towers will realise that during the 80s, there were countless large scale theme park projects planned that all had government backing and what seemed like the necessary level of investment available to make them a reality. For a number of reasons, most of these never came to fruition. The only one that ever opened was Britannia Park but this was dramatically scaled back from the concepts and quickly closed before it reopened as American Adventure.

Another factor that I'm dubious of is Paramount. Theme park wise, everything they have become involved with has been less than successful. Their parks in the US were basically amusement parks and featured very little theming save for a few rides. These parks ended up neglected and saw almost no ride investment in the years before Cedar Fair bought them up. Paramount were also brought in to turn around Terra Mitica but it didn't work out. The plan for a Paramount park in Dubai fell through and the last I heard of Paramount Park in Spain, it was still a dusty wasteland. I realise that Paramount are only contributing intellectual property to this project but I'm thinking that it might not be a coincidence that they have seen so little success in all of their previous theme park ventures.

The thing is that however good their Intellectual Properties are (and they have some very strong ones), when it comes to theme parks, Paramount is quite a weak brand. They simply don't have the pedigree of either Disney or Universal and they have 50 odd years of catching up to do in that area. To build a park on the scale of a Universal or Disney Park without those names and to expect similar visitor numbers from the word go is very ambitious. I'm not convinced that Paramount has the brand power to attract international guests.

The other thing that makes me skeptical is that even if it opens, I'm not convinced that a park like this will work in the UK, least of all right next to London. John Wardley has mentioned before in interviews how UK parks and rides need to be specifically tailored to a UK audience and that the quirks and oddities of our parks probably wouldn't work elsewhere. It's the same reason a Disney park doesn't work on the outskirts of Paris and why Six Flags couldn't successfully apply their formula in Holland and Belgium.

This project doesn't seem to be particularly tailored to a UK audience and has more in common with the types of park being built in China currently. I would be less skeptical if there were a history of large parks opening from scratch and doing well here but almost all successful UK theme parks have either been developed from other types of attractions or have evolved over the decades from small beginnings.
  • Alton was a tourist attraction in one form or another for almost a century before it became a theme park.
  • Chessington was a zoo.
  • Thorpe started out as a cultural and historical attraction before becoming a theme park.
  • Drayton Manor was a small zoo and amusement park started just after the war.
  • Flamingoland was a zoo.
  • Lightwater Valley started life as a pick your own attraction!

Oakwood is perhaps the only park that can claim to be a successful greenfield theme park but even they started small.

I'm not trying to be overly negative. I do believe that the UK desperately needs something to break Merlin's stranglehold on the industry. However, currently everything about this project is setting off alarm bells for me.
 
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I think you make a compelling argument against the specifics @CGM except I believe that Universal is not "quirky" like arguably DLP is. The other concerns you raise though really do have precedent
 
There are good arguments for being optimistic and there are good arguments for being pessimistic. I'm being optimistic because at least it is being planned and advanced. Something is happening, who know's what the outcome will be. At least with something happening there is a chance, even if it it's a small one (I actually think it's a pretty good chance), of there being a final product that we can look forward.

If this exact same thing was happening over in the States or Asia I bet many people would be cursing that they didn't choose the UK and asking why we don't get these new theme park developments. This time though the development is in the UK. I think that's something to enjoy and speculate about in this stage, and if it doesn't happen it doesn't happen.

:)
 
I'm still fairly confident that this will go ahead. It will be something new and refreshing as well. By the time it does open, the UK would have gone 24 years without a new park.

But at the moment, it's more or less a game of wait and see.
 
Blaze said:
Even if this did end up just being a glorified amusement park like Six Flags, so what? It'd still be a major new park and competition for Merlin.

At this point I'm pretty confident it will go ahead and be a proper, fully fledged rival to DLP though.
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The type of park isn't the issue that I was getting at (although I'm sure that most of us would prefer it to be a fully themed, immersive experience). It's more the fact that Paramount have some form when it comes to attaching their name to lacklustre parks and projects that never get off the ground. I'm thinking that this may not be entirely down to bad luck.

I don't see how the project can be a rival to DLRP, not for at least a decade after opening in any case. Europa is a well established park that most enthusiasts consider to be a better theme park resort than DLRP. Yet Disney still gets twice as many visitors annually (and it's considered to be under-performing).

I'm convinced that the biggest factor in this is Disney's reputation. Disney has an aura about it that can attract people from all across the continent. They also have the means to market their parks internationally. Their films, their TV channels, their high street shops, their cruise line and their parks are all part of the same seamless mega-brand. Simply building a park with a movie studio's name above the gate won't be enough to compete with this in my view. Even Universal's strategy has always been to ride on Disney's coat tails rather than to compete directly. It's only recently that they've began to step out of Disney's shadow.

Let's also not forget, Disney rejected the idea of building a park near London as they felt it would be too difficult to reach from mainland Europe.
 
The only reason most kids get taken to Disney is that the vast majority of parents have never heard of any other parks, so are unaware that better places exist.
 
Blaze said:
Even if this did end up just being a glorified amusement park like Six Flags, so what? It'd still be a major new park and competition for Merlin.

At this point I'm pretty confident it will go ahead and be a proper, fully fledged rival to DLP though.
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There are lots of "theme parks" in the UK, a higher concentration per head of population than most countries. If you want to see Merlin challenged then this is to be a theme experience par excellence.


DiogoJ42 said:
The only reason most kids get taken to Disney is that the vast majority of parents have never heard of any other parks, so are unaware that better places exist.
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I know you have a inherent hate for Disney but overall their theme parks are the best in the world. Even DLRP exceeded against most until they stopped caring the last two years.

CGM has pretty much addressed all my concerns well, it's not for lack of wanting the park (I don't like any of the southparks much anyway and they will likely get the biggest hit) and think the UK needs one. But a lot of alarm bells are ringing on this, primarily for me it's the number of individual investors who will want a return. Roller coasters are a slow return investment, not something banks like these days.

Something will get built, just worried it won't be what we want.
 
Disney thinking London would be too difficult to reach was 25 odd years ago... Unsurprisingly, this is not the case today considering London is one of the most visited cities in the entire world...

All that needs to be ensured is that the park appeals to a British/European audience as the primary objective... Would rather them bring a more continental theme park culture to our shores, as that will really make a difference to the UK industry...
 
People forget that in past 25 years we've had budget airlines and eurotunnel to really open access.

Still though, 15 million? what are they counting? everyone who goes to work or appears anywhere near their premises every single day?! I would've thought a comfortable 5 million would make more sense.
 
It's looking like it will be half theme park and half entertainment complex/water park to me. Does anyone know how high they will be able to build as I would imagine they could build higher than the big one and could go for tallest coaster and possibly fastest stealing thorpes audience and chessington will surely suffer with quite a lot of rides at places such as Disney and universal family friendly if this is family target then chessington and legoland will suffer most and I could imagine it wouldn't help with thorpe trying to become more family friendly. First new theme park in the uk for ages if it goes ahead and hinting at a woodie, I like it. Just hope it happens now!
 
An interview with Mike Bartok, EVP-Licensing at Paramount Pictures makes for a very interesting read alongside a glimpse at some early concept work :) It certainly gives an insight into what we could see at the park, link is at the bottom as there wasn't enough room for the whole article :p

53d62a3741b16-paramount-london.jpg

Early concept work for Paramount Park Kent

Blooloop said:
Star Trek to The Godfather: Mike Bartok, EVP- Licensing at Paramount Pictures Talks IP and Theme Parks
28 July 2014

How is Paramount looking to leverage IP?
Not as an owner anymore - we sold the parks and focussed on IP. We've shifted from being an owner operator to being a licensor, designer and non-financial partner in the projects we're participating in.

We do get involved in terms of the strategy for the ongoing operations. We consult with our partners and have varied roles - obviously with our experience of running parks we're in a different position than many of the other content licensors. We're not an operator but we're a fairly active business partner.

How is the Paramount theme park in Murcia progressing?

Paramount%20Park%20Spain%20Aerial%20600(2).jpg


It's going quite well. Building a theme park is like building a city and its going to take a bit of time, but our development partner has commenced the infrastructure on the project and we're anticipating beginning the attraction construction in the next few months. Hopefully the park will be open to the public sometime in 2016. We haven't set an official date yet but the park has been fully designed and we feel the next step is to build it.

We're really excited about it. We think of it as the next generation of theme park using all the cutting edge technology that's available to us as well as putting into our programme a commitment to sustainability and green technology which is something that theme parks haven't been known for in the past - we're very committed to incorporating that and being sustainable.

The parks we owned, the ones we sold, we bought them and rebranded then and they were really good. But we're really excited to have the opportunity to design and see come to fruition a“ground-up”Paramount park. When you rebrand you pick and choose, you don't rebrand everything, and as you add attractions you overlay your brand. When you build form the ground up every inch of it is Paramount which is cool.

Each land will have its own feel; every place that you walk you'll have some theming either from the movies or Paramount, or the Southern California lifestyle which we're trying to incorporate.

And what stage is the UK theme park at?
That's still in quite an early stage. We've done some early concept work [see header image]. Planning and approval processes in the UK are quite lengthy but our development partner in the UK has made some good progress and we're anticipating that we'll receive planning approvals in the near future, and with the design work we'll be able to move the project forward.

Please can you tell us about Paramount's ventures into hotels?
We signed an agreement a couple of years ago and have made some great progress. I recently came back from Dubai where we've licensed out a chain of Paramount branded hotels. We have six in development and a couple of them are under construction in Dubai.

They're different than you'd find next to a theme park - not themed hotels like you would find in Orlando. They're luxury high end hotels which have the tag line“inspired by timeless Hollywood elegance.”We're using the Paramount brand as a luxury brand playing on 5* hotel properties.

There's certainly going to be a lot to do with Paramount and Hollywood but softer – the artwork will be in there, our libraries will be available for on demand, but it's not themed. So you won't have one floor themed as Star Trek. The branding will be key, and we've worked with our partner to come up with some designs that are inspired by Paramount Hollywood elegance.

And what about other attractions: live shows and restaurants?
We've licensed out a variety of properties to Broadway and other types of productions. That's not the largest part of our business but it's ongoing and the past few years we've had Ghost, Fame and we've just opened Fatal Attraction in London.

We licensed the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company which is a great business and was purchased a couple of years ago by Landry's Restaurants. Bubba Gump is in up to 40 locations around the world and has been a great business for us.

Looking at other IPs which may be suitable, we're doing a lot of things which I would say are reduced scale versions of theme parks. They're more like entertainment centres for markets which don't have the scale that can support theme parks or the large investment in infrastructure that's necessary. For example here in North America in the malls we have big boxes like Sears which aren't contemporary any more. We're looking at what type of entertainment could fill those big boxes in a mall environment which would bring traffic into the mall and would be financially beneficial to the mall owner/operators. We've been working on a couple of projects both domestically and internationally which are in early level concept and are exciting opportunities.

Are there any Star Trek Attractions being developed?
We really only do stand-alone attractions with Star Trek as we have a great history with it. We have the one in Las Vegas and we're fairly far along in terms of completing the film for the project in Jordan [The Red Sea Astrarium] with Bad Robot which should be very exciting. That's going to be a centrepiece attraction with incredible, state-of-the-art technology. It's more than just a film, it will be the first attraction ever made to be 4D with actual freefall mechanisms in there. It should be fantastic and with Bad Robot involved we will have that authenticity.

Star Trek fans are keen on authenticity. Does this present special challenges when developing an attraction?
Actually Star Trek is a great and one of our creatives' favourites because it's so vast.

The Star Trek universe has been created on both film and TV, so for the attractions that we've done every inch has been viewed and has to be authentic. Some of the other IPs can be a little lighter but for the Star Trek World, it really requires full commitment creatively and financially to pull it off.

Star%20Trek%20Jordan%20Exterior%20600.jpg


Which locations do you think are particularly exciting for the future of IP development?
We've looked in many places. Without being too specific, there's a lot of great markets in Asia, China especially and the Middle East. Those are areas that have our significant attention. We've had the good fortune to have a couple of projects in Europe, which is a mature market but were excited about it. Asia is very great opportunity with growing economies. We've also had some success in the Middle East, particularly with our hotel projects, and we'd like to expand that into successes in the theme park and attraction world as well.

We looked many years ago at Brazil and Argentina but there's not as much development going on in those markets right now as there is in Asia and the Middle East. Perhaps after the World Cup is finished. Like on the UK project, after the Olympics there's all this infrastructure in place now to be capitalised on. I think Brazil and Argentina are interesting opportunities.

How do you choose or adapt the use of the IP for each geographical market?
Whenever we design something we look which of our properties resonate in those markets. Most of our projects would include iconic ones like Star Trek and Mission Impossible which are globally popular. But in Spain for example Westerns are very popular. We have a nice collection of western films in our library but our western area is all going to be themed on Rango which turned out to be very popular in Spain. (Johnny Depp was the lead in that film and he is incredibly popular in Spain.) In some other markets I don't know that we would ended up with a Rango Land rather than a Rango attraction but it's turned out that it's going to be one of the coolest part of the park.

So we really do look at everything locally and see what works. In Spain people also like to sit down and have a long meal at theme parks whereas most places on the world they don't. So we're going to have a few restaurants where you can sit down and have a wonderful meal for two hours.

The Godfather is one of our prestige properties and is treated with a lot of reverence and we have a“Corleones”which is going to be fantastic fine Italian dining in the park.
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Source
 
I know it's only concept art but is that some kind of mental robo arm coaster in the background?!
 
Looks like that ;) I love this idea!!! A new paramount park would be great in England, and I would love one, but its gonna have some major downsides as well. Theres a feed over at TowersTimes that pretty much says the same, some people quite sceptical but far as im aware the majority think its gonna be great!
 
I love the idea of the Paramount Mountain being the centre piece of the park, it somehow feels that it is just right :)

Ian
 
The beautiful sight of the Paramount mountain so you don't have you look have to look at the industrial area on the other side of the river thames :p

Seriously though, if the park is like the concept art, then I'll be very pleased!
 
Looks nice. But I'm still sitting on the fence and staying in the "I'll believe it when I see it" group. It's still in early stages and that has happened with loads of big UK theme park concepts in the past. Hope this progresses further though.
 
There's no way they'd build what's in that artwork anyway, and you can't blame them. Those sci-fi-esque buildings, the mountain, temple / palace and the roller coaster alone would cost a stupid amount of money, and that's only a fraction of what they'd need for a theme park. It's also ignoring the entertainment area too - something which was at the heart of the original plan (have they changed, because this looks nothing at all like those plans which were leaked originally?).
 
I also find that artwork meaningless. It has a Robo-Coaster on it so you know it won't happen.

What I'm looking for is the first sign of something that shows they really know what they are doing. For example a planning application with realistic and detailed design work or a large document explaining how they'll be dealing with crowd management.
 
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