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London Entertainment Resort: All Discussion

As much as I loathe spiders, I agree with Meat Pie; I'm not saying the park shouldn't be built, but perhaps the spiders could be rehomed in an environment as similar as possible to their current one? Extinction seems a little harsh, even for our eight-legged nemeses.
 
Harvey. said:
As much as I loathe spiders, I agree with Meat Pie; I'm not saying the park shouldn't be built, but perhaps the spiders could be rehomed in an environment as similar as possible to their current one? Extinction seems a little harsh, even for our eight-legged nemeses.
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I believe that's what they where going to do? I heard an idea was to make that a tourist attraction out of those spiders as well!
 
Does anyone really believe the spider story?

It's just a way of them trying to make an excuse not to build it (I would honestly be surprised if there's any spiders at all on the site). These projects have been appearing in the UK since the early 90s. I'm starting to lose count of how many of these developments come and go!

This will not happen. It will die down now and be forgotten. Only for in 5 years time for another 'amazing' development of a large theme park to come in to the news again.
 
I think what's happening here is that the developers have realised this project isn't very viable, and they want to pull out. However, they've got a crap-load of publicity about it now, and just pulling out will irritate the local people who were looking forward to the ton of new jobs.

They tried with the spider thing, but that just seemed insulting to people's intelligence. So now they're trying this, which is a lot more mundane and seems a lot more plausible. It also shifts the blame away from them and towards everyone's favourite hate figure, the government. But there's a problem...



Kent Online said:
Mr Hammond moved to address concerns about a threat to Paramount Park, saying the government would work with those behind the project.

He told KentOnline: "The government doesn't have a preferred route and I hope people will get involved with this consultation.

"Each of these routes has benefits and disbenefits - what we're saying is that by doing it this way we'll be able to do it more quickly.

"We will examine the evidence and in the autumn we will hopefully announce what route it is and then there will be some detailed modelling.

"Traffic over the next 20 years is likely to increase by 25% and that means we need another crossing.

"I don't have any concerns about Paramount Park. At the moment it's a line on the map and if that the route we choose we'll be working with the park to ensure it's fully compatible."
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Bloody government, getting in the way by being competent and reasonable!

There's the proof that this is just a wheeze. If this park was a serious proposal, then the prospect of the government building a major new road right past your theme park would be a huge benefit to the park, due to the perfect transportation links created at no cost to the developers.
 
So is anything happening at all with this park or are we pretending this never happened?

I read the other day that most people want the bridge to be built to the east of Gravesend as people want it to cross sooner for the larger goods vehicles to be out of the way quicker and to also help the theme park developers (assuming they haven't gone and hidden away until this is all forgotten about completely).

The only problem is that people around the area where the bridge would be built in Gravesend are saying that it would mean building the road through fields which they don't want to happen as they say that other developers will come in and build along it, thus ruining the few fields they have.

I've no idea where the bridge is to go exactly, or whether building it in the current favourite location (east of Gravesend) would actually mean the end of anything green in the area, but it seems like no side wants the theme park to not get built (understandable considering its size and the amount of jobs it would create for the area). I'd love to know more about all of this but there seems to be very little out there right now.

Anyway, I wonder what the next excuse for not building it will be (assuming they come back and say something about it)?
 
Looks like the colony of rare spiders scuppered their grand plans :p

I mean, it's understandable given that the project wasn't backed by a multi-billion pound company.

Oh wait.
 
So after public meetings and MPs discussing the place for the new Thames crossing, it seems that most people would rather there be no new crossing and for option B (the crossing plan which would cut through the middle of the proposed Paramount Park) to be scrapped altogether. Many are suggesting that the tolls be lifted on the existing crossing to see what effect that would have.

An article was published by Kent Online shortly before the meeting and another article was published by the News Shopper afterwards. Over 500 turned out to debate these plans.

The MP Gareth Johnson has also written a response to this development in which he talks about why he's against both options A and B, while the Dartford council leader, Jeremy Kite, has called for David Cameron to scrap option B entirely to ensure potential investors aren't put-off any longer. That too was published in a more recent article on Kent Online.


So with everyone for this theme park, if those behind it no longer want to pursue it, they're going to need to come up with another excuse or own up to not wanting to pursue the plan any further.
 
BigAl said:
...those behind it no longer want to pursue it, they're going to need to come up with another excuse...
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Or a bunch of excuses just to prolong this development further :p
 
Just to put a bit of positive back into this topic it is worth noting that while we have seen many projects like this over the years and most of them never leave the drawing board there is one that did...

Legoland

Now I'm not saying that this project is likely to happen but there is hope that one day a park like this will be built.
 
Tim said:
Just to put a bit of positive back into this topic it is worth noting that while we have seen many projects like this over the years and most of them never leave the drawing board there is one that did...

Legoland

Now I'm not saying that this project is likely to happen but there is hope that one day a park like this will be built.
Click to expand...


Legoland is very different to this in that Legoland was built on an existing safari park. It was an already established tourist attraction and the infrastructure was already in place.
 
Re: New UK theme park anyone? Paramount interested in UK

HaydenCR said:
Tim said:
Just to put a bit of positive back into this topic it is worth noting that while we have seen many projects like this over the years and most of them never leave the drawing board there is one that did...

Legoland

Now I'm not saying that this project is likely to happen but there is hope that one day a park like this will be built.
Click to expand...


Legoland is very different to this in that Legoland was built on an existing safari park. It was an already established tourist attraction and the infrastructure was already in place.
Click to expand...
Well, yes and no.

Lego (ie the Lego Group) did indeed hit gold with the old Windsor Safari Park site, but they considered a number of other sites across the UK when looking to build a theme park here, some of which would have required developing from scratch in the same way as this Paramount proposal.

Also worth noting that although the site did indeed have some infrastructures in place, the conversion from safari park to Legoland was no small feat, and a great, great deal of almost Disney-like thought, planning and design went in to creating a park and infrastructure that just 'works' as a theme park. (Before anyone jumps on me here, I mean precisely what I've written - the design of the park and associated infrastructures is/was excellent; I'm not talking about ride hardware here).

As for Windsor Safari Park already being an "established tourist attraction", although that may have helped slightly, with the clear overlap in guest profiles, I doubt it would've made much difference all in all - very few people would have visited it because it "used to be WSP", but rather because it's Legoland, and equally I'd imagine that, say, Legoland Dartford would, more or less, have been just as successful.
 
Don't worry, there are plenty more excuses they can come up with. After all those spiders are bound to attract birds that want to eat them. They could make up a whole eco system of rare critters with those evil arachnids at the (almost) bottom of the food chain.
 
Islander said:
HaydenCR said:
Tim said:
Just to put a bit of positive back into this topic it is worth noting that while we have seen many projects like this over the years and most of them never leave the drawing board there is one that did...

Legoland

Now I'm not saying that this project is likely to happen but there is hope that one day a park like this will be built.
Click to expand...


Legoland is very different to this in that Legoland was built on an existing safari park. It was an already established tourist attraction and the infrastructure was already in place.
Click to expand...
Well, yes and no.

Lego (ie the Lego Group) did indeed hit gold with the old Windsor Safari Park site, but they considered a number of other sites across the UK when looking to build a theme park here, some of which would have required developing from scratch in the same way as this Paramount proposal.

Also worth noting that although the site did indeed have some infrastructures in place, the conversion from safari park to Legoland was no small feat, and a great, great deal of almost Disney-like thought, planning and design went in to creating a park and infrastructure that just 'works' as a theme park. (Before anyone jumps on me here, I mean precisely what I've written - the design of the park and associated infrastructures is/was excellent; I'm not talking about ride hardware here).

As for Windsor Safari Park already being an "established tourist attraction", although that may have helped slightly, with the clear overlap in guest profiles, I doubt it would've made much difference all in all - very few people would have visited it because it "used to be WSP", but rather because it's Legoland, and equally I'd imagine that, say, Legoland Dartford would, more or less, have been just as successful.
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I think it's also worth noting they opened Legoland California just 3 years later which to my knowledge was built from the ground up so there's no doubt they could have done the same in the UK.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that It all depends on the company. Like Islander said Lego really did plan everything to the finest detail. As I've said before if you can find a copy of "The Ultimate Lego book" it gives a great little glimpse of just how much planning went into the Lego parks (specifically Windsor and California which was still being built at the time). If Paramount have made similarly detailed plans then they could pull this off... the question is if they have.
 
Another recent update:


The Kuwaiti owners of Ebbsfleet United have thrown their financial weight behind plans for a £2billion entertainment complex in Kent.

Kuwaiti European Holdings (KEH) has made a multi-million pound investment in the Paramount Park scheme proposed for the Swanscombe Peninsula.

Sources close to the UK developer London Resort Company Holdings (LRCH), which is spearheading the project, would not disclose the amount but acknowledged it is "a seven-figure sum". The company declined to comment.
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Read more here.
 
Hmm. 7 figures isn't huge given that they want billions! We will see...

I look forward to this happening, but I don't have much faith!

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As long as it keeps trundling along in the news with positive reports then it may just happen.

The worst thing would be hearing nothing.

I'm not hopeful though by any means.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk.
 
Seven figures? Minute, in terms of building a massive theme park, surely?

Disappointing, this is ever fading.
 
Went to a talk yesterday at the Kent Construction Expo by the project leader of Paramount Park London, Tony Sefton. The reason for not having a great deal of news coming out is because the project is currently under a media lockdown (the information/concept art released last year was in fact leaked rather than fully official).

Though I can't say much, I can say they have the money in hand for full planning and purchase of land and have already bought the IP. It is correct, the current estimated cost is £2bn (but we all know the 'estimated cost' usually gets higher and higher :p). Both the South Korean and Spanish project have near completely fallen through now due to a lack of money and good planning, but I have been informed this is not the case for London. The closest we can see a large bucket of public information come out is probably mid-2014. Hope this assures people the project is still well underway :)
 
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