London Entertainment Resort: All Discussion

don’t expect anything but houses and a gym
No need for shops these days
Or bars and restaurants

 

so..... maybe....wasteland? or Borisisland (just in land)

 

I am as sceptical as the next person on this. But you have to remember, large projects like this take a huge amount of time.

I sometimes get the impression that some people expect projects like this to go up as quick as a supermarket. That is not the case.

Disney initially started scoping out locations for a European park as far back as 1966. When Paris was selected as the location, it still took 9 years from then until opening. This is a company with deep pockets and huge experience and success in Themeparks.

What I am trying to say is, the length of time that has been taken vs the apparent progress that has been made. Is not alarming in itself. All massive engineering projects take decades sometimes to get off the ground. They just do.

This doesnt distract from the myriad of other issues though, which probably will hinder it. But on it's own, it is not a worrying factor.

 

Would love to know who is finding this though
Must have some very deep pockets

 

It is probably all those billions that went missing in the summer over the track and trace monumental cock up. It was a smoke screen so that Boris can re build a zip wire to re live his glory days waving flags over the Thames. In his brand new Boris Land.

Back to seriousness for a sec. London is (as BBC Panarama uncovered recently) the money laundering capital of the world. With involvement of some of the worlds largest backs such as HSBC, Barclays and Lloyd's. It would not surprise me in the slightest if this has dirty money invested into it. Quite a good way to launder money, even with what they have done. We probably however, will never know. But filthy money is all over London in other investments, that is a fact. So why would it not pump into projects like this also?

 

I know it’s on a completely different scale, but Thorpe Park was also announced in 1970 with an originally planned opening date of 1974. It hit very similar snags and had years of similarly slow initial progress before eventually opening in 1979. At the time, RMC/Leisure Sport were complete newbies to the tourism scene.

By 1973, the developers were suffering huge financial struggles, with many doubting that the project would happen. But it did eventually rise off the ground and open in 1979 to become the Thorpe Park we know today.

Taking into account that the London Resort is far larger than Thorpe Park, and that UK planning regulations have most probably become quite a bit stricter since the 1970s (thus things like the consultations and the GDO will take longer), I wouldn’t say that all of these delays are necessarily bad news for the project.

 

I think people have some what come used to expecting the Dubai effect. Where massive engineering projects have shot up in relatively short amounts of time. Something that simply does not happen anywhere else in the word for the most part.

 

No people are sceptical because this project has been a sham from the very start.

They clearly have a plan but what good is that if they don't have any money? We could have all got together and come up with what they have so far. All they have got are proposals at this stage.

If they have even secured a tenth of the money required to actually build this place I will eat my hat.

 

Let's face it, this theme park is about as legitimate as Circo's contract to run the test and tracing.

 

I’m still convinced the only thing built will be a large scale housing estate.

 

I will be amazed if we even get that. There has been so much media attention recently given to this project but I'm yet to see proof they have the funding for this at all.

Were talking upwards of 4billion pounds. Given the fact we are living in a covid and post Brexit country.... That's absolutely enormous money to invest into a market place that typically doesn't make that much profit.

How long is it going to take to recoup the investment required for this project? Will investors ever get a return on their money? Its very difficult to see isn't it?

How much profit do Port Aventura, Disney land Paris and Europa Park make per year?

 

In that interview PY Gerbeau gave Blooloop at the tail end of last year, I was struck by his slightly farcical comment that people living in the area around the planned resort site didn't have many leisure facilities on their doorstep.

Bluewater is literally a few minutes' drive away - with a 17-screen cinema, one of the biggest selections of chain restaurants in the UK and various outdoor activities including the zip wire park that's due to open later this year (https://hangloosebluewater.com/). If a Hollywood Bowl was going to be built in that neck of the woods, it would also be at Bluewater.

Which would be a better use of the land in all probability.

 

To me a multi billion pound theme park sounds better use of the land than more housing, the economic boost it could bring would be incredible.

But I’m sceptical like most are, however I want to remain positive about any future possible investments to the uk industry, it really needs it with merlin having such a strong grip on the market.

The concept art looks fantastic, but ambitious. But form a marketing point of view, I do understand why you’d want to make your concept are look eye catching. As regards to the money, who knows (unless you are involved in the project or have inside information) how or where they are getting funding from, if they have any at all.

 

At least with the housing option they will make decent profit and quick turnaround on funds spent. Building this ambitious park has been going on for years with nothing changing even with the planning permission going in don’t mean anything. As I said many times before if a resort theme park was going to be built here in England it would of been built a long time. For me personally it would be nice to have a resort park here in the uk but it’s far to risky to attempt right now. A few people I spoke to who go to theme parks all said the same thing that unless there’s an instant draw to the park something unique then it’s easier to travel to Disneyland Paris. For me personally merlin will always have to upper hand unfortunately they will just keep pumping the vouchers and cheap tickets and because merlin parks are recognised brands here people know what to expect.

 

In the 1970s the word on the street was there were these things called Theme Parks in the United States which were effectively licenses to print money, like a tourist attraction but one which people travel to and spend the whole day within. It was a gold rush, bordering on a bubble which lasted throughout the 80s.

Speculative investment was driven by pure belief that these were sure fire investments. Britannia Park was another such scheme, just with pockets not quite so deep as RMC's. I can't find a sale price for Thorpe Park but I would say it's far from certain RMC ever saw a return on their (significant) investment.

Fifty years on, and with the benefit of numerous case studies demonstrating financial failure following lofty attendance expectations (not least Eurodisney), the prospects are nowhere near so rosy. In the UK, the survivors from that gold rush are all, with the exception of Gullivers, Oakwood and Thorpe Park, existing tourist attractions which built up a ride offering organically or pre-existing amusement parks - and even amongst those there are plenty of examples of failure.

 

According to the Thorpe Park book I recently read, Tussauds purchased Thorpe Park for £15m. Think they got a bargain.

 

Apparently, though, Thorpe was pretty successful in its earlier years under RMC, when things like Loggers Leap and Rumba Rapids had been built, and it was mainly a combination of the emergence of Legoland as a competitor and X No Way Out’s failure that drove them into financial difficulty.

 

I don't know how the economics worked out for RMC, but I recon they would have done pretty well in the early days. There was a period when Battersea Fun Fair and the Kursaal had closed and not a lot had opened, when the South of England was very uncompetitive.

It's possible that things started to go downhill once Chessington Zoo turned into Chessington World of Adventures and then Windsor Safari Park became Legoland. In the mid-nineties Peter Pans Playground had a significant expansion to become Adventure Island and Paultons Park was growing. This might have been a factor of them selling. But at least in the early days, there wasn't a lot of competition in the South of England.

According to the Making of Thorpe Park book they attracted 1.3 million visitors in 1989. That's the year they opened Loggers Leap. Chessington World of Adventures was up and running, but they hadn’t opened Transylvania yet. Part of the problem with opening a theme park now is that the UK’s a mature market that’s already fairly well covered for theme parks, even if some of them aren’t as good as they were in the past.

 

A major factor in the development of Thorpe Park, and specifically why it went there...
Central government post war planning.
My (sadly deceased) favourite customers husband was on the planning committee at the time.
Had to keep Monks Walk as free access exercise path, with the area reserved for open access leisure available to all public, with free parking.