Oakwood Discussion

[Enter Valhalla]

I definitely agree that short 1-2 hour ‘experience’ places, such as mini golf, electronic darts centres, trampoline parks, axe throwing etc are now far more popular than all-day attractions like theme parks. The public no longer seem to want to spend full length days out of the house.

People, including previously Nick Varney, always used to try and justify theme parks’ high prices by saying that hour-for-hour they offer better value for money. But now that the public seem less bothered about being out for the whole day, this has become a somewhat moot point. (I always thought it was a pretty stupid argument anyway since the majority of your day at a theme park usually involves standing in queues)

 

[Themeparksandy1981]

The problem you got now also is to get the best prices you need to book 2-7 days in advance so it’s tough to know what the weather gonna be like.

 

[Steve74]

If anyone is interested, Moomin Littlesocks is doing a faithful recreation of Oakwood in Planet Coaster 2. This is the first video (2 released so far)


From: https://youtu.be/bNvsszKC12Q?si=Na6PgfFeZCSpCId1

 

[Bones]

I don't buy the argument that Oakwood failed because money is tight and people don't go holidaying in Pembrokeshire anymore.

It failed because of lack of investment and commitment to upkeep. I've never visited a theme park anywhere else in the UK or Europe that looked so unloved. My first visit there was 2010, my last in 2023, and in that time absolutely nothing noteworthy had been added and there had been no investment at all in support services like F&B, transport rides, in fact even the minigolf had been mothballed by then. I'd paid £45 for that visit because it was an impulse trip and I hadn't been able to book in advance. Frankly I felt totally ripped off.

Oakwood's a bit of a trek for me but a viable day trip, however I just couldn't justify spending that kind of money again to visit such a dilapidated park. Now I'll make similarly long treks but to better parks like Thorpe and Paultons. The potential customer base for a park in Pembrokeshire is still out there, but you've got to give them a reason to want to make the effort. Aspro didn't.

Fully agree with the bits in bold! Aspro are well known for lack of investment in all of their parks!


Also with people saying the location of Oakwood didn't help, i know quite a lot of Welsh people who would visit there purely because it was the only theme park in Wales! than in itself is quite a lot of visitors

 

[James]

Oakwood was always your obligatory school theme park trip when I was younger. I think from 2010 onwards, it became more common for schools to arrange trips to the bigger parks with the extra hour+ journey. My year group in high school was the first year group ever to not go to Oakwood and instead go to Alton Towers.

Certainly, speaking to family/friends/work colleagues, etc., it's become less and less common for people to visit Oakwood, and most are happy to pay the extra and drive more to visit better UK theme parks.

 

[Matt N]

My school liked Oakwood as a school trip park while I was there (I was in lower secondary school from 2014 to 2019).

I went to secondary school very near to the South Wales border at Chepstow (a mile or less away), and it was one of the theme parks our school commonly used to like taking students to on their end-of-year reward trips in July, with the other common one being Drayton Manor. Me and my sister were both taken to Oakwood in our time at secondary school.

My year group went there at the end of Year 8 (July 2016), and it was certainly the busiest I’ve ever seen Oakwood, or at very least had the longest queues I’ve ever seen there. I enjoyed my day at the time, but on reflection, I still don’t think I’ve ever seen such dire operations at a theme park before or since.

I waited 90 minutes per ride for Speed from only just over halfway around the (relatively short) queue line while it ran at minimal capacity, and it pretty much took me a good 30 minutes to merely go up the steps into the station on Megafobia (it was running 1 train). The queues were made painfully slow by FastPasses seemingly being given away like sweets, which made every major ride have a burgeoning FastPass line as a result; both Megafobia and Speed had FastPass lines consistently containing at least 50 people at a time. Resultantly, at least one in every two trains on both rides was being fully loaded with FastPass users, so when <50% main queue throughput allocation was combined with the already low ride throughputs, the queues became pitifully, pitifully slow. Being in them was honestly like watching paint dry!

I got on 6 rides across the course of a full day (2x Speed, 1x Megafobia, 1x Treetops, 1x Waterfall, 1x circus-themed teacups whose name I can’t remember), so I didn’t do too badly all things considered, but I genuinely have never seen operations or FastPass overselling like it at any park before or since. The operations were absolutely abysmal, and probably represent some of the most corrupt running of a theme park I’ve ever witnessed!

For our next school park visit 2 years later, our year group went to Thorpe Park… which admittedly was even worse for ride count from my standpoint, with our group only riding Rush and Samurai all day! I do think my poor Thorpe Park ride count was caused in large part by some poor strategic decision making on our group’s part, though, with some in my group being ardently against joining any advertised queue longer than 60 minutes and us also seeming to take ages to eat lunch…

Ah, the nightmare of school trip season!

 

[Enter Valhalla]

Back in 2013 and before, Megafobia and Speed would routinely run two vehicles each for the entirety of school trips season. Not sure what happened to change that. Presumably lack of maintenance budget.