• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

Oakwood Discussion

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)
 
NuttySquirrel said:
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.
Click to expand...

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
 
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.
 
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!
 
Last edited:
I'm not convinced with the whole "Oakwood was in an awkward location". It's prime holiday making area for the summer, and it's also the closest theme park for millions of people.

Although people have mentioned the chronic underinvestment (which is the true reason for Oakwood's collapse), I don't think people really get the full image. Aspro said they've invested £25m since 2008. Sounds like a lot, but that's chicken feed. It includes the £13m for Neverland, and includes the multi million pound retract for Megafobia. Once you factor those out, what they're saying is they've been attempting to run a theme park on roughly half a million pounds a year. That's... nothing! That's just tickover, and even then it's not enough to run a theme park. Combine that with the fact that the entire figure includes investments as well, it becomes apparent as to how Oakwood failed.

Half a million a year for EVERYTHING, plus attempting to invest. I challenge someone to find me a theme park that attempts to invest and run on half a million a year! It's so low it's comical, and yet Aspro advertise it as a good thing. It was doomed to fail as soon as they took over.

In an ideal world, I'd like to see Oakwood get taken over by the original owners who now own Bluestone. Considering Bluestone was originally meant to be part of Oakwood as the next logical investment step, it would make a load of sense to finally incorporate what was meant to be nearly twenty years ago. Make it a multi-day resort, use the same business model as Bluestone for Oakwood (which has proven to be very successful with happy staff, a rarity in the entertainment industry), and get the ball rolling again. Consistent investment with a new project every four years, they'll be sorted.
 
You can't make a profit with a theme park in just the school holidays...and not in a highly populated area...very little local trade.
It needs massive investment to become a single day park, as it had been run into the ground, and a number of attractions closed.
Even with large scale investment, it is in a challenging location, lack of people most weeks, simple.
 
rob666 said:
You can't make a profit with a theme park in just the school holidays...and not in a highly populated area...very little local trade.
It needs massive investment to become a single day park, as it had been run into the ground, and a number of attractions closed.
Even with large scale investment, it is in a challenging location, lack of people most weeks, simple.
Click to expand...
You're absolutely right. The park alone is not viable to be a full-day location. I've been to Oakwood approximately 300 times over the last 20 years, the last time I went was in 2023. I cancelled my annual pass in 2019. It's been in a steady managed decline since roughly 2010.

However, I think it is possible if integrated in to Bluestone to make it a full day attraction. They have the capital, expertise and experience to make it work, with convenient facilities and accommodation. But yes, you're right. Oakwood on just it's own in its current state is not feasible without becoming a money pit.
 
Ffinian said:
Although people have mentioned the chronic underinvestment (which is the true reason for Oakwood's collapse), I don't think people really get the full image. Aspro said they've invested £25m since 2008. Sounds like a lot, but that's chicken feed. It includes the £13m for Neverland, and includes the multi million pound retract for Megafobia.
Click to expand...
I’m fairly confident that Neverland cost £3 million, not £13 million.

The vast majority of the cost of Neverland actually went on theming, as opposed to ride hardware. Most of the rides were already at Oakwood, and the only “new” ones were three used rides that they got dirt cheap from the defunct Camelot.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
I’m fairly confident that Neverland cost £3 million, not £13 million.

The vast majority of the cost of Neverland actually went on theming, as opposed to ride hardware. Most of the rides were already at Oakwood, and the only “new” ones were three used rides that they got dirt cheap from the defunct Camelot.
Click to expand...
Maybe they spent the remaining £10 million on the hasty retheme of Roald Dahl land after the Ronald Dahl estate came down on them like a ton of bricks?
 
Sorry, you're all pulling my leg, right?

A new family theme park area called Neverland.

You are actually fudging shipping me?

Did they buy all of the rides off of MJ's estate too?

If you're going to spend millions on a new area of your family theme park, try and pick a name which doesn't share one with an amusement park belonging to alleged child sex offender...
en.m.wikipedia.org

Neverland Ranch - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
The writing was off the wall on the wall from the start.
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
Sorry, you're all pulling my leg, right?

A new family theme park area called Neverland.

You are actually fudging shipping me?

Did they buy all of the rides off of MJ's estate too?

If you're going to spend millions on a new area of your family theme park, try and pick a name which doesn't share one with an amusement park belonging to alleged child sex offender...
en.m.wikipedia.org

Neverland Ranch - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
The writing was off the wall on the wall from the start.
Click to expand...

They figured with a name that good, they couldn't Beat It
 
Ffinian said:
I'm not convinced with the whole "Oakwood was in an awkward location". It's prime holiday making area for the summer, and it's also the closest theme park for millions of people.

Although people have mentioned the chronic underinvestment (which is the true reason for Oakwood's collapse), I don't think people really get the full image. Aspro said they've invested £25m since 2008. Sounds like a lot, but that's chicken feed. It includes the £13m for Neverland, and includes the multi million pound retract for Megafobia. Once you factor those out, what they're saying is they've been attempting to run a theme park on roughly half a million pounds a year. That's... nothing! That's just tickover, and even then it's not enough to run a theme park. Combine that with the fact that the entire figure includes investments as well, it becomes apparent as to how Oakwood failed.

Half a million a year for EVERYTHING, plus attempting to invest. I challenge someone to find me a theme park that attempts to invest and run on half a million a year! It's so low it's comical, and yet Aspro advertise it as a good thing. It was doomed to fail as soon as they took over.
Click to expand...
M&D's can go lower than that and still get away with such tactics.
 
I'm surprised they never got into trouble for using the Peter Pan IP actually. The rights to which were given to Great Ormond Street Hospital with unusually no expiry date. Withholding royalties from sick kids would have kicked up a stink in the press.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top