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Oakwood Discussion

Matt N said:
But I would ask once again; how is a small zoo in Folly Farm seemingly surviving and going from strength to strength within the same locale if the location is the primary factor in Oakwood’s demise?
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Different market, and far far less staffing costs.
Rides need far more staff than goats.
And need far more visitors to make it worthwhile opening.
 
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I don’t agree that the location was the biggest problem with Oakwood, but I agree that it was part of the problem.

If they’d invested wisely and creatively, and made the entrance fees reasonable, I definitely think it could still be open.

Poor decisions under the previous owners with the installation of Hydro, and then Speed which I doubt they could really afford at the time, together with overspending unnecessarily (let’s not forget that pre-Aspro the park was open 10-10 every day in August including Sundays when it was dead, and there were staff everywhere), resulted in the previous owners getting into a load of debt and then having to sell the park.

Aspro then came in and arguably cut back on everything and had very little willingness to invest. Aspro were always like this, they cut back on everything, but I think the fact that Aspro managed to operate Oakwood in this shoddy way for 17 years before it shut down, shows what a strong product it was and therefore how with better decisions from up high, it could have been far more successful.
 
Oakwood lived off nostalgia for the place and what it was in the 90s for many years.

The market has changed significantly since then and the park never adapted or invested. It could still work in my opinion but it would have to be scaled back from what it was.
 
MaxPower said:
Oakwood lived off nostalgia for the place and what it was in the 90s for many years.

The market has changed significantly since then and the park never adapted or invested. It could still work in my opinion but it would have to be scaled back from what it was.
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But other parks have also lived off Nostalgia to and still survived
 
Lack of long term investment and planning kills parks. They get locked into a cycle of maintaining what they have at increasing cost while not bringing in anything new. Attendance declines which in turn puts people off visiting, further justifying the lack of investment.

It might look like nostalgia but it is on fact a basic business strategy that has failed time and time again with Oakwood being the latest victim. If you stand still for too long you get left behind.
 
Hid said:
But other parks have also lived off Nostalgia to and still survived
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The parks that do that successfully tend to have brand recognition on their side.

One example of doing this successfully is DLP. The main park hasn’t had a new ride in 20 years, but the raw power of the Disney name keeps it going. People have an attachment to Disney, and that pulls families back year after year despite the lack of new rides.

Is Oakwood a brand that people have an emotional attachment to in the same way? Absolutely not.
 
DLP keep their parks immaculate though, Aspro not only didn't invest in new attractions they left existing ones and the infrastructure of the park to rot.

People in the area who knew Oakwood or visited as kids remember how good it used to be, but there's nothing sadder than going back to somewhere like that and finding it in the state it was in.

We stayed in a local B&B the last time we visited and the family who owned it had fond memories of the park in the late 90s / early 00s and they hadn't gone back due to customers saying it was looking run down.

Then there was the accidents on Hydro, Bounce and Treetops aswell.
 
Quantum said:
Lack of long term investment and planning kills parks. They get locked into a cycle of maintaining what they have at increasing cost while not bringing in anything new. Attendance declines which in turn puts people off visiting, further justifying the lack of investment.

It might look like nostalgia but it is on fact a basic business strategy that has failed time and time again with Oakwood being the latest victim. If you stand still for too long you get left behind.
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I’d agree but has been said, DLP hasn’t installed a new ride in years.

Yea it’s had the studios to expand and rightly so, but the main park went for quality over anything else and it lasts. Especially with updates and good maintenance
 
Ash said:
I’d agree but has been said, DLP hasn’t installed a new ride in years.

Yea it’s had the studios to expand and rightly so, but the main park went for quality over anything else and it lasts. Especially with updates and good maintenance
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This is true but both Disney and Universal parks are the exception. The power of thier IPs remain a strong pull regardless of if there are new rides or not. That's not to say they are imune from it but they certainly have more resilience and the pull factor beyond rides themselves.
 
Bones said:
So sad what has happened all because of Aspro

I wonder what the McNamara family are thinking
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Some of the things that caused the issues pre-date Aspro. Hydro was a terrible investment and Speed wasn't great. They tried to make it too much of a thrill park whereas several smaller rides and things would have been better investments than a couple of massive ones. Yes Aspro didn't invest enough, but I would say the McNamara's also invested badly which caused the issues leading to the sale.
Look at somewhere like Pautons, where yes a lot of the success is Peppa Pig but outside of that it was balanced medium scale investments things like Lost Kingdom was £9million for multiple rides and lots of work in the area. Not sure how much Hydro cost but Speed was £3million. Could multiple smaller attractions have been a better investment?
 
jon81uk said:
Some of the things that caused the issues pre-date Aspro. Hydro was a terrible investment and Speed wasn't great. They tried to make it too much of a thrill park whereas several smaller rides and things would have been better investments than a couple of massive ones. Yes Aspro didn't invest enough, but I would say the McNamara's also invested badly which caused the issues leading to the sale.
Look at somewhere like Pautons, where yes a lot of the success is Peppa Pig but outside of that it was balanced medium scale investments things like Lost Kingdom was £9million for multiple rides and lots of work in the area. Not sure how much Hydro cost but Speed was £3million. Could multiple smaller attractions have been a better investment?
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I very much agree with this. But what we have to consider is that in the late 90s and early 00s, thrill rides were much more the trend than they are now. There’s been YouTube videos made and blogs written about how theme parks globally have shifted more towards installing family rides, and many of the thrill rides we see being built today are closer to what I’d define as “family-thrill”.

Back at the time when Bounce, Hydro and, to a lesser extent, Speed went in, UK parks were building more thrill rides and Oakwood can be forgiven for trying to keep up with that, especially after the success of Megafobia, where they wanted to keep the momentum going. In hindsight, Hydro was a terrible decision.

By 2010 when Aspro had settled in, big thrill rides were already less of a wow to the public than they had been 10-20 years before, yet Oakwood under Aspro, took the bizarre decision to focus all their marketing efforts on the thrill rides. Remember the ‘Ride the Big Four’ marketing? It was an outdated marketing strategy and it’s no surprise that a few years later, under a new Park Director, they abandoned it in favour of ‘Wales’ Biggest Family Adventure’ with the introduction of Neverland… a far better use of funds than just whacking in another coaster, which is what had previously been the strategy under the McNamaras.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
Back at the time when Bounce, Hydro and, to a lesser extent, Speed went in, UK parks were building more thrill rides and Oakwood can be forgiven for trying to keep up with that, especially after the success of Megafobia, where they wanted to keep the momentum going. In hindsight, Hydro was a terrible decision.
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I only ever visited Oakwood in the 90s, so before Hydro. But the things that stood out to me were the assault courses and zip wires, the toboggans and that sort of thing. As a kid the low-fi exploration stuff was way better than the thrills anyway!
 
To be fair, all the thrill rides that Oakwood installed had height restrictions of 1.25 metres or lower. Bounce’s height restriction was raised to 1.4m only after 12 years of operation. So arguably, these were thrill rides which were accessible to the family market, and Speed was actually pretty popular and a good compliment to Megafobia. Hydro on the other hand, no, total waste of money.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
To be fair, all the thrill rides that Oakwood installed had height restrictions of 1.25 metres or lower. Bounce’s height restriction was raised to 1.4m only after 12 years of operation. So arguably, these were thrill rides which were accessible to the family market, and Speed was actually pretty popular and a good compliment to Megafobia. Hydro on the other hand, no, total waste of money.
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I think the thing with Hydro is that if they installed a Spillwater from the same company or a Water Coaster, it would've been better operated, higher capacity and more successful.

The thing with Hydro was that it is an unreliable model as well with no other Intamin Mega Splashes operating nowadays. Hydro/Drenched was the last one.

It required a certain amount of people to operate (whether this is manufacturer or Oakwood) which not many people rode and in the end, didn't operate.
 
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