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Oakwood Discussion

Aspro are a puzzling company. They hate wasting money, which I can actually get behind when we see how much money Merlin waste on silly things, yet neglect the things that matter.

Aspro’s attitude to all of their parks seems to be that they want to just keep them ticking over rather than them being anything special. This does kind of work. They ran Oakwood this way for 17 years, and I think the approach works ok when things are running smoothly. It’s when external factors are against you that this approach doesn’t work. Covid, cost of living crisis, the high profile incidents on Treetops and Bounce. These would be a big challenge for any theme park, but to a theme park which has continually under invested for the past 17 years, it’s an even bigger challenge, and in the case of Oakwood it sadly made it unsustainable.

What is disappointing is that Aspro, certainly at the moment, don’t seem willing to even entertain the idea of selling it as a theme park to any other operator.

But, at least the grass is still being cut.
 
That's the strange thing, maintenance continues.

I've spent several hours of late looking at theme parks on Google Earth (because you can go back and look at historical changes at parks, it's fascinating). I never really clocked how close Fobia is to Bluestone - there *has* to be some thinking that the ride and that piece of land could at least be sold as a functioning attraction to Bluestone.

I can dream.
 
My understanding is that the guy who cuts the grass comes every week still, the lights are all still on, the power is still running, and they have a large team of privately hired security staff patrolling the site, as well as lots of CCTV that has been installed all around the site since its closure.

This will be costing Aspro a fortune, and this is a company which notoriously hates to waste money. Of all the closed down theme parks, I’ve never seen one as heavily guarded and heavily maintained as Oakwood currently is. They must be planning something, surely?
 
spotweld said:
I think you're right. The video posted yesterday is deadlinked.
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It has been reuploaded due to error with the music playing over it -
From: https://youtu.be/I3pVLfOWCFk?si=tKPaLZRwga7pIQHz

Regarding Megafobia, I haven’t seen any evidence of it running and a recent video on YouTube trespassing on the site shows the train is no longer anywhere on the track, so unless some buyer wants to see it run, I think that’s that unfortunately.
 
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I think it’s fairly common for land owners to keep basic maintenance going for closed down sites. Even the dreaded Britannia Hotels are keeping the grass cut at their closed down Pontins locations.

I’m no expert but a quick google suggests it could be for a number of reasons, but insurance/security may well be part of it.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
My understanding is that the guy who cuts the grass comes every week still, the lights are all still on, the power is still running, and they have a large team of privately hired security staff patrolling the site, as well as lots of CCTV that has been installed all around the site since its closure.

This will be costing Aspro a fortune, and this is a company which notoriously hates to waste money. Of all the closed down theme parks, I’ve never seen one as heavily guarded and heavily maintained as Oakwood currently is. They must be planning something, surely?
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I think they may be planning something why close a park if your not selling the land and they said it was closed for 2025 season but did not say forever
 
Steve Minor said:
Remember guys they still have assets on.site that they want to protect from vandalism so they can be relocated. The grounds keeping may very well be a pre arranged contract so if its already locked in then it will still take place.
I think a lot more is being read into things that there actually is substance for
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Of course. And I would say this has been considered, but what’s surprising is that, since the announcement of closure was made, basically nothing has happened in terms of asset removal.

Bounce and Drenched had already been dismantled and are still sat on site doing nothing. All the other rides pretty much remain in place, apart from a very partial dismantling of the Pinfari.

It’s been 5 months since the announcement was made. In that time, I would expect at least some of the rides to have been sold or moved, especially since these security guards are from an external, private firm who they’ll be having to pay a pretty big fee to.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
Of course. And I would say this has been considered, but what’s surprising is that, since the announcement of closure was made, basically nothing has happened in terms of asset removal.

Bounce and Drenched had already been dismantled and are still sat on site doing nothing. All the other rides pretty much remain in place, apart from a very partial dismantling of the Pinfari.

It’s been 5 months since the announcement was made. In that time, I would expect at least some of the rides to have been sold or moved, especially since these security guards are from an external, private firm who they’ll be having to pay a pretty big fee to.
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I'm expecting major movement in the closed season 🤔 in the direction of two certain French parks that rhyme with Alligator 🐊
 
owenstreet7 said:
I'm expecting major movement in the closed season 🤔 in the direction of two certain French parks that rhyme with Alligator 🐊
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Let’s hope so. I do find it very odd that this process hasn’t already begun, especially the dismantling of Speed.

Oh and for the record by the way, I don’t think the Oakwood site will ever open again as a theme park, I just find the way that Aspro are dealing with the closure to be quite odd.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
It’s been 5 months since the announcement was made. In that time, I would expect at least some of the rides to have been sold or moved, especially since these security guards are from an external, private firm who they’ll be having to pay a pretty big fee to.
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People in this thread have short memories - when Camelot shut, some of their rides stood SBNO for years and a large number of buildings weren’t pulled down until the pandemic.

If some of the attractions do get moved to other Aspro properties, you can understand why they’d want to wait until closed season - for a company with pursestrings tighter than a gnat’s behind it’ll be cheaper for one.
 
KolonelKlink said:
People in this thread have short memories - when Camelot shut, some of their rides stood SBNO for years and a large number of buildings weren’t pulled down until the pandemic.

If some of the attractions do get moved to other Aspro properties, you can understand why they’d want to wait until closed season - for a company with pursestrings tighter than a gnat’s behind it’ll be cheaper for one.
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Some rides did stay SBNO at Camelot for years after closure, but those are the ones that were scrapped. In regards to the ones which were sold however, things moved much quicker. Camelot closed at the end of the 2012 season, and by the start of 2013, the log flume, the dragon coaster, the junior galleon and the circus train had already been moved and re-assembled, at Oakwood funnily enough.
 
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