Paramount Park Spain

[BigAl]

I'll start by posting some images of the concept art for this park so that we all realise the scale of what paramount have planned:

Airtimers has more images and more detail on all of this artwork which can be viewed here.



We knew about the proposed park in Spain before the one being planned for the UK, but not a lot seems to have happened across at the site in Alhama De Murica. Similarly, the proposed park in South Korea looks like it has been abandoned.


However, I've just come across a few updates from various websites which all suggest that the park in Spain still has potential. This first site shows how plans for the park have been changed which may be the reason why not much has happened since the opening ceremony and the first few stones were laid down for the park:

Paramount Murcia plan to be submitted early 2013

Over the course of the next 2 months the Ayuntamiento of Alhama de Murcia is expected to issue the "special plan", to finalize the required approvals, permissions and licences for the Paramount Pictures theme park.

The original plan required slight modification due to changes being made to the proposed layout of the park following problems purchasing the orginal quantity of land.

By the end of January 2013 it is expected that a full environmental impact report will be complete to accompany the plan.
The promoter and developer of the park Proyectos Emblemáticos Murcianos - otherwise known as Premursa - will finalise their move into a custom built office facility on an industrial park on the outskirts of the town later this week. One of the key projects that the company will undertake until all licences are in place will be to execute a recruitment program for an anticipated 6'000 job vacancies which will be created at the park.

A video of the site included in that article:
Paramount Theme Park, Murcia

Source.​

The Theme Park Guy posted a link to this video a couple of months ago which shows bad weather affected the site which held-back initial site clearance:

Storm at Condado 10 august 2012




An update from the Theme Park Guy website from November 5th:

Construction Update November 05, 2011

Construction of this exceptionally promising major theme park venture in the south-east of Spain hasn't commenced to date, yet I was able to secure a brochure from the mayor's office in Alhama de Murcia.

Paramount endures a somewhat unfortunate history with regards to theme park announcements: none of their proclaimed parks in Hangzhou/Shanghai (announced in 2005), Dubai (2007) or Korea (2008) got off the ground so far. As with Paramount Movie Park Korea, progress on the proposed Spain park gambles on the quest for non-Paramount investors to provide the necessary funds (that is, according to the brochure: 500 million EUR for the theme park, and 500 million EUR for the adjacent 'Lifestyle City' that includes hotels, shopping and infrastructure). I dearly hope it will work out this time, otherwise Paramount's creative teams may slowly grow tired from seeing their concepts never being put into practice.

Above all, the biggest of all questions remains: will these parks live up to the standards of Universal Studios theme parks (5 star) or hover at the Warner Brothers level (3-4 stars)? If Disney and/or Universal standards will be matched or beaten, finally a third major theme park player will drop anchor. We will see. Hopefully we will see it here, in Alhama de Murcia.

Some images included in that update:

Paramount Park Spain brochure

Park sections Adventure City (bottom), Rango's West (left), Woodland Fantasy (top)

Park sections Woodland Fantasy (top left) and Plaza Futura (top right)

Rango's West roller coaster on the left, Sleepy Hollow dark ride at the top

Warp Speed launch coaster sticking out of the Plaza Futura section

Mediterranean Paramount Park entrance

The road that passes the proposed Paramount Park site

This is where Paramount Park Spain is planned to be built

The exact spot of the proposed Paramount Park Spain

Future Paramount terrain?

Paramount theme park Spain pre-birth stage

All this will have to make space for Paramount

Murcia, site of the future Paramount movie theme park

So it still doesn't look like much has happened at all (if anything, however, 'thethemeparkguy' posted this comment on The Theme Park Guy Forum topic:

There seems to be some movement at or close to the Paramount site. My local contact wrote a week ago:

There were more trucks taking the turn to the MU-602 (since the new road is here, the MU-602 is very quiet) then usual, the ones we only see when they need to clean out land. And there is not a lot to do there for those trucks at this moment, so it could be related.

And a few days later:

I checked again: at the site itself nothing is going on at this moment, they are cleaning out an area nearby and that could be the truck depot area for the construction trucks.

There's still something going on, but nothing exactly significant.




Another potential problem for this new theme park is the new Corvera airport which is going nearby are taking their time to get things going:

“We want to do things well”, he said “and with all the guarantees so we are not going to do this in a hurry. “
In recent years the Murcia Government has been under immense pressure to do something in the region with regard to the stimulation of the economy and employment and until the announcements of the new International Airport and the Paramount Theme Park the economy in this particular part of the Province was suffering from severe depression.
However the promise of the two new developments went a long way toward soothing the voices of protest. This recent announcement will once again lead to raised voices of criticism if the summer tourism season fails to live up to expectations.

Source article.


Some images from that article of Corvera airport being built:

This park just seems to have quite a number of problems which are preventing it from getting further. We have the bad weather which held back site clearance, the new airport taking longer to build than they'd thought and a lack of investors needed to complete the amount of money required to get things going. But that final point has meant that the park has had to reconsider what land they are going to use, which has now meant that they've had to change their plans and resubmit them (taking us to January of next year before we may know any more about the future of this park).

Arrr!

 

[BigAl]

Still no signs of construction and now this article from Murcia Today has some bad news regarding the park.

Apparently some ecologists are demanding that 21% of the land that will/would be used for the park to be reclassified as protected green land. They want 32 hectares to remain untouched by any form of building.

 

[joelpagett]

That is such a shame! its seems like such a waste of resources to build up hope for the local economy only to keep delaying the project... with it possibly not getting of the ground at all!

 

[BigAl]

NEWS!

Themeparx is reporting that the Paramount Park set for Spain has been given the all-clear by the local council to begin construction!

Does this give our own park more of a chance? Hopefully once it gets underway, potential investors in our own might be persuaded by what they see!

 

[IanB]

Or maybe the UK park was used to put pressure on the local council in Spain to approve the project there.

It would not be the first time a Council has been told, if you don't approve this, we will just build it somewhere else?

Hopefully this is not the case, and we will get our own park as well.

Ian

 

[Craig]

I'm pretty sure the two parks are completely unrelated aside from by name, so I can't see it being used as a bargaining chip. Paramount essentially franchised out their name/rights, with the companies involved in Spain being different to those in the UK.

With the state Spain is in at present, it's no surprise things are moving slowly. If I'm honest, I'm shocked things have even progressed to the point of plans being approved! I still can't help but have muted excitement for this so far though. Without some substantial construction, I'm still in two minds whether this will even happen.

 

[BigAl]

Disney and More have covered the new park in two parts, and have also been told that the construction work will begin soon. They've got a lot of concept art up, as well as some of what we've already seen.

Part 1
Part 2

 

[Rob]

I recommend watching this video found at the end of the second article:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjPG-m_XB78#ws

It shows what they are planning really well. It it ends up anything like the concepts then it will be very exciting. But I'd imagine that is quite a big if as we all know how concepts are often far better than the final project.

 

[Sam]

I love the phrase 'dining and retail spine'.

The theme park looks nice, but the 'Alhama De Murcia Lifestyle Centre' looks like the blandest, most vile, horrible, corporate, empty, vacuous, hollow hell-hole this side of Meadowhall. What an absolutely soulless and revolting development.

 

[CoasterCrazyChris]

3D this, 4D that...

I think this park has the potential to be great, but it sounds like too many of the attractions will rely on technology to entertain people instead of proper good old fashioned theme park design. It's all a bit lazy and corporate.

The themed areas look like they will be stunning though, but like many Spanish theme parks this development looks like it will be more style over substance.

 

[BigAl]

One of Paramount Murcia's investors has filed for bankruptcy, according to this article.

...Jesus Samper, the President of Premursa - the Developer and Promoter behind the Paramount Murcia theme park project, is also the President of one of the Investment companies behind the €50 Million development.

Soooooooooooooooooooo.......

 

[Stevie]

Yeah, this is never going to happen.

Sent from my GT-I8190N using Tapatalk 2

 

[Sam]

Not quite as dead as we thought, apparently...

Posted by loopylucyuk on Reddit.

 

[Sam]

Spotted by Lofty on CF.

Well apparently this is going ahead, according to this blog post!

Look at some of this bloody concept art...

Open the above image in a new tab to see it in full because it's massive and shows the new park in its entirety!

Same with the above.

Park map.

Another worth opening up in full.

There's LOADS more concept art on the original blog post, which the interwebs won't seem to let me upload for some reason. Also, full descriptions of each new area and details of the attractions. Go take a look!

 

[Rob]

I am unsure of if there has been any progress with this park or not but I saw a bit of the Real Sociedad vs Barcelona last night and caught a glimpse of an advert for "Parque Paramount" on the electronic advertising boards around the pitch. So I can only assume this is making decent progress if they are advertising already!?

Thought was worth a mention.

 

[TheMan]

Now, is that just a co-incidence?

In this case probably, but still.