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Paultons Park: General Discussion

Matthethemeparkfan said:
Thought I would see what all your thoughts are on this.....

We all love Paultons, and I think it is the best themed park in the UK, but over the years what mistakes do you think they have made?

For me, it would be taking out the Wind In The Willows walk-through, I loved that attraction and couldn't believe they removed it! I wish they would bring it back!
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Good question, they've got a lot right but not everything. No park can.

Personally, I think they've made 4 big mistakes. Well, not mistakes as such, but new development that hasn't ultimately landed that well for me.

1) the new entrance. It's an ugly building.
2) critter creek. Its OK but not at paultons recent standards.
3) the undercover seating area by the pirate ship and rio grade station. Useful, but again, ugly.
4) controversial, perhaps, but the way that buffalo falls is blended into tornado springs is poor.

I too, loved the Wind in the Willows as a kid. I also miss the magical forest walk through and the romany experience they used to have. The old hedge maze, the atsroglide, the bumper boats. The old kids kingdom play area. So many missed attractions for me, although I don't think it was necessarily a mistake to remove any of them, but I do miss them all.
 
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Matthethemeparkfan said:
Thought I would see what all your thoughts are on this.....

We all love Paultons, and I think it is the best themed park in the UK, but over the years what mistakes do you think they have made?

For me, it would be taking out the Wind In The Willows walk-through, I loved that attraction and couldn't believe they removed it! I wish they would bring it back!
Click to expand...
I think the mistakes Paultons have made in my opinion is.
  1. Not focusing on enough all round family or family thrill rides (1m+) meaning there's not too much other than the coasters for older ones.
  2. Removing Raging River in 2024 mid season without there being a suitable replacement ready until possibly 2027.
  3. An oversaturation of Zierer Force/Tivoli coaster models.
  4. The removal of Magma when there is a shortage of larger rides.
  5. I wouldn't say that's a mistake but bringing in a Eurofighter in 2025 instead of around 2013/14. I've already said that a Eurofighter around that era would've been fantastic.
 
Instinctively, I would say that the Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter for next year seems like it could be a potential misfire, particularly with the choice of OTSRs, but I’m willing to reserve full judgement on that one until it opens and people have ridden it.

In my personal view, I would also maybe say that Farmyard Flyer feels a little bit redundant. It is one of three smaller family coasters of a relatively similar style in the park, so by the time it was added, the park arguably already had ample coaster coverage in this area. It also isn’t up to much in terms of ride experience for me; I would say I quite comfortably prefer Cat-O-Pillar as a ride experience, even if the theming is absolutely gorgeous.
 
Just wanted to chime in on the controversial Euro Fighter.

There's probably a few reasons why they chose this:

The wanted a coaster to interact with Cobra, and I should imagine bits of Cobra will need to be disassembled and put back together again. They probably want Gerst to oversee/consult on this, and it makes sense to have them also design and manufacture the new coaster.

From experience, quite a few vendors have long wait times due to being extremely busy. Parks are having to wait for their slot (which currently the wait time can be a number of years depending on the vendor). It might be that Gerst had the availability to meet Paultons requirements. There are A LOT of unannounced projects in the ME that are currently in concept/design stage for example.

They have a limited budget and a Euro Fighter fits their budget, and required attraction scope (e.g. inversions)

Also, they just want that coaster type,

Will be interesting to see how it is received by the public once its opened.
 
Matthethemeparkfan said:
Thought I would see what all your thoughts are on this.....

We all love Paultons, and I think it is the best themed park in the UK, but over the years what mistakes do you think they have made?

For me, it would be taking out the Wind In The Willows walk-through, I loved that attraction and couldn't believe they removed it! I wish they would bring it back!
Click to expand...
The playground in Tornado Springs is pretty poor.
 
I’d say the only real mistake that Paultons has made in recent year is to install items that are functional rather than aesthetically pleasing.

Right now, the biggest issue is that Paultons is a mix of heavily themed lands with the pre-Magma style of simple, functional, but bland installations.

It’s actually quite remarkable how quickly Paultons changed from bland and functional to heavily themed. When you walk past the teacups and Kontiki ride and then in to Tornado Springs, this stark contrast is so obvious.

It’s definitely a huge change in focus, but let’s not forget that the new entrance area and the seating area around the stage are both fairly recent additions, and already look so out of place next to the heavily themed areas adjacent to them.

I won’t criticise them too much for Critter Creek and Magma because these were early attempts at theming and were done on a small budget, and to be honest they look fine.
 
Matt N said:
In my personal view, I would also maybe say that Farmyard Flyer feels a little bit redundant. It is one of three smaller family coasters of a relatively similar style in the park, so by the time it was added, the park arguably already had ample coaster coverage in this area. It also isn’t up to much in terms of ride experience for me; I would say I quite comfortably prefer Cat-O-Pillar as a ride experience, even if the theming is absolutely gorgeous.
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To add to this, that is what I'm thinking

If the park wanted to add another family coaster, I think it would be amazing if it's a Mack Powered Coaster instead

Something that is slightly different from the Zierer Force/Tivoli models they have

Now onto Zierer, could we see a Zierer Star Shape eventually? 😁 (I'm not being serious on that)
 
MattBTP said:
Just wanted to chime in on the controversial Euro Fighter.

There's probably a few reasons why they chose this:

The wanted a coaster to interact with Cobra, and I should imagine bits of Cobra will need to be disassembled and put back together again. They probably want Gerst to oversee/consult on this, and it makes sense to have them also design and manufacture the new coaster.

From experience, quite a few vendors have long wait times due to being extremely busy. Parks are having to wait for their slot (which currently the wait time can be a number of years depending on the vendor). It might be that Gerst had the availability to meet Paultons requirements. There are A LOT of unannounced projects in the ME that are currently in concept/design stage for example.

They have a limited budget and a Euro Fighter fits their budget, and required attraction scope (e.g. inversions)

Also, they just want that coaster type,

Will be interesting to see how it is received by the public once its opened.
Click to expand...

I don’t think there is any issue with them going with Gerst, but their small infinity coaster model would have been a far better option.
 
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