In terms of investment, I think one relative problem that Pleasurewood suffers compared to Drayton is that it is in far more of a remote location for the vast majority of the country and has a far lower population within the immediate vicinity, so investing loads into Pleasurewood to try and expand it may not be justifiable from a business standpoint due to it having a smaller captive audience.
Drayton Manor is arguably one of the best, if not the best, located park in the UK. Being sited in Tamworth, it has the entire Birmingham Metropolitan Area, the UK’s second largest urban sprawl behind only London to my knowledge, on its doorstep. The biggest population centres in the North, such as Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield, are less than 2 hours’ drive away and in the ballpark of 100 miles or less in terms of distance. Bristol, another of the UK’s biggest cities, is also less than 2 hours’ drive away and in the 100 miles ballpark for distance. Even parts of North and West London are in a similar boat of only being under 2 hours or roughly 100 miles away, and I’d wager that most of London is probably under 3 hours from it. I could keep reeling off places all day, but my point is that Drayton Manor is a very, very well located park with a large potential audience within reasonably close range, so it has more expansion potential and investment into it is more justifiable.
By comparison, Pleasurewood Hills is located about as far east as it gets, in a fairly remote part of the Suffolk coast. The nearest major conurbation is seemingly Norwich, which isn’t a particularly large population centre compared to some of the significant heavyweights located near Drayton Manor, and the largest places within that 2 hour/100 mile radius are also less significant population centres like Cambridge and Colchester rather than huge heavyweight cities like the ones surrounding Drayton Manor. In the interests of fairness, parts of East London like Barking and Dagenham and Havering can seemingly reach Pleasurewood Hills within about 2.5 hours, but much of London will be more than 3 hours from it, and most of the big heavyweights will also be more than 3 hours from it. Unlike Drayton, Pleasurewood Hills does not have Birmingham or Bristol or all those huge Northern cities within a 2 hour radius, and that will have a big effect on its potential audience. And the park having a lower potential audience will ultimately mean that huge investment into it will have lower potential returns and will be less justifiable from a business standpoint.
I get that East Anglia is a seaside destination, but for a park to be a big success and be worth investing in, you probably want a big captive audience year-round, and seaside areas like East Anglia only really provide a big captive audience during peak tourism season like the summer holidays.
