As I've said before moving the park entrance will completely alter the flow of guests around the park. The current layout works. The headline attractions are at the 3 corners of the park drawing people towards them. High capacity filler rides such as the rapids, Hex and Duel divert the main paths to lure people away. Then you have shops and smaller rides lining these paths as further distractions.
The only mistake in the formula is Sonic; a low capacity crowd pleaser right by the entrance. hence it always has dire queues.
Moving the entrance to Forbidden Valley would have the following affect inside the park:
+ Sonic gets quieter
~ Duel gets busier
- Nemesis and Air... Sorry Galactica, will have massive queues, especially if this VR experiment cripples the capacity.
- The Smiler and Oblivion are now completely out of the way, given Oblivions high capacity it wastes one of the queue absorbing headline rides and The Smiler... is probably not going to be very popular anyway.
- Ceebebbies Land and CCL now take up two corners of the park, meaning the family's with young kids have the furthest to walk.
- An entirely new "Main Street" style entrance would need to be built, probably where the Monorail Depo currently is. Towers Street becomes dead space (and we'd need a new name
).
- The paths around Forbidden Valley can't handle such big crowds. FV is already isolated from the rest of the park. Gloomy Wood would become a massive bottleneck as it is the only way to the rest of the park without diverting people into the gardens.
The Solution is simple.
= Keep the current set up. The monorail is probably only knackered because it hasn't been looked after properly. Disney built their first one in the 60's and it is still goes strong. Updating the infrastructure is probably a lot cheaper then starting from scratch.
= Use the new restaurant as an excuse to build a second entrance/exit through Air's gate. Initially use it for hotel and restaurant customers only.
= Over the next 5 years start developing an entertainment complex on that car park. Start with evening activities such as a bowling alley and a small cinema primarily aimed at hotel guests (they could even do a Europa and make the cinema the biggest in the county or even an IMax to encourage people in from the surrounding areas). Move on to a few restaurants and shops, linking one directly to the second entrance. Maybe add a fast food outlet to encourage day guests to eat before they drive home. If Merlin want to be really ambitious they could even move Sea Life here or add a Dungeons/Lego Discovery Centre forming the Alton "Cluster".
= Once the above is in place allow everyone to exit (but not enter) through this gate. This will alter the flow of the park but in a positive way. People now enter at one side, progressing around the park ready to leave at the other. Rides that are busy in the morning get quieter towards the end of the day and the entertainment complex can soak up the crowds along with a lot more of their money.