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The World of David Walliams: General Discussion

Its proximity to the towers and age/state of the building I assume remains an issue.

For me, all the buildings need to be put to use. The driving school moved to CBeebies where it should rightfully be. In the santas grotto area.

The street should be turned back into a classic “English/victorian” type street again. Post boxes, lamposts, kerbs etc.

If the buildings on the left hand side of the street (not including the theatre) are dropped and redeveloped (with MMM moved) something akin to Symbolica and a proper restaurant could make a great addition. Tying in with Algenon or the Earls discoveries from around the world (maybe in 80 days) in a phantom manner style caper.

Talbot Street coming back would be a great name with original IP. Make it a true family area with rides to match. 4D cinema, trackless dark ride, Project Horizon and a rethemed Dungeons and GG would/could arguably make the best area in the UK if done right. And with original IP even better and give the Americans a run for their money showing Merlin understand the UK audience better than anyone.

I’d bring forward the entrance as close to fountain square as possible and stretch the land out. Maybe even close the path along the side of the skyride turning fountain square into a “hub” of sorts.

To make the most out of Alton’s vast size, stretching the queues to the far back of the park must be a real goal as they have a huge underutilised area back there in terms of food, building space and potential capacity, it’s criminal.
 
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Honestly when you’re in Fountain Square at the moment, with no Hex, no Skyride, an unpopular Dungeons, a vile Burger Kitchen and a sparsely populated Walliams World you could be forgiven for thinking that you’re not even in a theme park. The whole area needs widespread change.
 
Ash said:
Its proximity to the towers and age/state of the building I assume remains an issue.

For me, all the buildings need to be put to use. The driving school moved to CBeebies where it should rightfully be. In the santas grotto area.

The street should be turned back into a classic “English/victorian” type street again. Post boxes, lamposts, kerbs etc.

If the buildings on the left hand side of the street (not including the theatre) are dropped and redeveloped (with MMM moved) something akin to Symbolica and a proper restaurant could make a great addition. Tying in with Algenon or the Earls discoveries from around the world (maybe in 80 days) in a phantom manner style caper.

Talbot Street coming back would be a great name with original IP. Make it a true family area with rides to match. 4D cinema, trackless dark ride, Project Horizon and a rethemed Dungeons and GG would/could arguably make the best area in the UK if done right. And with original IP even better and give the Americans a run for their money showing Merlin understand the UK audience better than anyone.

I’d bring forward the entrance as close to fountain square as possible and stretch the land out. Maybe even close the path along the side of the skyride turning fountain square into a “hub” of sorts.

To make the most out of Alton’s vast size, stretching the queues to the far back of the park must be a real goal as they have a huge underutilised area back there in terms of food, building space and potential capacity, it’s criminal.
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I agree with quite a few Ideas, although this area would have a lot of dark rides, as there are already 3 dark rides in this small area.
I also had an Idea rather than having a 4d cinema, I think the shows they run on the lawns work quite well, and it would be nice to have a more permanent solution, I would suggest removing either the 4d cinema or burger kitchen (I have never seen anyone in there, it is currently far off the main path, although it may make a large amount of nose and be too close to residents), and build an outdoor covered stage and seating area, I am something akin to how disney do their theatres in florida where the seats are long benches, going down, and the stage and seating area is covered, but the back and the sides are open, allowing for natural light to get in, and my idea is not to run scheduled shows where guest wait in an area before entering when the show is ready, like the 4d cinema, more like how the show on the lawn is done now, where guests can come sit down and have some food, then stand up and leave once finished. Although theming a structure like that could be difficult, but maybe a theme like to the towers could work.
 
I don't know why but the whole area has always seemed like an afterthought in Towers planning. They have never had any clear vision what they wanted this area to be but out of all the areas of Towers I'd be quite happy if they bulldozed the lot and started from scratch. Towers needs family area that doesn't just target young kids.
 
I'd like something to be done to the area in the near future. I've always hated Walliams World ever since it opened, with the only saving graces being the areas music and the Book pile lampposts.

The Buildings are actually really good, but the primary coloured paint and wacky look they currently have just doesn't look appealing personally. I'd like to see the area become a Victoria one again with the buildings, and as other mentioned earlier, a new version of Talbot Street would be quite nice. It's a shame how this part of the park has slowly downgraded over the years, starting of as one with some great architecture and nice colours...
talbot5.jpg
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Heck, even the Burger Kitchen looked really nice back then too.
talbot9.jpg

to this...
wodavidwalliams08.jpg
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Okay, the Burger Kitchen actually doesn't look all that bad (if only the food was), but still, the area as a whole looks like no care has been put into it for a long time, which is really sad to see. I hope they don't rip down the facades, knowing Merlin they'll replace it with something not as detailed or as appealing to look at. It just needs some love with a good creative vision and it could really be a great Victorian area, complimenting the Towers heritage with its Victorian style.
 
flyingguitar said:
although this area would have a lot of dark rides, as there are already 3 dark rides in this small area.
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I don't think there is anything wrong with an area mainly consisting of dark rides, fantasyland at the Disney castle parks is dark rides, shows, carousel, tea cups and the Dumbo spinner. No reason why AT can't have an area with multiple dark rides, a show, carousel and a spinner. In fact re-open the theatre/cinema and that would be the case with the area already.
 
jon81uk said:
I don't think there is anything wrong with an area mainly consisting of dark rides, fantasyland at the Disney castle parks is dark rides, shows, carousel, tea cups and the Dumbo spinner. No reason why AT can't have an area with multiple dark rides, a show, carousel and a spinner. In fact re-open the theatre/cinema and that would be the case with the area already.
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Ofc, if Towers is serious about opening for more days of the year then it'll have to increase its indoor attractions regardless with Project Horizon likely the answer to this though when TWODW is finally put out of its misery, the opportunity to install more dark rides in that area is possible.

Having dark ride corner (instead of coaster corner as what it was years ago) could be useful asset to be perhaps one of the few areas of the park to remain open during autumn or winter periods though admittedly having most of your guests funnelled into that area might lead to capacity problems even if you have Project Horizon, Dungeons back into dark ride use, a rethemed Gangster Granny and one or two dark rides and the theatre back into use which could have some side effects but I'm thinking ahead.
 
The Gangster Granny building has had it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the rest are also knackered. Might be time to cut their losses on the actual buildings themselves.
 
Poisson said:
The Gangster Granny building has had it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the rest are also knackered. Might be time to cut their losses on the actual buildings themselves.
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I’d bulldoze the lot as well. Huge area that could be better utilised
 
Jb85 said:
I’d bulldoze the lot as well. Huge area that could be better utilised
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Although I agree, I’m no planning expert but I wonder if the park would struggle to get new/different buildings so close to the towers again.

And it really needs them. A large family dark ride to accompany PH could be a great draw operationally for the park
 
Mick said:
It’s not something I ever go anywhere near, but is the driving school popular at all?
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I don't know, but I think if it is, it probably needs to be moved, as it is currently taking up quite a large amount of that street and heavily restricts movement around the world of David Walliams (it would probably be better if the land had the second more enticing entrance next to hex, as I personally rarely go to david walliams because how much out of the way it is, compared to the curse where I do it most the times I walk past heading to nemesis.
Although if they wanted to keep the ride, I don't know where it could go as after checking online it has a minimum height of 1m which seems too tall for CBeebies, although a post man pat theme could work well for it, but I can't imagine it would fit well in any other land.
 
Years ago when my kids were littlethe driving school was once in the hospitality tent for Christmas, seemed a good idea to me: using existing hardware, undercover and close to CBeebies (or the farm as it was then) the bar was repurposed as a photo sales point too so the kids still got mrs Claus driving school licences.
 
Ben said:
Years ago when my kids were little the driving school was once in the hospitality tent for Christmas, seemed a good idea to me: using existing hardware, undercover and close to CBeebies (or the farm as it was then) the bar was repurposed as a photo sales point too so the kids still got mrs Claus driving school licences.
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It's surprising that the Driving School hasn't been located near/in CBeebies Land yet, they fit the same demographics and it would take a relatively low infrastructure investment to relocate and advertise as a new attraction, not to mention increase traffic to the attraction. The old Donkey enclosure is still abandoned next to Andy's, and there's also space where the portacabin toilets sit behind Justin's House, which is a bit embarrassing compared to the rest of the area... Alternatively, they could demolish Spinball Noodles and locate them next to Octonauts and expand into the dead zones of Adventure Land.

It'll free up space for another attraction at the current Driving School site such as Bumper Cars, and would be more appropriately targeted for the Horizon/Dungeons/Walliams age demographic as well as open up the section behind the Towers next to Hex again. This means that TWoDW/CCL will no longer be a bottleneck enabling more free flow around that corner of the theme park, because it really lacks much atmosphere at the moment, even compared to about ten years ago...
 
Dring school should be relocated, the carousel could be moved as well but it would leave the area pretty redundant so they would need some sort of plan before they do that and I think Thier focus is elsewhere at the moment.
 
Seems a no brainer moving the driving school for me, allows TWODW, or whatever follows it to be a proper blank space to decide what comes next. At the moment it looks awful and closes off the area. It would also use the last bit of current development land in CBeebies without encroaching into car park. It would bring another new attraction to CBeebies within the target age range and theme. Easy to move and allow the existing hardware to be reused. Perfect for a low capex year imo.

TWODW or its successor can then focus on the “family” market as it always should have done. Boat ride, dark ride, 4d cinema, quick service restaurant, carousel and project horizon. If they could thematically and physically tie that area together they’d go a long way to bringing balance to the park, especially if they had plans for Nickelodeon building and old car showroom.

For me given it’s one of the few places on park you’d think it would be easier to get planning for buildings I really hope they’d plan to push the boat out, even if it means moving MMM as it’s a huge wasted space currently.
 
I am not sure where this consensus that the driving school is aimed at the CBeebies audience has come from?

The attraction has a height requirement of between 1m and 1.4m. This puts it in the average age category of between 4 and 10 years old.

CBeebies is aimed at those under 6.

Moving it into CBeebies would actually be reducing the number of attractions for the already underserved ‘too old for CBeebies, not old enough for the big coasters’ market.
 
I'd pull down the fence between Octonauts and Spinball and put a 2nd CBeebies entrance, re do the Octonauts queue and station, then the driving school down there where noodles was. Between Newbies and Spinball as accessible to all ages.

Then I'd demolish everything that isn't GG in TWODW and rebuild to a better area. The GG building would need serious work as well, but is probably too new to scrap the ride system.
 
GG isn’t to everyone’s liking but my kids love it. In a re-theme of the area keeping the premise of the ride the same and introducing an original story and effects would be more then adequate. Not everything needs to be targeted at the enthusiast market
 
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