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The World of David Walliams: General Discussion

The only Good Ip area In the country is easily Thomas Land.
Walliams World just shows how lazy and corporate Merlin really are.

I remember @QTXAdsy bringing up an idea to retheme it with the Abandoned Port Discovery theme, along with The Dungeons and bringing back Around the World in 80 days.

I can imagine Walliams World retuning to a Talbot Street styled area, but with a more striking Victorian era theme of course.

It's still hard to imagine that Merlin never thought of using the Buildings and in that area to create such an ambitious project that would be way more successful than TWODW.

But hey, what do I know about them? All I can say is that they can't tell the difference between a World Class, Wonderfully theatrical ghost train and a cheesy Zombie shooter in desperate, and proper need of TLC.
 
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Trooper Looper said:
The only Good Ip area I the country is easily Thomas Land.
Walliams World just shows how lazy and corporate Merlin really are.

I remember @QTXAdsy bringing up an idea to retheme it with the Abandoned Port Discovery theme, along with The Dungeons and bringing back Around the World in 80 days.

I can imagine Walliams World retuning to a Talbot Street styled area, but with a more striking Victorian era theme of course.

It's still hard to imagine that Merlin never thought of using the Buildings and in that area to create such an ambitious project that would be way more successful than TWODW.

But hey, what do I know about them? All I can say is that they can't tell the difference between a World Class, Wonderfully theatrical ghost train and a cheesy Zombie shooter in desperate, and proper need of TLC.
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As much as your sentiment is great @Trooper Looper it's business I'm afraid. Merlin cannot spend ridiculous amounts of money like Disney (who use there own IPs). Merlin cannot take the risk of building a big home grown story themed area and nobody turning up, it's just not a good marketing move. An IP is far safer an investment for them and therefore that's what they tend to do with these mid sized projects.
 
I think even CBeebies land the standard of theming is limited with most of the building themselves not changed from the farm days. The building themselves and layout of Walliams world is nearly the same as Talbot street 40 years ago but will layers of paint over the top and cheap theming added over it. 2005 was the last time with CATCF which a building was striped back to its shell of a building.
 
JAperson said:
As much as your sentiment is great @Trooper Looper it's business I'm afraid. Merlin cannot spend ridiculous amounts of money like Disney (who use there own IPs). Merlin cannot take the risk of building a big home grown story themed area and nobody turning up, it's just not a good marketing move. An IP is far safer an investment for them and therefore that's what they tend to do with these mid sized projects.
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Plenty of people turned up to Alton Towers and Chessington in the 90s with their own rides and home-grown stories. The only licensed attractions really were shows (Peter Rabbit, Barney, Tweenies) and the Nickelodeon thing. Chessington had plenty of good home-grown stuff as Tussauds Studios (and John W) were good at that, they used his knowledge from film sets and the Tussauds knowledge well. Bubbleworks, Terror Tomb, Hocus Pocus Hall were all great attractions.
No reason why they couldn't do that sort of stuff again.
Oh I forgot Beanoland was probably the first major IP land in the UK really back in 2000.

The main issue right now is that they have an IP for one attraction (Gangsta Granny) but then tried to make it into a land with a poor paint job.
If they had done like Charlie and made it a single attraction in an overall land it probably would have felt better.
 
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Actually, with the exception of the GG building and theatre, are the other buildings just façade fronts with nothing in them? They have been then since Talbot Street was first built IIRC, right?
 
QTXAdsy said:
Actually, with the exception of the GG building and theatre, are the other buildings just façade fronts with nothing in them? They have been then since Talbot Street was first built IIRC, right?
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Not sure what you mean, but all the facades have actual usable buildings behind them, it’s just they have been out of guest use for many many years.
 
QTXAdsy said:
Actually, with the exception of the GG building and theatre, are the other buildings just façade fronts with nothing in them? They have been then since Talbot Street was first built IIRC, right?
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The only building in that area which is 'just a façade' is the Driving School's Car Wash. Even then, there is actually a building behind it, but I don't believe the façade is actually attached to it.

Everywhere else in the land, if you were to walk through the doors you'd be walking into an actual building (mostly into the various parts of Nickelodeon: Outta Control).

I may be wrong, but I think the only façade that is still recognisable from Talbot Street is actually probably Raj's Shop, which was originally one of the area's speciality shops - Ravens Den. Otherwise, all the other façades are from each of the land's later incarnations - but pretty much all have functional buildings behind them.
 
They have been used for a lot of things, Entertainments where there at one point before they moved to Bagshaw house, I think recently they have been used for storage.

Towers is a bit of a Merlin graveyard, before they built Sub-species a lot of the basement of the Towers was used for storing old Madam Tussauds moulds and figures including one of Shrek I think. They all probably moves into the building behind those facades.
 
Dave said:
They have been used for a lot of things, Entertainments where there at one point before they moved to Bagshaw house, I think recently they have been used for storage.

Towers is a bit of a Merlin graveyard, before they built Sub-species a lot of the basement of the Towers was used for storing old Madam Tussauds moulds and figures including one of Shrek I think. They all probably moves into the building behind those facades.
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would love to go and have a look, see what's in all these storage places, bet there's some right gems.
 
Dave said:
They have been used for a lot of things, Entertainments where there at one point before they moved to Bagshaw house, I think recently they have been used for storage.

Towers is a bit of a Merlin graveyard, before they built Sub-species a lot of the basement of the Towers was used for storing old Madam Tussauds moulds and figures including one of Shrek I think. They all probably moves into the building behind those facades.
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What and where is Bagshaw House?
 
jon81uk said:
Plenty of people turned up to Alton Towers and Chessington in the 90s with their own rides and home-grown stories. The only licensed attractions really were shows (Peter Rabbit, Barney, Tweenies) and the Nickelodeon thing. Chessington had plenty of good home-grown stuff as Tussauds Studios (and John W) were good at that, they used his knowledge from film sets and the Tussauds knowledge well. Bubbleworks, Terror Tomb, Hocus Pocus Hall were all great attractions.
No reason why they couldn't do that sort of stuff again.
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You're right, there's no reason that you can't do it, the question is whether it's a win for the parks to do it. If you're going to sink seven figures into a new ride or land, the IP fast tracks awareness in a way that it would be really expensive and hard work to replicate if you didn't have the brand recognition.

Take Thomas Land or Peppa Pig World, thousands of families are sold on the idea at the mere mention of the name of your product. It's invaluable. Like I say, it's not to say you can't invent your own anthropomorphised steam train or animated pig, but it's a lot of work to do and it's heinous amount of work to do well and when you do it well, you have to convince people it's charming and wonderful before they'll consider turning up.

Plus, even if you pull it off, you won't sell as much Jon the Tank Engine merch as you will Thomas.
 
Rick said:
You're right, there's no reason that you can't do it, the question is whether it's a win for the parks to do it. If you're going to sink seven figures into a new ride or land, the IP fast tracks awareness in a way that it would be really expensive and hard work to replicate if you didn't have the brand recognition.
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I think that’s where the inbetween themed lands come in, not full on immersion but just reasonably well done theme park stuff, things like Ug Land, Katanga Canyon, Mutiny Bay, Wild Asia, Amity (Tidal wave).

Yes few of these are probably a draw on their own, but as part of an overall theme park they compliment other areas well. In the same way Drayton Manor has Thomasland but has also put effort into making Adventure Cove last year and now Viking whatever this year.
 
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