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[🌎 Universal GB] Planning, Transport and Infrastructure

I wonder what the chances would be of another operator purchasing a brownfield site around Bedfordshire and building another brand new theme park? Turn the area into a mini UK version of Florida where people could spend 3-4 days? Merlin could potentially let go of the further out places like Towers and concentrate on the South.
 
BarryZola said:
I wonder what the chances would be of another operator purchasing a brownfield site around Bedfordshire and building another brand new theme park? Turn the area into a mini UK version of Florida where people could spend 3-4 days? Merlin could potentially let go of the further out places like Towers and concentrate on the South.
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i predict a massive expansion for the nearby center parcs to capitalise on this. not sure about another theme park but i imagine there will be a huge uptick in other service things or one-day midway destinations like cinemas or those ski slope type places to capture the wealthy foreign tourists.

i imagine woburn safari park will be coming up with some ideas to get a bit of that ancillary coin too.
 
Bowser said:
Are there any existing UK theme parks with ample expansion room?

It seems another major advantage Universal will likely have is both space and permissions.

In the 90s these hindrances were reasons for our parks to find creative solutions such as Nemesis, Oblivion or the various Blackpool interactions whereas now the limitations often seem crushing, though I’m sure economics play a role in that too.
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Pretty much every major UK has capable land for redevelopment
 
Pleasure Beach arguably have the entire car park and workshop areas. If they built a multistory car park and new workshops on the car park over the road they'd probably not lose any car park spaces as well.
When the bowladrome goes down for Aviktas they'd conceivably have the rest of that car park they could expand into.

Loads of weird little plots of space within the park itself as well if they wanted to do something.
 
I do hope all routes are improved around Universal Studios Great Bedford. And not just the ones directly next to Universal
 
Bowser said:
A good video here going through the planning documents. This timeline someone on another forum snapped is particularly interesting. 2 years of actual park construction seems mad!

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From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wak-AUBKR1M
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Really phases 1b, 1c and 1d are the ones that take time. Enabling works take ages as that’s all the ground levelling and so on, and infra/utility works take _bloody ages_ as they may need more specialist teams. The actual main construction is just reliant on enough manpower and hardware until they get to the “making it look pretty” stage
 
Quantum said:
Look how fast the new area is flying up at Paultons. It's a realistic timeline and Universal will throw money at it to get it done
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To be fair all UK parks are pretty good at getting stuff built when started. Even Merlin comparatively does get stuff done once begun.
 
I think it’ll be particularly interesting because we have never really had a theme park built from scratch in England, they’ve all grown out of other ventures across decades (or even centuries) let alone something of this scale.

American Adventure was probably the closest thing and that was almost 40 years ago.
 
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