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Wardley to retire

According to some of the other forums, John Wardley has already completed his autobiography and a number of publishers are considering it!

Can't wait to read it.

Blaze said:
I disagree, I reckon if he published a book it'd sell quite well if they marketed it properly.

Surely it's not just us uber-geeks that have an interest in behind the scenes? I bet it'd be a very interesting book for 'casuals' who just enjoy a trip to theme parks to get an insight into how it all happens. Plus there's all his experience in film.

Who wouldn't want to read "John Wardley - The story or the man who made James Bond's car jump over a river and do a 360"? :p
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Blaze said:
I disagree, I reckon if he published a book it'd sell quite well if they marketed it properly.

Surely it's not just us uber-geeks that have an interest in behind the scenes? I bet it'd be a very interesting book for 'casuals' who just enjoy a trip to theme parks to get an insight into how it all happens. Plus there's all his experience in film.

Who wouldn't want to read "John Wardley - The story or the man who made James Bond's car jump over a river and do a 360"? :p
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I'm more "casual" than "uber-geeky", and I'd buy it. :p
 
What worries me now is what does the UK theme park industry do now for inspiration.

It's never clever to put everything on one man/ woman but we have essentially come to depend on JW to guide an industry that has become ever more leaderless in this country as the bankers have become all powerful.

It's clear JW influence on The Smiler is limited and although he is rolled out for the odd sound-bite he is not the force behind a ride that he once was. And i don't see anyone (or organisation) taking his place. At the end of the day John was a geek, geeks come in many shapes and sizes and to be honest i wouldn't trust many to run a tombola never mind a theme park. But to be successful in the industry you need to be that rare geek that also gets reality, its a rare bread that few achieve and i really worry we have entered a post Wardley world without a geek in charge who knows what they are doing.

Unless there is one hidden somewhere i worry that the ride designers for the premier UK parks are entering a phase where the leaders don't actually understand what a theme park is... even if they have worked in the industry for many years.
 
So true, Dave. :(
To paraphrase Hunter S. Thomoson,
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Alton and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
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See I'm not so much worried about finding others like John Wardley. I think there are plenty of people that are both enthusiastic and if given the chance capable of executing such a project. Sometimes you even see stuff they do, although it's normally overlooked by the tacky game stall someone from finance decided to install next door.

What worries me is that we'll never see someone else like him manage to break through the corporate structure and have as much influence as he did. Tussaud's took a big risk by putting Wardley in charge; when you think about it they let one man with (at the time) a limited history of Theme Park projects completely re-design Chessington. Thankfully the project was a massive success and John became the go to man. But are we ever likely to see someone given a chance like that again?
 
Tim said:
But are we ever likely to see someone given a chance like that again?
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I would say no. Well, at least not with Merlin that's for sure.

Tussauds was small when they took John on, they had a very close family feel. As such, the risk was worth taking. Merlin is a big corporate company, their smaller businesses may have a close family feel, however in the big scale of the company they will only take on highly experienced staff within the industry. So people such as Candy, who have been a part of previous big scale projects. I'm sure they will have many other experienced people like Candy who have been in the game a long while.

The problem we have now is that the industry has been in the UK for so long, so there are heaps of people they can use without taking risks. The only likely places to takes risks these days will be the smaller parks, such as Oakwood for example (although even they have been playing it safe for far too long the past few years).

As much as it pains me to say this, I doubt we will ever have someone that will be such an influence. John will go down in the history books and will no doubt be someone we tell future enthusiasts about.

A lot of people that work within the industry now stay behind closed doors and that's only how I see the industry in the future. We will just see the rides pop up. But we will never see the key designers come out and talk about it (in the way John got so involved with enthusiasts and the whole industry).
 
John gets involved with enthusiasts because he is an enthusiast. Several times we have heard some of the Alton big wigs (mentioning no names ;) ) say that they don't actually like rides. It's no wonder they can't produce rides that have the same "spark" as John's.
 
Tim said:
What worries me is that we'll never see someone else like him manage to break through the corporate structure and have as much influence as he did. [...] Are we ever likely to see someone given a chance like that again?
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Probably not. Theme parks in Britain are now a business, but when he had the ambitious idea to build Chessington in the early 80s there were few set rules. From about 1985 to 1995 it seemed to be just him and a few others leading the whole British theme park industry!

The way I see it, John Wardley's expertise was never theme parks, and I somewhat disagree that he was a "geek" or an "enthusiast" himself, at least that's not the way I see him. He was a magician (literally), who eventually settled on theme parks and rides as his preferred medium for entertainment.

The original Chessington World of Adventures, from what I can infer, was built from the principles of theatre, not theme parks; of which the most well-known at the time was Disney, and John wanted to deliberately avoid their style. That is why it was so cleverly designed, themed and creative, yet fun and pleasant. To extend a famous zoo into a theme park was an ambitious project - the type that usually never leaves the planning stage - but it clicked with the "British sense of fun" so well. And everything he has ever been involved in has had a humane sense of fun that almost everybody can enjoy (to whatever extent their brain works at)

John Wardley has had an obvious influence on the British theme park industry, even today, mostly at Alton Towers. Things aren't done the American way, for example, rides aren't always trying to be big and impressive, mind-glowingly immersive holiday destinations or full of extreme thrills. Instead they are unique, often weird but always incredible fun.

You can tell the industry has moved on from the days when he could simply come up with an idea and it would get built a few years later. Also his ethos didn't always connect with the public in the context of a theme park. The Fifth Dimension, for example, is perhaps the best example of a big, ambitious, British blockbuster project full of humour and theatricality, but which relied too much on assumptions about how the public would react. He was not serving himself by building these rides, he was doing it for the public. So, when the public didn't get it, he knew the ride had to be changed, even though it was a great creation.

However, it's that naivety that I admire. In terms of the Fifth Dimension, it's quite a nice idea really - a romp through space with your quirky robotic friend Zappomatic on you way to defeat evil, all to the tune of playful synths/toy piano music. But the public had little reason to lap it up the way it was intended. It's rather sad really but not a failure, and the ride would have still entertained enough people who rode it. He inspired me with Professor Burp's Bubbleworks, a ride which, by the 21st century, was far from sophisticated, but entertained us in crazy ways that you just can't get anywhere else.

Anyway, thank you John Wardley. I've never met you (well that debases my whole post) but your personality and easy imagination inspires me no end. Thanks to you and your collaborators for all the fun.
 
The thing I love about John most too is that he never got swallowed up within Merlin.

At the core of it, John's job was quite high up, working on the biggest secrets being kept from the rest of the industry (he no doubt knows future technological developments in roller coasters that are currently being worked on too). Naturally you would expect someone that high up with a company on the scale of Merlin to be swallowed within the company and disappear from public view. But not John, no, and for that I think is what makes people love him most. He speaks his mind and doesn't hide in the shadows. Obviously he has to keep some things quiet, but in the big scheme of things he's the most vocal person we've ever had in the industry.

Despite the times moving on from a handful of people working on developing the theme park industry in Britain, to now when we have Merlin as a monopoly here and other theme parks owned by various companies and managed as big businesses - John has stayed quite equally the same through the whole big changes. That's what I value most about Wardley.
 
I suppose we will have to see how future rides turn out but i'm not keen on the current trend of design by committee. I think it's telling when you look at Merlin Studios structure and note that there isn't a single creative in-charge.

I wonder how often Merlin studios big-wigs have been down to the Smiler site, i worry about the future.
 
Sub-Terra was Wardley-free. I think as a concept it was pretty cool, but execution was poor. I think they have some promising people but they need the funds.
 
The problem isn't that there's no-one to take his place. I'm sure there are dozens of young designers in the country, equally as talented as Mr Wardley (BigAl springs to mind...). The problem is that parks aren't interested in employing those people, because their excellent and detailed ideas will cost a lot of money.

Parks are interested in employing people like Holland, who can work out how to make a ride impressive enough to get people through the turnstiles while spending as little money on it as possible. Her art isn't creative, her art is in working out how to get away with the least possible effort and the maximum profit. The only places that are still interested in people like Wardley and Machin are Disney and the independent European parks.
 
Tom said:
Sub-Terra was Wardley-free. I think as a concept it was pretty cool, but execution was poor. I think they have some promising people but they need the funds.
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Agreed. My biggest issue with Sub-Terra is that it lacks a lot of really simple theatre tricks that would have turned it from good to something really special. I'm still maintaining that Wardley should have been involved with Sub-Terra and not The Smiler (dependent on seeing the final result of course) as there are many people out there that can deign a great multi-looping coaster but a theatrical dark ride needs that extra spark.
 
Tom said:
Sub-Terra was Wardley-free. I think as a concept it was pretty cool, but execution was poor. I think they have some promising people but they need the funds.
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Actually it wasn't. He was there a lot before the ride opened for feedback etc. He apparently looked thoroughly bored though - but was there for on site for a good week at least.
 
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