Play-and-Stay Blog

Found a cool website on UK theme parks at www.themeparkjunkies.co.uk. It’s made for real enthusiasts by real enthusiasts, and it’s a great source of information: check it out!

Legoland Windsor will be adding some great family rides with opening of the all new Land of the Vikings. This will feature three new attractions. First up there is a maze called Loki’s Labyrinth. Then there’s the kiddy orientated Longboat Invader. The big announcement is the opening of an all new river rapids ride: Vikings’ River Splash. This river rapids style ride will be a very welcome addition to the park, as it only previously had one with the Pirate Goldwash.

One of biggest moves of the season is Pleasure Beach’s acquisition of The Traumatizer from the now defunct Pleasure Land, which sits just across the Ribble Estuary.

Pleasure Beach are utterly convinced that it will be a totally new experience for all its passengers, having made some interesting changes to the set up. Making the ride Infusion at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

The roller coaster is now set above water, which sounds pretty hairy, particularly when you take into account the roll-over, double inline twist and a sidewinder. The track is believed to be around two and a half thousand feet long and still quite expensive (at £8 million). This is a really good sign for Blackpool Pleasure Beach, another big investment adding to the already huge collection of roller coasters on offer.

Pleasure Beach is in the news again over the sale of its Spin Doctor ride. The Fabbri Giant Booster ride is rumoured to have been sold for around £1 million and looks to be staying fairly local, being relocated to South Pier, Blackpool. Good news for all the fans, you will still be able to put it to good use, all 120 terrifying foot of it.

Lightwater Valley in Ripon, North Yorkshire, has a new arrival this season, with Hornets Nest. OPening in May, this ride promises to be wild, and was secured from the closure of Pleasure Land, Southport, back in October. This could be great for Lightwater Valley, their Thrill Rides seem to be growing on trees and pleasing all the visitors as they grow! Nothing has been taken from Lightwater Valley in order to include this edition so all is good here.

With the month of March the new UK theme park season is very much underway and soon all theme parks will be open, offering a selection of brilliant rides and great days out.

The following parks are already open:
All Diggerland parks
Paultons
Thorpe Park
Pleasure Beach, Blackpool

The following parks open on the 17th March:
LEGOLAND Windsor
Alton Towers

The following parks open on the 24th March:
Drayton Manor
Chessington World of Adventures
All of the Gullivers Theme Parks
M and D’s

The following parks open on the 31st March:
Camelot
Lightwater Valley

If you’re going to go to a theme park this season then make sure you have a great time!

Having purchased the Tussauds group in 2005 for £800 million, the investment group Dubai International Capital have agreed to sell it to Merlin Entertainments for £1 billion. DIC will retain a 20 per cent stake in the combined company. Merlin itself is owned by the US private equity group Blackstone, the second largest attractions operator in the world after Disney.

Merlin’s Chief Executive Nick Varney said:

“The combination of the Merlin and Tussauds brands, people and operating expertise will create an exciting and world-beating global company. With such iconic brands, the expanded Merlin will not only have strong development potential, but also an amazingly robust and high value portfolio.

“Our ambition is to build on this to become the world leader in location-based, branded family entertainment.”

The Tussauds Group currently consists of Alton Towers, Chessington World of Adventures, Thorpe Park, Heide Park, Warwick Castle, The London Eye and 5 Madame Tussauds Wax Works around the globe. This is added to Merlin’s brands of The Dungeons, the Sea Life Centres and Legoland.

John Lord, an expert in the leisure industry at the University of Wales, saw a number of factors behind the growth in leisure attractions:

“We perhaps go out more as a family than we did in the past and we are more mobile. That means resorts can be developed on out-of-town sites without needing to worry about being close to town or to bus stops and train stations. Increased leisure time and wealth are also playing their part. These attractions are getting ever more expensive … but that doesn’t seem to put people off.”

Interesting… That’s not exactly the more negative view of Southport’s Pleasureland after it closed last year:

“It must be acknowledged that the UK theme park industry as a whole is facing increased competition from publicly-funded and lottery-funded attractions which have significantly distorted the visitor attractions market. This situation has been compounded by our weekend trading now competing with extended Sunday shopping rules and Sunday sporting events.”
(See my blog New Season, Renewed Optimism).

It seems a case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer after last year’s closure of a number of UK theme parks. The financial power of the bigger groups is now squeezing out smaller competition. This acquisition is likely to push forward more investment in some of the UK’s most popular attractions, but could potentially put even more financial pressure on smaller theme parks and leisure companies.