think the subsidence issue was mentioned earlier in the topic (or did I dream it ), and as far as I know they've looked at the issue, though they couldn't do anything. Whether this decision was money related I've no idea, but from the debt-discussion previously mentioned, I should think it is.
The subsidence issue is probably being thrashed out by the County Council (as land owners) and whatever the remains of British Coal is called this week. The park are probably involved, but not to a great degree. At the end of the day, they have probably tried to claim insurance for it, but I guess insurance may not pay out as the park knew full well what lies underneath, or not as the case may be! I think shoddy work by one of Britannia Park's contractors may also have been a factor, suprise suprise!
It's obviously not that bad up there, staff are walking up and down all the time. There have been people working around the old Mine Shaft recently, and random stuff up there has been repainted, methinks they want to reopen it.
Look at it this way, taking a long term view. You have an area that is costing you maintenance money to keep it in a decent enough condition, if the subsidence was really that bad you would make a one-off payment to demolish the lot and solve the problem that way. I think they do want to reopen it but are waiting for some work to be done, possibly out of season. Look at the park map, it is still the same as it was when the old entrance was there - if you had planned to never reopen the entrance you would have sorted the map out by now.... wouldn't you?
Then again, DCC may not want to demolish their asset and the park are stuck with it....
Does anyone have an approximate figure of how much AA was purchased for? Britannia Park didn't do too much to the park, so I'm guessing the figure didn't run into millions!
I think £8m was invested for the first season - I presume this included the purchase of the lease. The log flume, RMT and buffalo must have cost about £1m each, another £1-1.5m for smaller rides etc and perhaps £1m for building Silver City and the Alamo. That leaves around £2.5-3m for park purchase. Than again I could be wrong!
The park needs a fairly large cash injection to drag it out of the sewers before its name is lost in the world of larger, more reputable parks. Another problems is their lack of advertising, as most people outside of the immediate counties have no idea AA exists. I asked someone from just outside the region if he knew where it was, to which his reply was something along the lines of 'huh, where?'.
Agreed! The park are classed as a 'regional' park, meaning that the east midlands are the target audience. The parks days as a nationaly known park probably only lasted up to about 1990. It was no longer the 'next big thing', the bubble had burst - just as any new pub loses it's crowds after a year or so and a few new ones have opened. They could do with pusing the sphere of advertising further, South and West Yorkshire are well within reach with no park of their own - Flamingoland and Lightwater are further away than AA.
They could do with improving the park and creating accomodation for visitors from further afield.... DOH!
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