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Suggestions - For Improvement (About Drayton Manor)

Elise

Elise

Team Member
Team Member
We are all here because we have a single thing in common, a love for Drayton Manor.

However, there is always room to improve and develop and sometimes things that we may notice.

What sort of things would you change / improve in order to enhance the experience?

[This thread was a suggestion by RustyShackleford. Thank you for the suggestion!]
 
Definitely the cleaning depth. If you don’t have little children then you don’t see the extreme dust sitting on the big scale engines in the Thomas soft play centre. It’s that bad and thick , I can’t enter when the air cons are on as it sets my Asthma off.
 
They need to clean the rides in a few areas I agree. It's an area merlin have looked at with project sparkle at thorpe park being heavily publised. Similar I believe at other merlin parks. Indoor areas need to be maintained and kept clean. Castle of dreams had rubbish in areas that they should be constantly cleaning in my opinion.
 
I think the park either need to hire more staff, properly train the staff they already have (to operate water rides) or pay staff with proper training, and to be honest even all the staff, more money.

There must be reasons why so many team members are leaving… I highly doubt if the park were paying good money so many would leave in such a short space of time (2023 season). I also remember the staff didn’t like some of the hours they had to do, but if they got payed more they probably wouldn’t moan as much since they would earn more money.
 
I have recently been looking at 1 star reviews for Drayton Manor on Google Maps to see what the park could improve on and after reading 50+ this was the general consensus:

- The park is unorganised
Especially during the Christmas event last year. Multiple reviews stated they had a timeslot booked for Santa at 5:00 only to be told when they got there that the last slot was at 4:00. This was obviously due to the park changing times BTS, but not telling people who had booked further in advance they had been changed.

Another example is, yet again during the Christmas event, wait times for both Santa and the Wishmas Express being over 2+ hours in some cases. I had personally experienced the same with the Wishmas Express so I kind of see where these people were coming from. This was most likely due to overbooking of the event on certain days.

- General staff issues
A lot of reviews said the staff were either unhelpful, rude, or both. I have not personally experienced this, so maybe they were just having a bad day? Not too sure about that one...

- Wait times
Most people complained about the wait times during peak summer and school trip days. I get it's annoying, but if your going during July/August I'm afraid that's just what happens in literally any theme park.

- Ride closures
Mainly the closure of water rides. We of course know this is due to both Stormforce 10 being old and often unreliable, and lack of staff training for water rides.

There were also a lot more negative things said... if you don't like people saying bad things about things you like, I don't recommend you to look at these reviews.
 
The Station Buffet is just an empty buidling which sort of brings the whole place down at the moment.

Stick some face painting in there and you change the whole atmos and brings a buzz to the park seeing kids with painted faces everywhere.
 
I think the looping group what they done with the park has been excellent for the past 3 years they slowly replacing the rides the Bryan’s added or re-themed. On the other hand they upsetting families with their extra charges for food and drink, add fast passes to rides and upsetting the staff with them working longer hours with no extra hourly pay. Even today a lot of staff looked bored and not interested. Like I was talking to a member of staff about the new coaster and they was more interested in how long to they could go home. Some staff even closing queue lines 5 mins earlier so they finished bang on half 4.
 
RustyShackleford said:
Given the sneaky photos of the paint job on the outside of the rethemed barrells I think they should get Dynamite from the new Gladiators to open it.

(If Sabre wants to come round too at the same time I will happily give her a personal tour of the park)
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What a good idea
 
They need to look at the car parking. There were people parking everywhere on sunday and I understand also during the whole event. No one directed us where to park, we arrived about 1230. They are investing heavily in the park, but some also needs to be diverted to a tarmac or multi story car proposed when they planned to build the hamilton car park. This would provide an all weather car park.
 
Pete999films said:
They need to look at the car parking. There were people parking everywhere on sunday and I understand also during the whole event. No one directed us where to park, we arrived about 1230. They are investing heavily in the park, but some also needs to be diverted to a tarmac or multi story car proposed when they planned to build the hamilton car park. This would provide an all weather car park.
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A multistorey would probably be the best and have the most capacity for space.
 
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Pete999films said:
They need to look at the car parking. There were people parking everywhere on sunday and I understand also during the whole event. No one directed us where to park, we arrived about 1230. They are investing heavily in the park, but some also needs to be diverted to a tarmac or multi story car proposed when they planned to build the hamilton car park. This would provide an all weather car park.
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We were there earlier and there was a chap coming down the cars trying to get in and explaining how wet it was, we were to go to the nexgt guy who would direct.

The next guy did direct us down one of the horizontals but then there was no one else and it was a bit of a free for all.

I think a multistorey would cost as much as a new coaster. Any tarmacking would mean there is no where for the water to soak away. Something ought to be done though.
 
RustyShackleford said:
I think a multistorey would cost as much as a new coaster
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True, but it would probably be worth it. The more the park expand and add new rides, the more throughput and guests they can allow in, and with the current grass car park, in some weather conditions it can be difficult to use or completely unusable. However, I think realistically speaking we can probably just expect to see some tarmac with a decent drainage system.

(After googling it, the average multistorey in the UK costs £7500-£8000 per bay, so yeah I definitely see where you're coming from in terms of cost)
 
With them getting £6 per car you would think the money made from the parking will go on improving the car parks. Even if they removed the grass and used hardcore like they done in the main car park in a couple of the rows.
 
The car parking does need looking at especially for Vikings. They have the disability parking on the grass but when it rains and the grass turns to complete mud, it becomes lethal for those with disabilities to navigate.
 
Charliie said:
The car parking does need looking at especially for Vikings. They have the disability parking on the grass but when it rains and the grass turns to complete mud, it becomes lethal for those with disabilities to navigate.
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Disabled parking... in a muddy field... where wheelchairs can't get through... not very well thought out.
 
alfie8 said:
Disabled parking... in a muddy field... where wheelchairs can't get through... not very well thought out.
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No it’s not. We had no option but to park there during some of the events and with the ran it became extremely slippery to the point that I fell over in the mud. It’s that bad that i ask staff to move barriers so I can collect my mother who is legally blind safely.
 
Charliie said:
No it’s not. We had no option but to park there during some of the events and with the ran it became extremely slippery to the point that I fell over in the mud. It’s that bad that i ask staff to move barriers so I can collect my mother who is legally blind safely.
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Car parking is definitely a pretty big issue that the park just don’t seem to want to address or do anything about, which really isn’t very good considering it’s one of the first things you do when you enter the park especially when as a new guest it could be your first impression of the park.
 
I'd say move disability parking to a different bit of the park because of how it's just a field with no wheelchair accessible entrance to go. And I'd use the current land for future park expansions.
 
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