DRAYTON MANOR
United Kingdom
(Owned by Looping Group)
Park News - (3/9/2024) Drayton Manor have confirmed that the park’s former stand-up Shockwave roller coaster will reopen for the 2024 season as a traditional sit-down roller coaster called The Wave. The revised coaster will feature a more relayed height restriction of 1.2 meters and all new four-across seated trains produced by ART Engineering that appear to use the same seat and restraint system that they developed for Cannibal at Lagoon.
(10/21/2023) It’s official… we now have a date to take your last ride on Shockwave as a stand-up roller coaster Drayton Manor. According to the park you only have from now through to Nov. 5th to take your last stand on Shockwave.
After that, the coaster will return (probably with a modified name) and feature some form of new sit-down trains. I still have to wonder if they might try to add those air-time pistons under the seats like Pipeline at SeaWorld Orlando as an experimental upgrade concept.
(9/10/2023) A reader on our social media pages pointed out that there is a good chance that Shockwave’s new sit-down trains may end up being very much like 4-across trains Intamin built for Hyperion at Energylandia in 2018. I had forgotten all about this particular ride myself, and this does make a lot of sense. One other possibility may also be to revive the 4-across train style created for SkyRush at Hersheypark, where the outer two seats hang over the side of the track, offering a floorless style ride experience.
 2024 - Frontier Falls / Gold Rush Family Coaster - (7/12/2024) Drayton Manor has announced that their new Gold Rush coaster will open on July 26, 2024. This is a new family coaster from Intamin with a unique twist, featuring both a lift hill and a launch track. Through the use of track switches, the coaster will be able to offer different, multi-directional routes that the riders may experience, all while not knowing exactly which layout is in store for them at any given time. Fun photos of the Western themed land around the new ride have been posted to Themeparks-UK.
As for the coaster itself… other than some previous pictures of it under construction, the exact nature of the ride experience has been left as something of a mystery to be discovered when the ride opens later this month.
(3/23/2024) Blooloop reports that Drayton Manor has opened their new “Frontier Falls” western themed land this weekend. The land features a 4D Looney Tunes show in side the Falls Theater featuring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, the “Blasting Barrels & Co” flat-ride and the arrival of characters on the streets who will occasionally engage in shoot-outs with each other. A new upcoming roller coaster from Intamin will also soon be part of the land as well, though the details about this new ride have yet to be released.
(2/5/2024) Check out the video below to get a first look at the installation of the new family coaster from Intamin going into Drayton Manor this year. Perhaps the biggest focus on the new coaster will be the innovative use of switch tracks that will affect the flow of travel across the track.
While they don’t give away just what is expected to happen in that video, a second animated video from a fan gives us a perfect look at exactly what you can likely expect to experience from the layout. Through the use of track switches, the train is expected to come to a stop at one point in the ride and get launched backwards, and through the use of a track switch the train will rise up the lift hill backwards, which will now serve as a sort of reverse spike track, to send the train back forward once again through the switch, into the launch track where it will be shot forward and through the rest of the layout.
Even more tricky is the fact that it may not do this every time… as it has been hinted that a few other layout possibilities may be possible through the use of switch tracks and that forwards/backwards launch point. More on this when we find out…
(7/15/2023) Drayton Manor has confirmed that the park is now working with Intamin to create a new family thrill coaster for the park that will feature a lift hill and a launch. Look for this to open in 2024, which will be the first new coaster at the park since Accelerator (formerly: Ben 10 - Ultimate Mission) opened in 2011.
(6/3/2023) While we already knew that Drayton Manor was planning on adding some kind of large family roller coaster to the park for the 2024 season, new wood grained themed construction walls have now appeared in the park with the messages, “Ay you, no peeking” and that “Something exciting is coming”.
(2/4/2023) The latest video from Chall speculates a bit on just what kind of new family roller coaster may be coming to Drayton Manor in 2024.
(1/21/2023) Drayton Manor have revealed that they will soon make an announcement to reveal a large family thrill coaster coming to the park for the 2024 season. According to the park’s managing director, this will be “one of the best coasters in the UK”. The only other details given so far is that they have already broken ground for the new coaster and that the removal of Apocalypse was also required to make room for it.
(3/25/22) A new article at Blooloop looks over the purchase of Drayton Manor by the Looping Group and digs a little deeper into what plans the new owners have for the theme park. This includes the opening of three new rides this year as part of the new Viking land, as well as the mentioning of “a very big project for 2024”.
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