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GARDALAND
Italy
Merlin Entertainments Group
 Park News - (10/22/2024) Gardaland To Open Animal Treasure Island Attraction for 2025
(10/20/2024) Italy’s Gardaland park sent out a fun video showcasing how they celebrate the Halloween season which you can watch in the post embedded below. Gardaland promotes their seasonal event as “Gardaland Magic Halloween”, which lasts through to November 3rd, offering an assortment of spooky new fun suitable for families and young-adults.
"For Gardaland, entertainment is an absolute priority," says Sabrina de Carvalho, CEO of Gardaland. "For our visitors, fun also comes through entertainment: from Street Animation to shows, from live performances to music, all the way to food & beverage experiences. These are events that emotionally engage and bring out the joy of coming to the park to share carefree moments with family or friends, living immersive experiences."
Families can immerse themselves in set designs and animations that strike the right balance between fear and fun, with chilling Street Animation and shows like "ANUBIS," an exciting story set in the Egyptian afterlife, performed at the Gardaland Theatre, or the new show "The Wail of the Abyss" in the English Village, where a pirate crew is lured by the eerie song of sinister sirens. There will also be thrilling adventures at the 4D cinema with the short film "Dracula 4D," which will keep both young and old on the edge of their seats.
For those seeking more intense emotions, the “Venerd́ da paura” will officially begin on Friday, October 11th. Every Friday, from 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM, the park will transform into a horror universe thanks to the Scary Zones: two restricted areas of the park infested with zombies and unsettling creatures. The evenings will culminate in Jumanji Square with the electrifying rhythms of DJ Eros' Scary DJ Set, creating the perfect atmosphere to end the day with some spooky dancing.
Of note is the park’s horror experience called ‘WRECKAGE - The Horror Experience” which is actually an extra ticket attraction, and requires guests to be at least 14 years of age. The park will also host a grand Halloween Party experience on Oct. 31st where the Jumanji Square area is turned into a giant open-air disco party.
(12/23/2023) Gardaland’s Magic Winter event is now taking place, with the focus of this year’s event being on “kindness”. As part of the event young guests are invited to write down their own “kind thought” as a statement of positivity and encouragement to others on Christmas cards. Turning these in, the statements will be used “to help Prezzemolo create a new verse to add to the main song of the Winter 2024 edition” of the park’s Welcome Show song.
The park is currently featuring a “Santa Claus’ Magic Village” area set up in the Jumanji Square area, complete with “giant marzipan people, gift wrapping and a sweet reindeer”, a skating rink, large Christmas tree, and of course Santa Claus himself.
2024 - Wolf Legend - (6/13/2024) Gardaland has now opened their new Wolf Legend themed drop tower ride. As previously mentioned, this is a more family friendly scale ride, featuring a 25 meter spinning drop tower sticking out of the mouth of a massive wolf head, howling at the sky. A short videos showing off the entire experience from the park can be seen below and it actually looks like a very fun experience for all, not too scary, not too tall, and very well themed.
(5/14/2024) Gardaland has revealed that the name of the new tower ride opening this season will be: Wolf Legend. “The new Drop and Twist Tower of the park is an attraction for daring adventurers of all generations, called upon to perform - with courage and determination - a bold ritual: to plunge from 25 meters in height into the jaws of the gigantic, petrified wolf and free it from the curse that looms over it.”
(3/29/2024) Gardaland sent out a fun reminder video that they are now open daily for the 2024 season. While I’ve never been myself, it looks like a fun park to visit for both thrill seekers as well as families with smaller children. Plus the park also features three on-site resort hotels and two side attractions: a LEGOLAND Waterpark (with a Miniland) and a SEA LIFE Aquarium. Of course we know the park is also home to the only Jumanji themed dark ride, and based on the video it is also home to a good bit of live entertainment options as well, as well as a new for 2024 Looney Tunes 4D attraction..
According to the press release, the park’s yet-to-be-named new tower attraction will be ready to open in June 2024. They do confirm that this will be a “Drop & Twist Tower”, enclosed within a structure themed to look like “a majestic and imposing wolf of over 16 meters tall with its jaws wide open, which, struck by a curse, has turned to stone!” Guests will climb abord one of the 16 seats positioned in a circle around the gondola that will rotate and lift you “25 meters up in breath-taking scenery, light effects and clouds of smoke for a memorable adventure!”
So there you have it… basically all the details you could want to know about the park’s latest attraction, except the name, which they are still working out apparently.
(3/21/2024) Gardaland has posted a construction video showing off the pieces of what is clearly a new drop tower ride arriving on site at the park. Watch the video carefully and through the scaffolding you can see a very similar shaped structure to Croc Drop at Chessington. So the new purple tower ride is coming up and out of the mouth of a giant animal mouth of some kind (with purple teeth), which goes back to our previous rumor, that this will likely be a giant wolf head howling into the sky.
(3/7/2024) Another new teaser for Gardaland’s new thrill ride has been posted, which teases the arrival of a very large WOLF in the park. The numerous sightings of a wolf within the park eventually leads back to those purple construction walls we saw in the previous video, trying things together. It won’t be long before the park is ready to reveal the secret.
As for our previous rumors that claimed that this might be a copy of Chessington’s Croc Drop attraction but with a different theme, certainly shaping the structrure at the bottom of the tower to look like a giant Wolf head, howling at the sky, would work as a theme that could serve the same thematic purpose.
(1/22/2024) So what’s the secret new ride coming to Gardaland? I’m a bit skeptical about this myself, but according to one Screamscape source the park may be attempting to copy of the success of Chessington’s “Croc Drop” themed drop tower ride in the UK. While this is all well and good, and would actually fit the small footprint available for the site at Gardaland, my biggest problem with this rumor is that the park already has a 40 meter drop tower called Space Vertigo.
Space Vertigo is one of the old Intamin style Giant Drop rides with four rider pods and is already taller than Croc Drop, which is only 25 meters. This doesn’t mean that Gardaland couldn’t try to install a taller drop tower, but I guess another thing to consider is the age of Space Vertigo. Intamin Giant Drops were first introduced in the mid 1990’s, and out of about 16 or 17 built in the 90’s, I believe five about a third of them have been closed or moved to date. It’s no secret that the original design for the ride was a bit of a problem child for the park’s that bought them, as it was fairly common to see them operate with at least one (or more) of the drop shuttles closed at any given time.
So following the hints from the park that this will new ride will feature some kind of Native American theming, if this does end up being anything like Crop Drop, then I’d expect that Space Vertigo’s days are numbered.
(1/18/2024) You can find an interesting new teaser for whatever Gardaland has in store for 2024. Big purple rocks with engraved runes need translating , but looks like things may be more difficult than anticipated for the team, with something wicked lurking in the fog.
(10/18/2023) Gardaland has confirmed that the park will open a major new attraction in 2024 that will feature a theme “inspired by the legends of the Native Americans who have always been the protagonists of true stories as well as cinematographic and literary works which illustrate qualities such as courage and physical prowess, as well as altruism and a strong connection with nature and famous rituals performed for a wide variety of purposes, from the Sun Dance to that of purification.”
While they aren’t saying what it is yet, a large purple wall has been set up inside the park that simply says, “An ancient legend of the Native Americans”.
2025 - (11/22/2024) Gardaland has announced the addition of Animal Treasure Island for the 2025 season at a cost of around 10 million Euro. This will be a world premier experience said to be the first Merlin Universe park to offer this new IP experience created by Merlin Magic Making for the theme park chain, that will take the form of “a 6,000 square meter underground water dark ride that interweaves timeless themes such as the struggle between good and evil with an immersive treasure hunt.”
More updates on this new attraction are said to be coming soon, so stay tuned!
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