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Park News - (5/18/2025) I’m not sure how serious of an effort this is, but after it was announced earlier this year that the Oakwood theme park in the UK was closing for good, it seems a local resident of the area claims that they are part of an effort working to save the park. While theft don’t want to leak details or financials yet, they do say that they have submitted their proposal to Oakwood’s current owners, Aspro Parks, but have yet to hear anything back.
    Anyone know more? I know previously that a ride or two was already in the process of removal when the closure was announced, such as the park’s “Drenched” super-flume from Intamin, but I haven’t heard if any more rides or attractions have been removed in the meantime.
 
    (3/6/2025) An article on Yahoo News paints a poor picture about the fate of Oakwood park now that Aspro Parks has announced that they’ve closed it. This includes a lot of former guest comments and feedback that unfortunately could be summed up with the overall feeling that many were surprised it took this long for it to go under.
    While Spain’s Aspro Parks operates a number of attractions around the Europe market and claims that they’ve never had to shut a major park down before, the chain is known more for their Waterparks, Botanical parks as well as Zoos and Aquariums, with only a very small handful of theme parks listed including Oakwood and the two Walygator parks.
    Guest feedback about the closure included many comments about the park overcharging for the few attractions it offered and a general lack of investment in new attractions over the years. So honestly, many potential guests simply went elsewhere with their leisure time from the sound of things, which is really unfortunately for fans of Megafobia as it sounded as if Oakwood had really turned that ride around in 2023.
   In the end… “Too little, too late…” as they say. And unfortunately, as we’re starting to see with a few other small park closures over the past couple years, the overall impact from the years of the pandemic is now catching up with them as insurmountable debts are coming due. While I’ve never personally been to Oakwood myself, so I can’t comment on the state of the park myself, I have always said that if a park isn’t always building something, then they may be dying.

 
    (3/4/2025) Consider me shocked… but Oakwood theme park in the UK is no more. At least not for 2025 at least. In an official statement posted to the park’s blog page they announced “the immediate closure of Oakwood Theme Park and confirm the park will not open for the 2025 season.”
    You can read rest of the official statement by following the link, but the gist is that the park’s owner, Aspro Parks, made this difficult choice due to “the current business environment”. They rescued the park when it was a risk of a closure the last time in 2008, investing over £25 million in the process, including the highly praised upgrade of the park’s Megafobia wooden coaster in 2023. Despite it all they site declining attendance and increased expenses in about every field (electricity, food and beverage, insurance, wages, etc…) and in the end they have determined that further investments and even the overall cost of operating the park is no longer sustainable.
    This would explain the crews that were spotted taking down the park’s mega flume last week, as I suspect that it and anything else of value will be put up for sale.

 
    (2/9/2025) According to posts on social media, cranes are on site at Oakwood where it appears that crews are carefully taking down the park’s “Drenched” ride, an Intamin Mega Splash flume. If the name isn’t ringing a bell, you may remember that this ride was called HYDRO when it first opened in 2002, but the name was changed in 2009 after the park was fined the year before following a several-years long investigation into the death of a rider in 2004.
    Intamin’s Mega Splash concept did not go over well, as the first version of the ride system that opened at Knott’s Berry Farm in California as Perilous Plunge in 2000 also was involved in an incident that resulted in a death of a rider about a year after it opened and eventually that version was shut down and removed from Knott’s in 2012.
    So far the park has not responded to any posts on social media asking about the status of Drenched, but it does not appear to be listed on the website page that shows off the park’s other “thrill rides” at this time.

 
    (7/12/2024) An incident was reported as having taken place on the “Bounce” drop tower ride at Oakwood this week. According to the report the drop tower ride experienced a ‘scheduled emergency stop’ in mid-ride and quickly brought a loaded ride cart back down quickly after only climbing half-way up the tower.
    Currently the ride is closed and undergoing an investigation. 

2025 - Nothing is known at this time...nothing added in 2024