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Wonderland Eurasia/Ankapark closes - After a year of operation.

After my trip report:

I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen with this place. It should be a decent park since there’s LOADS in it – I barely covered what was in the buildings in this report - but that doesn’t count for much when so much isn’t running yet. Will it ever be fully operational? I think there’s more chance of it closing before that happens to be honest. It’s just too big for a new park. Even if the rides were all running, the staffing costs would be HUGE, which is perhaps part of the reason so much is closed. If everything was open, they’d need literally hundreds of staff to run the place, which just isn’t feasible in a park with almost no guests.
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F**k me, I'm like Nostradamus with my predictions.

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CrashCoaster said:
So... The park has closed down.

Homepage – Infinite Scroll | News1 English

www.news1.news www.news1.news

Lol what a waste of money.

Seems there will be another Intamin 10 inversion knocking around. Drayton Manor, anyone?
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I would like to see Drayton Manor get the 10 Looping Coaster, yes! There is also an Intamin Family Launch Coaster/Jet Rescue style, so maybe that ride could save Lightwater Valley or possibly Pleasurewood Hills would benefit from that coaster
 
Coaster Chall YouTube said:
I would like to see Drayton Manor get the 10 Looping Coaster, yes! There is also an Intamin Family Launch Coaster/Jet Rescue style, so maybe that ride could save Lightwater Valley or possibly Pleasurewood Hills would benefit from that coaster
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There are an absolute s**tload of rides there as well as the ridiculous number of coasters, sometimes multiples of the same ride. For example, they have two giant frisbees right next to each other.

I'm sure other parks will be watching it closely since the rides are all pretty much new, some having never actually operated yet.

Drayton, Lightwater and Pleasurewood though? Highly doubtful. They'd struggle to afford just the shipping for one of the spinners at the moment, let alone anything else.

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gavin said:
There are an absolute s**tload of rides there as well as the ridiculous number of coasters, sometimes multiples of the same ride. For example, they have two giant frisbees right next to each other.

I'm sure other parks will be watching it closely since the rides are all pretty much new, some having never actually operated yet.

Drayton, Lightwater and Pleasurewood though? Highly doubtful. They'd struggle to afford just the shipping for one of the spinners at the moment, let alone anything else.

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That is true tbf. The frisbee would be a good fit in the UK. Chessington could so really well with a frisbee ride that's really well themed
 
Coaster Chall YouTube said:
I would like to see Drayton Manor get the 10 Looping Coaster, yes! There is also an Intamin Family Launch Coaster/Jet Rescue style, so maybe that ride could save Lightwater Valley or possibly Pleasurewood Hills would benefit from that coaster
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You aren't very good at detecting sarcasm are you?

We don't need another 10 looper in the UK. Or another coaster with loads of inversions for that matter.
 
gavin said:
Not the UK.

You seem to think that coasters just get donated to struggling parks that need something new. It'll go to whichever park pays for it, assuming it goes up for sale and anyone wants it at all.

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Yh that is true. I mean, a 10 Looper would only suit a certain target market theme park in the world. If it wasn't UK, I think it'll probably go to somewhere like Asia or something like that
 
How would this money laundering work then (asking for a friend!)? In my very limited knowledge of money laundering would be 2 ways of doing it here:
1) Add the dirty money into the takings and massively overstate the attendance, take the money as nice clean profit.
2) Pay the contractors who built the park in cash (from dirty money), then sell the park to get clean money.

I remember them making some pretty ridiculous claims about attendance so it could be option 1, but this would be pretty obvious wouldn't it? Or maybe they got found out and that's why it's been shut down. Option 2 will only work if the park can be sold, not sure how likely that is.

Note - this post is nothing but uneducated speculation!
 
I remember talking to an executive from a large European ride company about this park. And even then he said when (not if) Ankapark went under they were expecting to see a dip in European ride sales as there are so many rides here there would be enough 2nd hand rides to flood a good proportion of Europe's parks with a new ride for a year or two.

Shall be interesting to see how this pans out.
 
roomraider said:
I remember talking to an executive from a large European ride company about this park. And even then he said when (not if) Ankapark went under they were expecting to see a dip in European ride sales as there are so many rides here there would be enough 2nd hand rides to flood a good proportion of Europe's parks with a new ride for a year or two.

Shall be interesting to see how this pans out.
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And from sooooooo many different manufacturers, too.

I have to wonder if the manufacturers actually got paid properly. For example, it's weird that Intamin got the 10-inversion open, but not the Jet Rescue clone. Zamperla and Zierer got their stuff running, but the SBL coasters were clearly abandoned.

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Funnily enough I was reading up about the history of Hard Rock Park / Freestlye Music Park at the weekend (only on Wiki, nothing too detailed) - big investments, loadsamoney / company struggles then goes bust / someone grabs the assets (rides) in lieu of debts / someone then sells the assets and makes loads of $$$$.

Nothing to see here, please move on.
 
Peet said:
How would this money laundering work then (asking for a friend!)? In my very limited knowledge of money laundering would be 2 ways of doing it here:
1) Add the dirty money into the takings and massively overstate the attendance, take the money as nice clean profit.
2) Pay the contractors who built the park in cash (from dirty money), then sell the park to get clean money.

I remember them making some pretty ridiculous claims about attendance so it could be option 1, but this would be pretty obvious wouldn't it? Or maybe they got found out and that's why it's been shut down. Option 2 will only work if the park can be sold, not sure how likely that is.

Note - this post is nothing but uneducated speculation!
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I would imagine it went something like this: The funder pays a company to build the park for a ton of money. The company spends half a ton of money to build the park (using legitimate suppliers and sub-contractors), pocketing the other half. The company is in close cahoots with the funder, so the half-ton of money goes back (clean) to the pockets it came from. The other half-ton of money spent to build the park is claimed back via tax deductions or dubious public financing schemes or something like that. When the park goes bust, attractions are sold to recover even more money. Sure, it's a process that wastes a lot of the funder's money, but if funding is taken from public coffers, this might not be considered an issue for the people involved.
 
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