Parques Reunidos has acquired Belantis

[Matt N]

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Brill! Thanks for the suggestion @HeartlineCoaster; I might try that!

 

[CSLKennyNI]

Huracan's track is receiving a major overhaul.

Source

Official statement from the park.

After the takeover by Parques Reunidos, this year is all about renovation, beautification and maintenance. So that even the old "pearls" do not lose their attractiveness.
Among other things, existing areas in the park are being modified and further developed thematically.
Of course, special attention is paid to safety. So Huracan is currently partially dismantled. Heavy-duty track parts - the cars race over the course with loads of up to 4,3 G - are subjected to a special test for overhaul.

We wish you a nice evening and look forward to the new season!

Source

 

[oriolat2]

I guess the coaster must be tearing itself apart if Parque Reunidos is spending some money on it. If there is a more penny-grabber company than Merlin that has to be PR. By the way, this is sort of odd: has there been any other case of Eurofighter that has needed such an extensive track replacement after less than 10 years?

 

[Pokemaniac]

Since this is Parques Reunidos, I'm halfway suspecting them to take the ride apart to sell it. "After dismantling Huracan, we found that it would not be technically feasible to reopen it. Luckily, we were able to find a buyer."

But I suspect the truth is more mundane. The coaster probably needed an overhaul or total replacement, and the former option must have been found to be cheaper. I don't trust Parques Reunidos to be doing this unless it is somehow the cheapest alternative. That company is negligence and mismanagement incarnate.

 

[Hixee]

By the way, this is sort of odd: has there been any other case of Eurofighter that has needed such an extensive track replacement after less than 10 years?

Not that I can recall, but Gerstlauer seem to have most of their problems assembling them. I'm surprised it's taken this long for one to need work like this so soon in its life.

 

[_koppen]

Huracan is one of the worst coasters I've ridden in my life. It looks awesome but in some strange way it just beat the **** out of us.

Good to see something happen to it.

 

[Fluorineer]

I guess when a park has low enough self-esteem to buy an all-red Eurofighter, then even PR could lead to an improvement in overall decision making.

 

[Lofty]

The coaster was originally meant to be for another park, I'm sure it was Ferrari World? And then due to some complication, it ended up being bought by Belantis? Hence the red? I have that burning in the back of my mind.

 

[Fluorineer]

Fair enough then. I still have an old kids magazine from 2004 recommending Belantis as a magnificent place and praises Fluch des Pharaoh as a fantastic water ride. Considering how it's right outside of Leipzig, this place should have massive visitor potential in theory, and Tripsdrill shows that being a Gestlauer showground doesn't have to be a bad thing.

I'm just so torn about PR though. What is to expect from a company that builds Star Trek in one year, and then Ducati World the year after? From a Nickelodeon land with used kids rides to a full-circuit multi launch infinity coaster, everything seems to be possible.

 

[Pokemaniac]

I'm just so torn about PR though. What is to expect from a company that builds Star Trek in one year, and then Ducati World the year after? From a Nickelodeon land with used kids rides to a full-circuit multi launch infinity coaster, everything seems to be possible.

I would not hold my breath, as Parques Reunidos is really, really stingy.

Possibly not really related, but I just had a fun little exchange with a Parques Reunidos rep on Facebook, and why not post it here since they might decide to delete it all when they see it, and I don't want all the effort to go to waste:

I hope that the rest of the parks work better and that the amusement park in Madrid is an exception. The attractions are neglected, the Jungle, one of the few open the other day was a disgrace to the spider webs and dirt that the dolls have. The attractions almost all closed, said that the rain, but the characters of Nickelodeon, did not appear in the few hours that had it open.
I hope that the rest is managed in a very different way

The park in Madrid is NOT an exception. The parks of Parques Reunidos are all ill-managed, with a clear lack of maintenance, staff, staff training, and above all, investment. Money is being made, but only tiny crumbs are given back to the parks. Bonbon-Land in Denmark, Bobbejaanland in Belgium, Mirabilandia in Italy, TusenFryd in Norway, both parks in Spain, all the US parks... The quality has clearly gone down since Parques Reunidos took over, as demonstrated by visitor numbers. It is widely considered among theme park enthusiasts to be the worst theme park operator in the Western hemisphere, barely losing out on the world record behind Fantawild in China. I hope they either change their ways or go bankrupt while there is still something left to save in their parks.

Hello. Thank you for expressing your opinion although we do not agree with your comments. From Parques Reunidos we work to improve each year and give the best service to our users. We have almost 10,000 professionals around the world who strive to offer the best experience and quality to the visitor. We closed 2018 with almost 20,000,000 customers who demonstrate trust in our Parks. Every year we present new attractions, shows and restaurants and we strive to keep improving year after year. And finally, maintenance and safety is one of our priorities. We appreciate your comment and we hope that you change your mind in the future. We will work for it. Greetings.

Parques Reunidos, your visitor and employee numbers may be impressive, but the trends are not looking good. The business model seems to be to purchase parks that are "readily developed", and then cut all costs to the bone, giving back as little as possible while the park slowly ages and things gradually become worse and worse.

In my home park, TusenFryd, the signs of under-investment are clearly visible. New attractions are added at a steadily slower pace, queue times keep going up (whose idea was it to man a 40-seat Giant Discovery with a single staff member, giving it a dispatch time interval of around 10 minutes?), the food is regularly ranked the worst in the country by travel guides, the buildings are screaming for a new lick of paint, old attractions are scrapped without a replacement, and visitor numbers are down 20 % from 2006 (while other amusement attractions in the country and region have almost doubled their attendance in the meantime). The only arrow pointing up for that park is the ticket price.

But there's a whole big world of amusement parks under the Parques Reunidos umbrella. Maybe it's not so bad elsewhere? Let's tour Europe and see.

Some Googling reveals that Bonbon-Land (Denmark) currently sees around half the visitor numbers it had in 2006. This while non-PR parks in the country like Legoland Billund, Fårup Sommerland and Djurs Sommerland have seen increases of around 10-60 % in the meantime. Perhaps some of the reason is that they have added a few rollercoasters instead of removing them like Bonbon-Land has.

On to the Netherlands. Attraciepark Slagharen had around 1.5 million guests in 2011, before PR took over. In 2016, they dipped below the million, and the 2017 numbers were hardly better. Efteling, meanwhile, has gone from ~4 million to ~5 million in the same time span. Clearly Dutch people have picked up an appreciation for theme parks, but they're not going to your properties.

Bobbejaanland in Belgium? Same story. Attendance down 9% last year, if I'm reading the numbers reported by Looopings correctly. The exact numbers haven't been released, so it's hard to tell a trend, but apparently the park is struggling to stay afloat. Wikipedia's latest numbers are from 2008 and quote 740,000 visitors that year. Walibi Belgium's attendance, meanwhile seems to be relatively steady around the ~1 million mark, 1.3-1.4 if the waterpark is included.

Next would be Germany, and Movie Park... if I could find any recent numbers. Apparently, figures haven't been released in a few years, but its annual visitor record was apparently broken in 2014. I guess a statement would have been made if the record had been broken again, so let's put this one down as stagnant since 2014. Wikipedia shows that Europa Park has grown steadily since 2008, so apparently the market is there and it is growing. Granted, it's pretty hard to find historical visitor numbers for German parks in general. Hansa Park and Heide Park also seem to boast about record attendance in recent years, at least.

Great, Italy then. Mirabilandia had two million visitors in 2009. In 2016, it had 1.6 million. Gardaland, meanwhile, went from 2.8 to 3 million between 2010 and 2016. Granted, numbers appears to have been stable as another source mentions 3 million visitors in Gardaland in 2007 as well. Mirabilandia deserves extra mention as it was once the park that built Katun and iSpeed, world-class thrill coasters. Now all they're getting is inexpensive rides for children. The ambitions died not long after Parques Reunidos took over.

And then Spain. PortAventura has been nice enough to release its visitor numbers, which rose from 3.7 million in 2012 to 4.7 million in 2017. They also built several major attractions in the meantime. By contrast, Parque Warner Madrid and Parque de Atracciones de Madrid has seen one new roller coaster between them *since 2009*. I can only compare the coaster numbers as visitor numbers appear to be a closely guarded secret. Not that comparisons would be that useful, since the Spanish theme park industry was in shambles when those parks were bought by Parques Reunidos. All I can conclude is that the chain does not appear willing to develop the parks, instead relying on attractions that were built years before they took them over.

As these numbers show, visitors to European amusement parks in general have been stable or rising in the past ten years. Parques Reunidos parks, however, seem to have lost visitors all over Europe, which might explain the company policy not to release visitor figures anymore. Instead, the total visitor numbers are displayed for the whole chain, because those can be inflated by buying up new parks. The acquisition of Belantis will probably make this year's numbers look even nicer ("Up 600,000 in one year! That's a 3 % increase!"), but it says nothing about how each individual park is faring. And that is probably the intention.

So who hired those 10,000 professionals? Who built the parks that attracted twenty million people? Various previous owners. Parques Reunidos has taken over successful parks and tried to maintain the success without doing anything to uphold it. Only by cutting away those things that don't make money on paper. Why staff a restaurant with 5 people if it can technically be done with 3? Why pay good money to keep an attraction running for 5 more years if it can just be scrapped? Why build a 30 m tall coaster when one 7.5 m tall is much cheaper? Why build a coaster at all if you can hire a guy in a funny costume to do a juggling act in the parking lot? Why paint the buildings every 5 years when you can do it every 15 years? Why are your visitor numbers collapsing and your reputation suddenly the worst in the world among fans of theme parks?

Ask anybody with a bit of travel experience about who is worse than Parques Reunidos in this industry. Most will concede that for all their flaws, Six Flags is at least giving their parks new attractions. Cedar Fair builds spectacular rides when they finally decide to build them. Merlin Entertainment has a fixation on post-apocalyptic themes and shipping containers, but their parks see large-ish new attractions every few years. Some with a lot of international experience may mention Fantawild and how they build their parks 90 % complete, open them, and never let a carpenter anywhere near them again, but all in all you have to travel to China to find a less-liked theme park operator than Parques Reunidos. It seems like the chain itself is realizing this, as its home page is doing everything it can to tell investors how great it is at making money, while seriously downplaying its involvement in running amusement parks. Because the visitors are not the focus. The investors are.

To be quite honest, I expect Parques Reunidos to crash horribly at some point in the next few years. Their assets are rapidly becoming less valuable, by virtue of falling visitor numbers and aging infrastructure. As mentioned in my long post, buying Belantis is apparently an effort to patch the numbers to hide the decline, as the addition of a park with 600,000 annual visitors will make the chain-wide number go up significantly (or make any decline look less drastic). But with income from the parks spread to investors, or spent buying up new parks, a lot of parks losing money, and the parks being worth less overall, the system is bleeding value rapidly. When investors start to realize they're sitting on junk assets, they will probably start selling their shares, which makes the share price go down and cause even more people to sell, and then things will go rapidly the way of the dodo.

Most of their parks are not poised to make a profit in the long term. The attraction lineup is aging. The parks have fewer and fewer visitors. Income is apparently secured mainly through external investments, or possibly with the successful parks financing the ones that lose money. Heck, no wonder why they aren't investing more than nominal sums. The debt would rapidly rise beyond their capability to pay back if the stream of investor money stops.

Please prove me wrong. Finances is not my subject, but I just realized that things are looking incredibly grim for Parques Reunidos.

 

[oriolat2]

You are my hero, Poke! These people running PR manage their customers as if they were clueless, and they probably are, but that's no excuse for not trying your best to give your guests better facilities and an overall good experience.

 

[Hixee]

Thanks Poke, that was a fun read.

It'd be interesting to see some polling of GP visitors about their thoughts on the parks (let's say, comparing Tusenfryd with Liseberg). People are voting with their wallets, feet, bums, whatever you count it in, but some more feedback would be interesting. They may not know (or care) about who owns the park, but they will sure care about how much they enjoyed their day.

Hopefully they go under and someone can pick the parks up for cheap and then turn them around.

 

[DelPiero]

Laying the smack down on PR

 

[Pokemaniac]

Might as well post their response here. It was posted this morning:

In any case, thanks for participating in our social networks. Best regards.

I don't think they'll want to speak more about the matter.

 

[Ethan]

This is the content I want when I log onto this website. <3

 

[jayjay]

Is that just the professional way to word no u?

 

[Fluorineer]

I mean, what is he supposed to say. If Parques Reunidos in itself is already at rock bottom, how do you describe being a Facebook representative for PR? Awareness is clearly not the issue here, PR wouldn't be able to do what they do "profitably" if poor management was the sole reason for what is happening.

This is even one level beyond Merlin, with them I mostly feel like they know the issues but lack the tools to fix them, while the people in charge of these tools don't want to hand them out (since that would be their beloved didgeridollars). At PR though, clearly nobody is giving any hoots.

 

[Pokemaniac]

Awareness is clearly not the issue here, PR wouldn't be able to do what they do "profitably" if poor management was the sole reason for what is happening.

This is even one level beyond Merlin, with them I mostly feel like they know the issues but lack the tools to fix them, while the people in charge of these tools don't want to hand them out (since that would be their beloved didgeridollars). At PR though, clearly nobody is giving any hoots.

I think the profit generation in Parques Reunidos lies in convincing their investors that they are a company worth putting money in, as they have high visitor numbers and own a lot of locations. Their parks are hardly making money, if at all, and that's probably not the main focus either. The focus seems to be to fish for investments, then hightail it before anybody finds out exactly what they have invested in.

 

[ECG]

^We all believed Poke when he posted their response on Wednesday. There's no reason for you to post a snapshot of it two days later. Please refrain from these kind of posts. Thanks

 

[CrashCoaster]

tallking to ecg like that?

get out.

Did you actually just report me because I posted a GIF? Not cool.