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Merlin Entertainments (Thailand), a leading UKbased operator of amusement parks and other attractions, is looking for investment opportunities in Bangkok



The company, which opened Madame Tussauds Bangkok in December, expects to operate three attractions in Bangkok within two years, which will be packaged together into a “cluster” to generate economies of scale.

The company will spend between Bt400 million and Bt500 million to develop one new attraction. It also plans to take over at least one other facility.

Paul Williams, the company director and general manager of Madame Tussauds Bangkok, said the company is looking for empty space in Bangkok to develop a “Lego Land Discovery Centre”.

He said that in London, the company runs clusters of entertainment attractions, including the London Eye, London Aquarium, and London Dungeon.

“In Bangkok, there is also the possibility of putting two or three attractions together so they can be sold in one package to customers,” said Williams.

He added that with the cluster system, the company would be able to manage several attractions at a low cost, as it will require just one marketing manager and one operations manager to handle all the facilities.

Merlin Entertainments last Thursday officially opened Madame Tussauds waxwork museum in Bangkok. Located in Siam Discovery Centre, the 3,000squaremetre museum is expected to attract about 500,000 visitors in the first year, of which at least 80 per cent will be Thais.

Williams said that following the soft opening on December 4, Madame Tussauds had received very positive feedback from its customers.

Madame Tussauds Bangkok features 80 waxworks of popular movie stars and celebrities, including Theeradej “Ken” Wongpuapan, Ann Thongprasom, Khemanit “Pancake” Jamikorn, Tata Young, Yuenyong “Aed Carabao” Opakul, Johnny Depp, Nicole Kidman and US President Barack Obama.

The museum will launch waxworks of Spiderman in March, Sukrit “Bie” Wisetkaew in April and popular Japanese cartoon character Doraemon in May.

In October, the museum will launch a 300squaremetre “Horror Maze”. It will also open a 200seat fourdimensional cinema in the next two years with an investment of Bt50 million.

Williams said Bangkok was a promising market with plenty of welleducated young people who enjoy a monthly income of between Bt20,000 and Bt25,000. They can’t afford to visit the Madame Tussauds museums in London and New York.

He said about 80 per cent of the Bangkok attraction’s customers are young people aged between 16 and 35.

Merlin Entertainments Group operates 62 attractions and six hotels in 13 countries around the world.

The company has Madame Tussauds wax museums in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, New York, Washington DC, Las Vegas, Hollywood, Hong Kong and Shanghai. The company will open a new Madame Tussauds in Vienna next month.

The Bangkok attraction is the first Madame Tussauds in Southeast Asia.

“Anything we get as far as a water park is a benefit to the residents, especially with the heat we get in the region,” Lane said. “I’ll take my kids there.”

The project’s initial phase is expected to cost between $1.2 million and $1.5 million, said Robert J. Araiza, marketing director for Mulligan Family Fun Centers.
“The market is prime for it,” Araiza said of the decision. “The water park that was supposed to go in Temecula is no longer an option.”
In Temecula, Clearwater Waterpark Development, which built Wild Rivers Waterpark in Irvine, had wanted to build a water park on 20 acres on Diaz Road and west of Interstate 15. The company, however, was unable to secure funding for a project.

Mulligan Center opened in Murrieta in March 1996 and offers a variety of activities, including miniature golf, go-cart racing, laser tag and batting cages.
If it works out, the Murrieta water park could be expanded to include attractions on about half the park, Araiza said, and could include a “lazy river and some more extreme water ride elements,” Araiza said. Such an expansion would take about five years and be accomplished in two more phases, Araiza said.Some of the current attractions would have to be removed to create space for the water features.

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Mum’s the word on a new ride slated to join Dorney Park‘s lineup of belly-dropping, giggle-inducing thrillers, and park representatives say enthusiasts will have to wait until summer 2012 to try it out. Dorney Park’s parent corporation, Cedar Fair L.P., submitted a plan to South Whitehall Township for a new 138-foot-high amusement ride. But the plan doesn’t mention what kind of a ride it is, and the park’s general manager, Jason McClure, said his lips are sealed.

“We are keeping our focus on 2011 and all the new things we have in store with Planet Snoopy,” McClure said.

The park’s opening day will reveal the results of an $8 million top-to-bottom makeover of 10-year-old Camp Snoopy, the 3.5-acre children’s area named after the too-cool beagle from Charles Schulz‘s “Peanuts” comic strip. The renovation will bring six new rides, an amphitheater, a souvenir store and a “soda pop shop” featuring root beer floats. Dorney representatives will take questions about the proposed 2012 addition from the South Whitehall Planning Commission on Feb. 17, but even that won’t demystify the new ride. ”The Planning Commission can ask us a variety of questions… but it’s premature to get into a lot of detail,” McClure said.

That hasn’t stopped people from speculating that the incoming ride will be a coaster from California‘s Great America called Invertigo. The coaster happens to be 138 feet tall and is being relocated to another park within Cedar Fair’s amusement park empire, according to a Great America news release issued last week. Invertigo takes riders sitting face to face up a 138-foot-tall tower, then on several loops and twists both forward and backward through three inversions. The rumor of the swap surfaced last week on a theme-park fan site called Screamscape.com, but Dorney spokesman Chuck Hutchison said the rumors are just that — rumors. Invertigo reopened in July almost a year after a mechanical failure left two dozen people trapped 80 feet in the air for at least three hours, according to CNN. All of the trapped riders were rescued and no one was injured.

Under Dorney’s proposal for a new ride, several kiddie rides would be removed, as well as a basketball game, concrete midways and a portion of a paved service drive, affecting about 1.7 acres of the 187-acre property zoned as commercial recreation. Three Dorney rides are listed for sale on Ital International LLC, which dubs itself as the amusement industry’s most comprehensive new and used ride brokerage source. The Antique Cars and Dune Buggy rides are both listed for $18,000, and the Kiddie Merry-Go-Round is listed for $25,000.

The ride is slated for the western portion of the park, just north of Lincoln Avenue and Dorney Park Road and south of the mammoth Steel Force coaster, where the old Laser coaster used to be.

The Laser was removed in 2008 after 22 years of double-loop thrills. The portable coaster, anchored by tanks of water, was originally named Colossus.

The site of the new ride, where Laser stood, is on the edge of a 100-year flood plain. The location caused heated debate at the township level when Dorney sought approval for Laser. It was eventually approved with a host of conditions attached.

If Invertigo greets fans in 2012, it would be the park’s third inverted coaster, making Dorney Park the only amusement park in the country to have three true inverted coasters, according to a post on Screamscape.com.

McClure said the park will release more information on the ride this summer.