Fair enough! From having read your past posts, however, I notice that one of your key reservations with the project is around funding, and it would appear that they may now have gained some pretty substantial funding; enough to complete the project. Does this not allay your concerns somewhat, or am I reading too much into that part of the article?
Over the years, I have seen too many "fully funded" projects strand, and this projects has many similarities with them. The whole project appears to move at an absolutely glacial pace, and investors typically like to see a return on their investment before they are too old to enjoy it. They can pull out if things get too delayed, and this project has been a conga line of delays, spending money like a high roller all the time. How many hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent already, doing very close to absolutely nothing?
That's the big issue I have so far. The wild spending despite a lack of anything substantial happening for years. It's as if the people behind the project would much rather bait investors and collect "consultancy fees" than actually building anything. But as the years go by and the lack of progress continues, the promises just get loftier and more unrealistic.
Take for instance the "foadarche" they say they will build in the entrance plaza (whatever that is - a Google search for the term only leads back to the planning documents themselves). 100 m in diameter and 130 m tall. That's twice the dimensions of the Magic Kingdom castle. About the size of the Orbit Tower built for the Olympics in London. Pretty much identical stats to the London Eye (which is 135 meters tall and 120 meters in diameter). For a setpiece for the entrance plaza. How the heck is that a sensible use of money? And for that matter, it took three years for the Orbit Tower to be designed and built. About six years for the London Eye. Those things are heckishly expensive and not something you just throw up on a whim as part of a larger project.
Further, they're aiming for an attendance three times that of Thorpe Park when the first gate opens - in 2024. Does it seem realistic to get that ready in three years, when it has taken them eight years to
submit the planning documents? For the record, Universal Studios Beijing broke ground in 2016. That park is 54 hectares, versus 57 for this proposed first gate. It's still a construction site four and a half years later.
They're talking about 3550 hotel rooms. Again, let's look to Universal Studios Beijing. They're planning about 1200 rooms.
Or what about the IPs? If they want to be ready in three years, and build something that will draw millions of visitors, they better start construction by next year, which means the design process needs to start pretty much immediately. But they still don't seem to know which IPs will be involved, and that's
kind of essential to know what they will be building. Three years from the projected opening date, there should at least be an active construction site, or at the very least, detail design should be well underway. Pandora - The World of Avatar at Animal Kingdom broke ground in early 2014 and was opened in mid-2017. Design began in 2011. These things take a lot of time.
All in all, there are just so many red flags here. The proposed project is unrealistically large with an unrealistically short time frame, the track record so far is abysmal, and wherever you look for details there just seems to be "we haven't thought about that yet". There just doesn't seem to be any commitment, only pie-in-the-sky promises and calls for investment despite nothing being delivered for eight years and counting. I just don't see this getting anywhere close to what they are currently presenting. Maybe there will be a shopping mall with a cinema and a few escape rooms opening at some point in the late 2030s.
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