UK thrill seekers, get ready for your dreams to come true because our version of Disneyland is coming to a place near you soon.
The new theme park, dubbed the ‘UK Disneyland’, will initially have six differently-themed areas across its 535-acre site – the equivalent of 136 Wembley Stadiums – although there are plans in place for it to be extended by 2029.
Set to open in 2024, the theme park actually has no affiliation with Disney, and will instead partner up with the BBC, ITV Studios and Paramount Pictures.
Now, the first artists’ impressions of the £3.5 billion theme park have been released, showing the six different lands in all their glory: The High Street; The Studio; The Woods; The Isles; The Jungle; and The Starport.
The entrance to The London Resort, which will be located in the Swanscombe Peninsula in Kent, will be via a grand plaza that leads visitors and hotel guests through The High Street. The theme park resort will also have shops, restaurants, hotels, a convention centre and a first-class water park.
Visitors will start their journey in The Studio, which the park describes as a gritty, modern-day warehouse district which ‘practically roars with the exhilarating thrills of big, blockbuster features’.
Next to that lies The Woods, ‘an enchanted realm where springtime reigns eternal and the boundary between reality and fantasy dissolves.’ Here, visitors will be able to step through the pages of a storybook and embark on a range of different adventures.
Their journey then continues into The Kingdom, an immersive realm of swords, sorcery, dragons. ‘This is England as a dark and ancient land, a place of threatening and imposing castles and mystical Arthurian legends,’ a press release reads.
To the north lies The Isles, a land of giant creatures, mythical beasts and adventures at the crossroads of imagination and reality, while The Jungle will feature ancient ruins of a mysterious long-lost civilisation.
The final land, The Starport, will be dedicated to futuristic experiences, alien encounters and big thrill rides, and will ‘launch visitors into thrilling science-fiction adventures that are out of this world, leaving them mesmerised at things that should be impossible but are not’.
PY Gerbeau, chief executive of London Resort Company Holdings, said:
We are creating a first-class theme park. A destination that maximises all the new, immersive and interactive technologies and experiences in the world. But we won’t just be creating a world-class leisure destination, it will also be one of the most sustainable theme parks on the planet.
We have three guidelines we work to when it comes to developing attractions. Number one is innovation. We’re not here to copy what’s been done before even if it has been successful. Number two is relevance. We need to consider that the customers of today will not be the customers of 2024.
And the third is flexibility. We need to create a park that can evolve and adapt easily.
Billed as one of the most ambitious theme park projects ever in Europe, the London Resort will be the first European development of its kind to be built from scratch since the opening of Disneyland Paris in 1992.
The park will open in 2024.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).