Thursday, May 23, 2013

Green Light For the Paramount Park at Alhama de Murcia, Spain - Full Review With All Artworks - Part One


A new theme park will open in Europe and this one is from a major entertainment company as it will be a Paramount Park. You've heard recently the announcement of a Paramount Park coming to London, but this one is another Paramount park project, located at Alhama de Murcia, in Spain.  Although the project was announced a while ago it took sometime to get the green light from the city council, and on May 9 a special session of Alhama de Murcia's city council formally approved the plan. The council had now concluded all the bureaucratic stages to be able to grant full planning permission and this will enable the construction of the park to start shortly.

As a matter of fact this Paramount park is part of an even bigger project which include the construction of another area called Lifestyle Center which will include condos and office buildings, leisure gardens, seven 4 or 3 stars hotels and one 5 stars hotels including a casino,  malls, dining and night life areas, business and convention center, an auditorium and exhibition hall for cultural events, etc...

So, the whole project is a pretty big one but we will concentrate on what is the most interesting for us, i.e the theme park itself as it will include shows and rides, some from famous license movies. Let's start with the park's map, and as you can see the park will include five lands.




Here is a picture of the park's model, the Paramount park entrance is here located at the bottom right. It certainly will not be as big as Disneyland Paris Magic Kingdom and my feeling is that it should be the same size, if not a bit bigger, than Universal Studios park in Singapore, which also has its lands placed all around a center lake. 


Let's start the visit of the park, would we, and in the grand Disney and more tradition i have for you all the artworks for each ride and attractions! As usual click on each of them to see them in big size. 

The first rendering below shows of course the entrance of the park with guests walking through the legendary Paramount gate.


Next, they will enter Paseo Paramount, a dining and retail spine that will run through the park... 



...and the key entertainment offering will be "Paramount Live!" a musical revue that will celebrate Paramount greatest movie musicals in a live stage spectacular.



"Adventure City" will be the next land on the left, here is an artwork of the main street.


In Adventure City, guests will find what should be a big E-Ticket ride, "Mission Impossible 4D".  The 4D virtual attraction will mix the best scenes of the movies and its most stunning special effects, including a similar set as the one appearing in Tom Cruise movies.
It seems that you can expect here a ride using a similar technology than Universal's Spiderman or Transformers ride - even the ride vehicle looks the same - with a mix of 3D movies on giant screens and additional "real" show effects! Below, the pre show and show artworks.







Always in Adventure City guests will experience at "Titanic, the Exhibition" the unforgettable story of the Titanic that took place 100 years ago, through artifacts, displays and special medias. This one will obviously be a walk-through attraction. I've seen the Titanic exhibition which is on tour around the world and it was already very good, and i expect the one in the park to be much better considering the decors wouldn't have to be designed to be "moved" in several locations, like the ones of the exhibition tour.





Also in Adventure City guests will find "Grease Lightning", "An attraction where cars will have a leading role. Classic bumpers cars are updated in this funny entertainment for all ages, without losing the essence of the famous musical movie".


In Adventure City's Osteria Corleone restaurant, inspired by the Godfather movies, visitors will know at first hand what food establishments from the italian immigrants in the U.S looked like during the 1940's.

Let's move to the next land: Rango's West, and this one seems to be the "Frontierland" of the park, but a funny one: "The Far-West will be the main character of this world within the Paramount park with a combination of performances, shops, rides and restaurants".





Rango the sheriff will be the main character in "How the West Was Sung" an attraction in which visitors will help the character to restore order in the city, and the 4D scenes will bring the guests to a world filled with legendary characters from the Paramount western movies.  This attraction seems to be a 4D theater movie and i have the feeling that the film might be inspired by the concept of DLP WDS Cinemagique attraction in which a character has been digitally include in real movie clips...




On Rango's Raging Rapids guest will embark for a wet and wild raft ride and shall overcome all the obstacles they will find on their way, unless they want to be completely wet at the end of it! 




The Spirit of the West Mine coaster will be Rango's West roller coaster "traveling around various landscapes at a locomotive speed".


Rango's West will also features a shooting gallery and close to the Spirit of the West Mine coaster a play area "where all the themed elements are delightfully larger than life". Think about a "Western Toy Story Land" and you should be close to what this play area will be.


The artwork visit of Paramount Park Murcia is not finished yet and there is more lands to come,  including what will be Paramount Park Murcia equivalent of Fantasyland and Tomorrowland, and the part two is now on line HERE with more great renderings!

All artwork and pictures: copyright Paramount Parks and Pictures

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

so DLP what are you doing ??? are you going to let paramount to "steal" your fame ? :P its a shame! lol! but DLP has to do more than a rat ride next year, new thrills for disneyland park and ofcourse the walt disney studios park

minidisneylandparis said...

This Paramount park will not be that big of a threat because of its loction. Thats my opinion. Paris is much more central in Europe and is also much bigger. Near Salou in Spain the Universal Studios park exists without problems for Dlp. But indeed, Euro Disney needs to expand the Disney studios and upgrade Disneyland park and especially Frontierland and Discoveryland needs fixing! Why not build Splash Mountain?!

Zooma said...

Its interesting, going over the art work of the park layout, it seems like there is a star Trek roller coaster in "Futura Land". I guess we will find out tomorrow.

Zooma said...

Going over the first image, it seems as if they are planning a Star Trek roller coaster in "Futura Land".

Tom said...

Oh come on people, a new themepark with as big coaster an off the shelf, standard Vekoma mine train, pffff...

Anonymous said...

Don't get too excited, as this theme park lacks one of it's main features: money. There is actually no one giving financial support to it. It's just a project with very little possibilities to actually happen.

Marco Antonio Garcia said...

The concept looks quite nice, but I don't know the reason that they keep building big (relatively) and sophisticated Theme Parks in Europe if none of the existing ones are financially successful.

And worse, why do they want to build a big real state complex in Spain nowadays? Haven't they watched the news in the last 5 years?

I would never invest in that project!

Alain Littaye said...

Marco, theme parks in Europe are rather successful, even DLP on a certain point of view is successful, it's the most visited place in Europe and if DLP never had during twenty years its debt problem and the parks a huge cost of maintenance it will make more benefits.
I think that Paramount choose the right size and concept for a park, not too small, not too big, in a location mostly sunny all year long, etc... and as their goal is not to have 10M visitors per year like DLP the whole thing might work.
As for the real estate complex the partners are probably trying to build a resort complex with hotels convention centre, etc... and if there is one thing that spaniards know to build it's really buildings... a little bit too much may be as we've seen with the recent crisis...

Alain Littaye said...

To Anonymous: Well, then, if there is no money why the city council gave its agreement to the project after a long discussion and vote by the council? I mean, why would they lose time on a project if they knew that it will never happen because there is no financial support?
As i always say: there is always a logic in life...

Anonymous said...

As a person-of-color, is it true Spaniards are racist? I've heard negative comments about Spaniards, so that may make me choose not to go to Spain when Paramount Park opens up over there.

Harry Potter Movie Memorabilia said...

I'm sorry - not disrespecting anyone's opinion in anyway - but this looks like a complete joke. I think in a successful park; you either go all out; or don't bother. I wish all the best of luck to Paramount, but if they weren't willing to improve their previous parks (instead they sold them); why bother with a new park for? I really don't think Disney (or Universal) has anything to worry about.

Who knows, maybe as time goes on and more news of the park comes to life; I may change my opinion of it; but from what I'm seeing now... this new park looks like a massive snooze. So they've incorporated some of their best movies into the park through a rollercoaster; an exhibition; a 4D ride... I can already get that PLUS LOADS MORE at a Disney Park. They really need to go all out with this otherwise I think is there really any point?

Only time will tell!

Anonymous said...

Because local & regional elections were won under the promise of the thousands of jobs it would presumably create, so the dance keeps going even after the music has stopped. It's been delayed several times and it seems hard to be seen, like the Ferrari World @ Valencia, Spyworld @ Los Monegros, Motorworld @ Jerez de la Frontera, Reino de Don Quixote @ La Mancha, and many many other spanish theme park projects promoted by Majors that have no better idea to be elected.

Anonymous said...

And no; I've been in several european countries and Spain is one of the most open-minded, tolerant countries, maybe because tourism is one of its main industries.

Marco Antonio Garcia said...

Hello Alain!

I know that Disneyland Paris is a success with the public, but it was a financial disaster in the beginning (I know that for many reasons), and nowadays is not profitable (It may have a small profit every other year, but not nearly enough to justify such a huge investment).

The other park that I've been to in France is Parc Asterix, which I also don't think that is a financial success, at least it didn't looks like, but I may be wrong.

About the financial situation of most European parks I don't much to be honest, it's something that I've written based on DLP and a few other parks in the continent and generalized.

What I do know is that there are a lot of empty new condos and all kinds of real estate in Spain being offered for very low prices without any buyers, so I would never invest in building another huge real estate project there.

About the park, unlike most commentators, I think that it looks quite nice, but Murcia is not central in Europe like Paris and not even central in Spain. It may be a tourist spot in the Mediterranean, but it's not near a big city like Madrid that could support a big number of guests during the whole year, and Murcia also doesn't receive as many tourists as Paris.

I hope that the park is very successful and that it offers a solid competition to DLP for them to be forced to improve their parks, but I really doubt it, I think that it will lose money (I hope that I'm wrong though).

Anonymous said...

Europa Park, Phantasialand (both in Germany) and Efteling (Holland) are also very successful parks in Europe.

Anonymous said...

The location is great!
1 hour from the Alicante airport and if the Corvera airport opens then it´s only a few minutes away.

The parks location will be 20 minutes away from the costa calida many beaches.

The weather is much warmer all year long and the Spanish hospitality is a big plus.

I hope this project will happen and i know it will get successful.

Yes building prices has get down the last years (but don´t forget the Spanish people has around 2 or more condos just because they don´t pay the same rent as the rest of western Europe and that´s one of the reason there is a lot of empty houses now when everybody want to sell).

Dr Phil

PurpleSpain said...

The film was uploaded on January 2012 to You Tube, the screen grabs come from that film, so therefore I can't see how this either a) "new" news or b) accurate? Unless I am missing something...

Anonymous said...

Interesting comments here - for all the people who have property in the area, we need this project to be a sucess so that we can either rent out our properties or sell them at a decent price. too many people have had to give them back to the bank and come back to England. The tourism in this area has changed over the last few years but i can guarantee that if they get it right the Spanish will certainly use it in the summer (there are 2 million extra Spanish coming to the Costa Calida in July and August as it is there holiday place)

Anonymous said...

Hi all, I found a link to a 2014 preview brochure for the new Paramount Theme Park posted just recently (25 January 2014) on a local Spanish estate agents website. Link below:

https://plus.google.com/113736267590853866434/posts

Anonymous said...

Hi all, I found a link to a 2014 preview brochure for the new Paramount Theme Park posted just recently (25 January 2014) on a local Spanish estate agents website. Link below:

https://plus.google.com/113736267590853866434/posts