Award winning Drayton Manor

Sue Bailey accepting the awards for Drayton Manor Park

Drayton Manor Park has been awarded UK attraction Of The Year 2009 at the Coach Tourism awards ceremony, held at Coventrys Ricoh arena earlier this week.

The award was especially pleasing for Drayton Manor as this years saw a huge number of entries and the winner is picked by the readers of Coach Monthly magazine.

When announcing the award, they said;

“A huge investment back into the site, particularly in Thomas Land™, backed up by an impressive marketing campaign has established Drayton Manor as one of THE top UK attractions, and the readers of Coach Monthly obviously agree.”

Colin Bryan, Managing Director of Drayton Manor Park said;

“It is a great honour to win this award, especially as it voted for by the readers of Coach Monthly. We have made huge investments into the park and we are delighted that has been recognised and appreciated by the public.”

Road improvements around Drayton Manor

Thomas the Tank Engine at Thomas Land, Drayton Manor

The bank holiday weekend is now over and for many Fazeley based residents the traffic chaos is also over.

With the immediate success of Thomas Land, that opened at the park last year, residents have been subject to regular gridlock at peak times in the season.  With reports in the Birmingham Mail saying that journeys from nearby Ventura Park taking over an hour.  Although some could argue this isn’t caused by Drayton Manor, but more the bad design of Ventura Park.

After 8 months of negotiations though, a plan is finally in place to hopefully ensure a more pleasant trip for tourists and residents alike.  During this 8 months, Staffordshire County Council and Drayton Manor have worked on addressing these issues and trying to ensure the best solution is used going forward.

County Councillor Ellis said: “This has been a complicated piece of work. With several public agencies involved and national as well as Staffordshire transport policy around traffic management to deal with it’s not been as easy as I first hoped a year ago.”

The first stage of improvements were piloted over the Easter weekend including a faster entry system and 1,500 hard placed parking spaces within the park itself.  It has also been agreed by all local road authorities around the park to improve and change the routes used by tourists to alleviate the pressure on the infrastructure around the Ventura Park area.   Although not confirmed I would anticipate this improving sign age on the M42 and A5 to avoid the shoppers and associated traffic.

Colin Bryan, Managing Director at Drayton Manor said: “The instant success of Thomas Land last year was beyond all expectations. We’re very aware of our obligation to deal with issues that arise from a greater numbers of visitors.  We could not have achieved the proposals for better traffic management on our own. County councillor Ellis worked hard to make sure the public authorities played their part in making it happen.”

Only time will tell if these improvements are successful, with a recession hit Britain and many looking to holiday at home, it seems it will be another busy season for Thomas, his friends and staff at Drayton Manor Park.