Universal Studios UK 'unlike anything in Britain' as new ride details unveiled
The Universal Studios theme park to be built in the will be "unlike anything that exists in the UK", the company has said.
The new park, planned for Kempston Hardwick in Bedfordshire, could feature the tallest rides in Europe - with height limits reaching up to 115m.
That's taller than anything the company's theme parks in Orlando have.
And while details of the movies the rides will be based on are still under wraps, the reams of planning documents published today have revealed a few tantalising details.
Universal's theme parks, the documents say, are "very different to a typical amusement park and are unlike anything that currently exists in the UK"
Universal "takes guests to places that typically exist only in their imagination. To do this, [Universal] uses cutting-edge technology and partners with beloved storytellers to create fully immersive experiences where the attractions, placemaking, food, merchandise and costumes all work together."
Guests will arrive at the park's entrance plaza, which will include restaurants and shops - similar to the "CityWalk" area of Universal Orlando.
The plaza and its entertainment venues will be accessible to the general public, even if they haven't bought a ticket to the park.
Once through the park's large archway, paying guests will find "adrenaline-pumping coasters", "mind-blowing spectaculars" and will "come face-to-face with incredible creatures, heroes, and villains".
Guests will be able to "experience beloved stories and exhilarating adventures in immersive new ways."
And the rides themselves will pair "innovation and technology" allowing guests to "be fully immersed in different lands."
Universal's parks in the US and other countries have themed lands based on Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, the Simpsons and Nintendo - though it's not been confirmed if any of those franchises will feature at the UK park.
Universal hopes to secure planning permission in time for a 2031 opening date.
Other plans outlined in the documents include enough car parking space for 7,000 cars, as well as improved car and rail links to the site.
The resort, set to be among the most advanced in Europe, is expected to pump £50 billion into the economy and bring as many as 28,000 jobs during construction and operation.
The Mirror revealed in February that negotiations for the resort - to open near Bedford - were in the final stages.
Nearly 20,000 jobs will be created during the six-year construction period, with a further 8,000 new jobs across the hospitality and creative industries when it opens in 2031.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
9 hours ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Emma Watson cosies up to new love interest as they enjoy picnic and painting in an Oxford park - after romance with fellow student Kieran Brown
Emma Watson enjoyed a cosy picnic and painting date with a new male love interest in an Oxford park on Tuesday. The Harry Potter star, 35, was seen sitting on the bank of a lake, with onlookers saying it looked like the pair were enjoying a 'cute date'. Emma, who is studying for a part-time Master's degree at Oxford, opted for a stylish green and white printed dress as she relaxed with her new companion. Last year, Emma was spotted enjoying a romantic date with fellow Oxford student Kieran Brown, with the pair pictured at a pastry shop close to the University, over a year after she split from boyfriend Brandon Green. A passerby who saw Emma with her new date, said the actress was painting with the male companion at Port Meadow country park. Judie Kitchen, 18, spotted the pair as he walked by and said they were laughing and joking between painting each other and eating, seemingly unrecognised by the nearby wild swimmers. Student Judie, from Headington, Oxford, said: 'I saw them for like 40 minutes. They were having a general chat and making each other laugh, which was cute. 'We arrived just after 3.30pm and one of my friends went for a dip in the lake. Once he got out there, they were there. 'My friend is a massive Harry Potter fan, so when he saw her, it was really funny to see his reaction. 'They were painting each other and eating together. It was just a really cute date. 'It looked successful as they were laughing a lot, which was nice to see.' MailOnline has contacted a representative for Emma Watson for comment. In July 2024, Emma was pictured locking eyes with fellow student Kieran while at a bakery in Oxford. Emma, who is doing a part-time Master's degree at Oxford, split from her ex boyfriend Brandon Green, son of controversial business tycoon Sir Philip, in 2023. An onlooker in the pastry shop said the pair had a 'nice vibe' together and that customers didn't appear to recognise her in the shop. They said: 'They were chatting together in the queue, they seemed to have quite a nice vibe. 'I couldn't hear what they were saying, apart from when she ordered - she got an espresso, a cake and a juice, or something similar. 'She didn't seem to try to be hiding herself, she was just queuing with him normally. 'Nobody really reacted to her, but I could see people in the shop recognised her.' Just days earlier, Emma and the man were seen leaning in for a kiss out in the street as she went away for a few days. A source told The Sun: 'She looked incredibly happy - like she didn't have a care in the world. 'Her suitcases were put in the back of a blue Range Rover by her security and she was saying goodbye. 'They were incredibly close - they didn't seem to care who was looking. 'They only had eyes for one another. 'Emma loves Oxford and is here regularly because of her family - but it appears she now has another reason to love the city.' Emma is currently splitting her time between the US and Oxford after signing up for her part-time Masters degree. She only attends a handful of lectures on site - with security in tow - and completes the rest online. Judging by the adoring look she's giving him while leaning on the pastry case, she's decided he's the dish of the day. It comes after Emma split from ex Brandon last year, some time after Christmas - following a 'serious' romance which lasted around 18 months. Both of them met each other's parents and there were holidays including a romantic break in Venice. Brandon had a reputation as a party-lover and previously dated a number of models. He was once caught patting Kate Moss' bottom on holiday in St Barths. It was rumoured that the catalyst for their split was that Emma had some kind of an epiphany connected to her 'Saturn return' and decided that she wanted out of the relationship. In an Instagram post on April 15th to mark her birthday she wrote: 'This is 33. Holy moly. Before 29 I hadn't even heard of a Saturn Return as a concept. Let's just say that now I am well acquainted.' She went on to write about how she had re-evaluated her life and what she did with it, had learned to surf 'badly', ridden horses, done 'a lot of therapy' and 'said goodbye to my Grandma and Grandpa'. She added: 'I cut my thumb nail off on both hands trying to cook for myself and then was only able to do things one-handed for months. 'I felt really sad and really p*ssed off about a lot of things. I learnt more about love and being a woman... It took me three years but I have finally figured out a daily practice and can actually keep it for more than a few days in a row.' On the topic of 'love and being a woman' she didn't confide about the break-up with Brandon, which she kept private, but the news has now leaked out. Watson famously remarked during a period when she was single that she was 'self-partnered' but by more conventional standards she has been a serial monogamist – and serially unlucky in love. An early boyfriend was rugby player Tom Ducker. He was followed by a more serious romance with fellow Oxford University students Will Adamowicz and Matt Janney. She has dated three young tech millionaires, most significantly the entrepreneur William 'Mack' Knight. They split in late 2017 after a two year romance. On the rebound she had a six month love affair with handsome Glee actor Chord Overstreet. They broke up during the summer of 2018. She was then spotted sharing cocktails with tech CEO Brendan Wallace, the is co-founder of a venture capital fund who she may – or may not – be dating again now. By the summer of 2019, she had moved on to another tech millionaire, Brendan Iribe, CEO of Oculus. He was followed by businessman Leo Robinton, with whom she spent two years. In an interview she said: 'The boyfriends or partners I've had have generally made me feel really cherished. They've built me up.' Many may consider Watson very fortunate – thanks to being cast as a child in the Potter films she has more money than she could need and a thriving acting career. But actually she has quite mixed feelings about the fame it brought her and has more than once stepped away from acting. She was cast in the Harry Potter films at nine years old, having been found via the theatre club she attended. She only completed filming the last Potter when she was 20 years old, in June 2010. Sources who remember her from the Potter days say that her lawyer father Chris's influence was paramount, even though she lived with her mother in Oxfordshire. The experience of growing up on Potter was so constricting and so stressful that she was was in two minds about carrying on acting. She felt physically sick when she discovered how much money she had earned from the Potter films. She also seriously considered not renewing her contract to complete the films. When the cast and crew held a wrap party at Harry's Bar after shooting the final set of reshoots around Christmas 2010, she didn't come. She said in 2017: 'It's something I've really wrestled with. I've gone back and I've quizzed my parents. When I was younger, I just did it. I just acted, it was just there. 'I was finding this fame thing was getting to a point of no return. I sensed if this was something I was ever going to step away from it was now or never.' Post-Potter, films have been generally low key, like The Circle, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Bling Ring. It's said that she turned down the La La Land role which brought Emma Stone an Oscar. Her last film was Little Women, released in 2019 and as her recently founded film companies show, her ambitions now lie on the other side of the camera. As she recently said: 'I've often thought, I'm so wrong for this job because I'm too serious.' You can see how Brandon Green, who was raised in Monte Carlo and enjoyed a carefree life of private jets, penthouses and bikini models, perhaps just wasn't quite deep enough for this introspective star. But then, when one person who has everything meets another person who also has everything, maybe they just have nothing to offer each other.
Daily Mail
9 hours ago
- Daily Mail
BRIAN VINER reviews Jurassic World: Rebirth: Snap and bite as the T-Rex ROARS again!
Jurassic World: Rebirth (12A, 133 mins) Rating: The rampaging dinosaurs are back, which hasn't always been a reason to hurry to the cinema. Sometimes, you might have been forgiven for doing the same as their human prey and legging it in the opposite direction. But Jurassic World: Rebirth is well-named. Of the six films that have been spawned by a monster hit, Steven Spielberg 's Jurassic Park (1993), this is easily the most fun, with the same snap and bite as the original. The director is Gareth Edwards, currently only the second-most famous film director from Nuneaton (behind Ken Loach), but that could yet change. He received richly deserved acclaim for a couple of other sci-fi blockbusters, Godzilla (2014) and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), and will surely get oodles more for this one. It's terrific. Significantly, the writer is David Koepp, whose credits include Jurassic Park as well as Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man and a couple of Indiana Jones pictures. He has confected an adventure that grips from start to finish, so much so that I didn't once roll my eyes when the dinosaurs did what they always do: creeping up in the background, slavering through their terrifying gigantic teeth, when some poor sap isn't looking. If they ever make a spoof, it should be called Jurassic World: Behind You. As for the narrative background, the dinosaurs are no longer the attraction they were in previous films. Humanity has got bored with them, so now they all live – on land, sea and in the air – in the equatorial band that most closely tallies with the conditions of 65million years ago. Every government has slapped a veto on people going there, but that doesn't stop the creepy boss of a pharmaceutical firm, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), from plotting an illegal mission to extract blood and tissue samples from the biggest reptiles. These samples will apparently help him develop a cure for heart disease, not that his motives are remotely altruistic. He sniffs a colossal fortune. He duly assembles a crack team, led by one of those female mercenaries that only exist in the movies and radiate sex appeal even while crawling through a sewer. This is Zora Bennett, deliciously played by Scarlett Johansson. Joining her are Mahershala Ali as Duncan Kincaid, the noble captain of the boat that will get them there, and Jonathan Bailey as the trip's obligatory nerdy-yet-dishy palaeontologist, the bespectacled Dr Henry Loomis, whose sexual chemistry with Zora is less a sub-plot than a tease. Also along for the ride, albeit inadvertently, are a family who while sailing across the Atlantic unexpectedly encountered an ocean-going dinosaur about the size of Wembley Stadium. Humanity has got bored with them, so now they all live – on land, sea and in the air – in the equatorial band that most closely tallies with the conditions of 65million years ago This gives the story the cute little girl that it would otherwise have lacked. So the Jurassic cliches are plentiful: as always, the most expendable characters (played by the lesser-known actors) get eaten first. But it doesn't matter. The special effects, especially in the thrilling ocean scenes, are truly stupendous. And in any case, the film is derivative in all the best ways, with enjoyably distinct echoes of Jaws (surely by way of homage to Spielberg, one of the executive producers) and other long-ago classics. In the sneaky Martin Krebs, I even recognised the DNA of Richard Chamberlain's slimeball electrical contractor in The Towering Inferno (1974). There is masses to savour in this film. It is witty, superior entertainment, and if a healthily full Screen 2 of the Vue multiplex in Worcester was anything to go by soon after the doors opened on Wednesday morning, it will get the audiences it deserves. We all know the age-old question of dinosaur films: will-it-borus? This time the answer is a resounding no. In cinemas now. The Shrouds (15, 120 mins) Rating: Writer-director David Cronenberg has often woven his own life into his movies, but rarely so weirdly or disturbingly as in The Shrouds , a futuristic body-horror thriller inspired by the intense grief he suffered following the death in 2017 of Carolyn, his wife of almost 40 years. Charismatic French actor Vincent Cassel plays Karsh, an urbane Toronto entrepreneur mourning his wife Becca (Diane Kruger), who died of metastatic breast cancer. He even yearned to join her in her coffin, so set up a company that enables the bereaved to keep an eye on their loved ones' corpses. Believe it or not, Cronenberg at first manages to parlay this exceedingly macabre premise into biting black comedy, when Karsh explains his business to a blind date. Alas, The Shrouds soon shakes off any humour, becoming madly convoluted as industrial sabotage, a digital avatar called Hunny, a paranoid ex brother-in-law (Guy Pearce) and Karsh's dead wife's libidinous sister Terry (also Kruger) collide in an increasingly bonkers plot that will appeal to Cronenberg fans but by no means everyone else. Hot Milk (15, 93 mins) Rating: Hot Milk asks a lot of its audience, too. It is based on Deborah Levy's 2016 novel of the same name, but Levy's stories depend heavily on the interior lives of her characters, so to translate successfully to the screen they need a deftness of touch that largely eludes Rebecca Lenkiewicz, an experienced and accomplished screenwriter making her directing debut. That doesn't mean there aren't pleasures in this tale of an Irish woman, Rose (Fiona Shaw), and her sullen, carer daughter Sofia (Emma Mackey), who go to Spain to find a cure for Rose's paralysis. Vicky Krieps also stars, as the enigmatic German who woos Sofia, and the acting is splendid. But it's pretty heavy going. Both films are in select cinemas now. Back To The Future (PG, 116 mins) Rating: Yesterday's 40th anniversary of the release of Back To The Future offers a reminder not just of a classic comedy but also of the value of tenacity and self-belief. Director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Bob Gale had their cherished project turned down more than 40 times before Universal Pictures finally took a chance on them. They kept being told that time-travel movies don't make money, and that the story wasn't sexy enough to compete with raunchier 1980s comedies. But they stuck to their guns – and to their DeLorean – cast Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd, and made a sci-fi masterpiece.
Time Out
14 hours ago
- Time Out
Chuck E. Cheese is opening a new arcade chain—but this time it's for adults
Can you believe Chuck E. Cheese is turning 50? For everyone who grew up with this arcade icon, say hello to Chuck's Arcade, a slick new concept built for grown-ups who still get a rush from high scores and trading tickets for prizes. If your childhood was lit by the hum of Ms. Pac-Man and the chaos of Mortal Kombat, this is your spot. Rolling out in major malls across the U.S., Chuck's Arcade is not a reboot—it's a reinvention. Rather than birthday parties and ball pits, this new concept is pure, unfiltered arcade energy, designed for longtime fans and new gamers alike. Think state-of-the-art racing rigs, VR shooters and heavy-hitters like Halo and Jurassic Park, right alongside pixel-perfect classics like Galaga, Centipede and Donkey Kong. It's the future of arcades with one foot firmly in the golden age. And yes, the animatronics are back. Every Chuck's Arcade is 'watched over' by characters from the original Munch's Make Believe Band, now a nostalgic tribute instead of a live show. Chuck E. and crew are stationed throughout the spaces like retro guardians of the game floor. Ten Chuck's Arcade locations are now open: Buford, GA; Tulsa, OK; St. Petersburg, FL; Oklahoma City, OK; Victor, NY; El Paso, TX; Salem, NH; Kansas City, MO and Nashua, NH. A location in Brea, CA is opening soon. Each location has its own vibe: original artwork, unique layouts and a handpicked mix of modern and vintage machines. The Kansas City flagship even features a full pizzeria and pours beer and wine, making it a prime spot for grown-up game nights. Of course, the prize wall is here—but upgraded. Expect old-school merch, throwback tees, novelty candy and collectible toys that are worth the run for tickets. Whether you're chasing leaderboard glory or just want to relive a childhood weekend, Chuck's Arcade hits the spot.
