Madrid manages a sedate leap on to the rollercoaster of international theme parks
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Your support makes all the difference.Madrid has been a slow starter in Spain's scramble for theme parks, but the Warner Bros facility that opens to the public today 15 miles south of the capital hopes to become the biggest and best of all, overtaking even the highly popular Port Aventura at Salou.
To ensure success, Warner Bros Movieworld Madrid has had to make important concessions to Spanish habits, allowing visitors to sit down to eat rather than expect them to munch on the hoof and allowing attractions to open later in the day.
Up to 30,000 visitors daily will enjoy the all-American entertainment of Hollywood Boulevard, Bugs Bunny-inspired Cartoon Village, the Wild West experience, the Rio Bravo water shute, the land of Super-heroes with two spectacular rollercoasters dedicated to Superman and Batman, and the Warner Bros Studio containing sets from the company's greatest movies.
The 250-hectare park, open nine months of the year, employs 1,600 people and is expected to transform the village of San Martin de la Vega.
Regional politicians, who dreamt up the idea five years ago as an ambitious job-creation exercise, hope the development will galvanise the sluggish economy of Madrid's southern suburbs. Massive road and rail links have been built, and hotels and restaurants will be linked to the park by tram.
Spanish visitors will be relieved to find gazpacho and fried squid on the menu as well as chocolate milkshakes, barbecue ribs and hamburgers. They will also find 4,500 places to sit and eat, compared with the few hundred in the other 39 parks of Warner's empire. A small bottle of Coca-Cola is expensive at €2.70 (£1.65) and as for bringing a picnic – don't even think of it.
"In the US, most visitors eat while walking from one attraction to another, or while queuing," said the park's director, Thomas Mehrman, ahead of last night's gala opening. "But here you have a different gastronomic culture."
Market research revealed another Spanish quirk: Spaniards, it seems, are lessaddicted to adrenalin than Americans; they prefer "a family adventure". So, rollercoasters in Madrid are "exciting but not excessively frightening", Mr Mehrman promises.
The waiting time for rides, however, is constant worldwide, calculated at "theoretically" an hour per queue. Mr Mehrman would not be drawn on when the Madrid operation might turn a profit: "We don't offer financial information."
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