India’s leading amusement park operator Wonderla Holidays Ltd with three parks in Kochi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, plans to open its fourth amusement park in Chennai in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2018.

The park, spread across 55 acres on the Old Mahabalipuram Road, will be built over the next 18 months at a total investment of ₹350 crore. The park will open with 45 signature land and water rides along with a few new marquee rides/attractions.

“We have already started work and have signed an MoU with a Chennai-based, real estate agency which will acquire 55 acres on the Old Mahabalipuram Road for us. It took 18 months to build and launch the Hyderabad park this April and we are confident that we will be able to open the Chennai park in the same time frame,” Arun K Chittilappilly, Managing Director, Wonderla Holidays Ltd, told BusinessLine.

Experiential rides Amusement parks the world over offer both rides and entertainment attractions such as theme parks, laser light shows, sound & musical fountains, house of horrors, underwater world, etc. Plans are on to introduce more experiential rides to the Chennai park such as, a Virtual Reality jungle safari experience, 4D immersive animation shows and brand new rollercoaster experiences on the lines of ‘Recoil,’ India’s first Reverse Looping Rollercoaster ride (made in Netherlands) which was launched in the Bengaluru park this April.

Chittilappilly, who is in talks with Turkish and Canadian firms to import thrilling new water slides that will provide users with a ‘James Bond’ kind of experience said, he wants to open a new park every four years and next in line are Pune, Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

Wonderla has drawn over 2.5 crore visitors from around the country. An allocation of ₹25 crore has been made for advertising and marketing spend for FY 2017. However, the number of visitors during the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2016 remained flat at 4.96 lakhcompared to the same period last year.

Entry ticket price Asked why, Chittilappilly said “Growth in footfalls was flat because of the 25 per cent increase in our entry ticket price last year – inclusive of our annual 10 per cent increase plus 15 per cent service tax introduced by the Centre. This year, we have marginally increased the ticket price by 5 per cent.”

The ₹2,500-crore Indian amusement park business, comprising approximately 150 parks, is growing at 25 per cent per annum. Of the 150, about 10-12 are big parks like Adlabs Imagica, EsselWorld, Ramoji Film City, Worlds of Wonder, which are built at investments of over ₹50 crore with at least 25 rides and attractions.

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