pyramid

There are heaps of fun theme parks and attractions in the UK to enjoy but there are a handful that would have been great yet unfortunately plans had to be abandoned

The UK is full of amazing attractions, both old and new, from historic palaces to theme parks and world-class museums. But not every idea manages to get off the ground.

There were many large-scale projects that could have potentially become major tourist landmarks, which sadly, either failed due to cost or logistics. We’re talking theme parks that were said to have the potential to rival Disneyland, weird and wonderful pyramids, and giant bridges that cost millions but never actually opened.

We look at some of the incredible attractions that could have been gamechangers, but sadly didn’t manage to see the light of day (even if we’re still hoping!).

Check out our top picks below…

WonderWorld theme park

In the 1980s, a £346m plan to turn an old quarry into the ‘British Disneyland’ was hatched. The site of this ambitious project was Corby, Northants, where the abandoned quarry was connected to the town’s closed steelworks. The collapse of the steelworks had led to 10,000 job losses, and with a third of the town out of work, the theme park was cited as a way to get locals back into employment.

WonderWorld is said to have been inspired by Disney’s Epcot, and was set to have 13 themed villages, the first six of which would have opened in 1992. The idea was to showcase the best of British design, with David Bellamy set to help devise a mock safari, while Sir Patrick Moore would have helped design an observatory.

There would be a mix of the educational and fun, high-tech rides, themed restaurants, shops, and much more, which it would estimate would bring in four million visitors a year through the park gates.

The ambitious plans also included a 10,000 seat stadium for sporting events, and a Disney-style family resort with seven hotels, which would eventually offer 6,000 rooms and 100 holiday villas.

Sadly, all that was ever built of WonderWorld was a sign and a wooden cabin. Planning delays and rising costs were blamed, with backers soon pulling out. The site which would have been WonderWorld is now a new build estate, with nothing to indicate that it could have been the site of a major British attraction.

Garden Bridge

While a failed project can waste a lot of time, London’s Garden Bridge project also managed to waste a lot of money along the way. £53.5m was spent on a bridge which never broke ground, after many years trying to turn the idea into reality.

London’s Garden Bridge would have been a pedestrian bridge set between Waterloo Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge. The idea was it would be covered in shrubbery and flowers, creating a sort of park area you could wander round, rather than just crossing from A to B.

The project was such a disaster that Transport for London (TfL) launched an inquiry, which concluded that £43m of the sunk costs came from the public’s pocket. The failed project’s spends included £21.4m in construction costs and £1.7m in executive salaries, according to BBC reports.

The Garden Bridge Trust also spent £161,000 on a website and £417,000 on a gala for the failed proposal. Had it been built, the project was projected to cost £175m overall.

The idea for the bridge dates back to 1998, when actor Joanna Lumley had the idea for a “floating paradise” that would be built in honour of Princess Diana. But it wasn’t until 2012, when Boris Johnson was Mayor of London, that the unusual project was picked up.

While they managed to secure planning permission in 2014, the project had a number of vocal critics who complained that it would have had an impact on sight lines of St Paul’s Cathedral and Monument.

When Sadiq Khan took over as mayor, he ordered a review as to whether the bridge would offer good value for money for Londoners, before withdrawing his support the next year. The cancellation of the project was officially announced on August 14, 2017.

Trafalgar Square Pyramid

Trafalgar Square could have looked very different if one MP and soldier had seen their plans come to fruition. After beating the French at the Battle of the Nile, Sir Frederick William Trench decided that what London really needed was a giant pyramid right in the middle of Trafalgar Square to really celebrate their military success.

The proposal, submitted in 1812, shows a 300ft pyramid with 22 steps, one for each year of the two Anglo-French wars. At the time, the tallest structure in London would have been the Dome at St Paul’s Cathedral which was 365ft, meaning the pyramid would have completely changed the London skyline.

One idea to turn the plan into reality was to use the labour of men who’d recently been discharged from the armed forces, giving them employment once the war was over. However, the only thing that was ever built was a scale model, which ended up in the home of the Duke of York. A few years later, the land was cleared and the version of Trafalgar Square that brings in millions of visitors a year was created. But there’s no doubt the giant pyramid would have brought in the tourists too.

London Paramount Entertainment Resort

A more recent attempt to build a giant theme park in the UK was the London Resort, which was announced in 2012. Its location in Swanscombe, Kent led to some dubbing it the ‘Dartford Disneyland’, and it was set to include Europe’s largest indoor water park, theatres, live music venues, attractions, cinemas, restaurants, event spaces and hotels.

The park would have had several worlds including a Spaceport, The Isles, The Kingdom, and High Street, all themed around the UK. Another planned attraction was a triple launched roller coaster that would reach speeds of 70mph.

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The park’s troubles continued during the planning process, when Natural England decided to designate a large portion of the planned park area as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).

In 2022, it was reported that plans for the park were scaled back, and would be resubmitted the next year. Its company, London Resort Company Holdings (LRCH), then went into administration and faced a lawsuit from Paramount. Finally, in January 2025, it was reported that the High Court had ordered the company to be wound up, effectively killing off the dream of the £2.5b London Resort.

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There are three essential components to a healthy democracy: elected officials, voters and political opposition. The first two make the most noise and get the most attention.

But that third pillar really matters too.

According to Ballotpedia, the online nonpartisan organization that tracks election data, of the nearly 14,000 elections across 30 states that the group covered this week, 60% were uncontested — with only one candidate for a position, or for some roles, no candidate at all.

Much of this week’s postelection analysis has been focused on the mayoral race in New York City and Zohran Mamdani’s victory. Yet the same night, as democracy in America took center stage, more than 1,000 people were elected mayor without facing an opponent.

Only about 700 mayoral races tracked by Ballotpedia gave voters any choice. Dig a little deeper and you find more than 50% of city council victories and nearly 80% of outcomes for local judgeships were all without competition.

That’s a problem.

Elections without political opposition turn voting — the cornerstone of our governance — into performance art. The trend is heading in the wrong direction. Since Ballotpedia began tracking this data in 2018, about 65% of the elections covered were uncontested. However, for the last two years the average is an abysmal 75%.

It’s a symptom of broader disengagement. Over two and a half centuries, a lot of lives have been sacrificed trying to perfect this union and its democracy. And yet last November, a third of America’s eligible voters chose not to take part.

Are we a healthy democracy or masquerading as one?

Doug Kronaizl, a managing editor at Ballotpedia who analyzes this data, told me the numbers show Americans are increasingly more focused on national politics, even though local elections have the greatest effects on our daily lives.

“We like to view elections sort of like a pyramid, and at the tippity top, that’s where all of the elections are that people just spend a lot of time focused on,” said Kronaizl, who’s been at the nonprofit since 2020. “That’s your U.S. House races, your governor races, stuff like that. But the vast majority of the pyramid — that huge base — is like all of these local elections that are always happening and end up being for the most part uncontested.”

Take New York, for example. For all the hoopla around Mamdani’s win, the fact is most of the state’s 124 elections weren’t contested. Iowa had 1,753 races with one or zero candidates; Ohio had more than 2,500.

And that’s being conservative. In some cases, if an election is uncontested, ballots aren’t printed and the performance art is canceled. Ballotpedia says its data doesn’t include outcomes decided without a vote.

We have elected officials. We have voters. But political opposition? We’re in trouble — especially at the local level, down at the base of the pyramid. The foundation of democracy is in desperate need of repair.

* * *

The former mayor of Tempe, Ariz., Neil Giuliano, has dedicated most of his life to public service. He said when it comes to running for office, people must remember the three M’s: the money to campaign, the electoral math to win and the message for voters.

“It used to be the other way around,” he told me. “It used to be you had a message and you talked about what you believed in.” Now, however, “you can talk about what you believe in all day long,” he said, but if you don’t have the money and the data to target and reach voters, “it’s either a vanity effort or a futility effort.”

When an interesting electoral seat opens in Arizona, Giuliano — who was elected to the city council in 1990 before serving as mayor from 1994 to 2004 — is sometimes approached about running again. For two decades now, his answer has been the same: No, thank you.

Instead, the 69-year-old prefers mentoring candidates and fundraising. He also sits on the board of the Victory Fund, the 30-year-old nonpartisan organization that works to elect openly LGBTQ+ candidates at all levels of government.

Giuliano said the rise in uncontested elections can be explained by two discouraged groups: Some people don’t run because they believe the positions don’t matter. Others are “so overwhelmed with everything going on they’re not going to alter their life,” he said. “It’s already challenging enough without getting into a public fray where people hate each other, where people need security, where people are being accosted verbally and on social media.”

That sentiment was echoed by Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of Run for Something. Her nonprofit recruits and supports young progressives to run for local and state offices. Since President Trump was elected last November, Litman said, the organization has received more than 200,000 inquiries from people looking to run for office — which could indicate some hope on the horizon.

“I think the problems have gotten so big and so deep that it feels like you have to do something — you have to run,” she said. “The number one issue we’re hearing folks talk about is housing. The market in the last couple of years has gotten so hard, especially for young people, that it feels like there’s no alternative but to engage.”

* * *

Indeed, these are the times that try men’s souls, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Paine. He wrote those words in “The American Crisis” less than two years into the Revolutionary War, when morale was low and the future of democracy looked bleak. It is said that George Washington had Paine’s words read out loud to soldiers to inspire them. And when the bloodshed was over and victory finally won, the founders drafted the first article of the Bill of Rights because they knew the paramount importance of political opposition. That is what the 1st Amendment primarily protects: freedom of speech, the press and assembly and the right to petition the government.

Today, the crisis isn’t tyranny from abroad, but civic disengagement.

And look, I get it.

Whether you watch Fox News, CNN or MSNBC, it usually seems as though no one in politics cares about you or your community’s problems. We would have a different impression if we listened to local candidates. There are thousands of local elections every year, starving for attention and resources, right at the base of the pyramid. Since the 20th century — when national media and campaign financing exploded — we have been lured into looking only at the tippity top.

One reason political opposition in local races is critical to democracy is that it teaches us to get along despite our differences. The president will never meet most people who didn’t vote for them, but a local school board member might. Those conversations will affect how the official thinks, talks, campaigns and governs. When the system works, politicians are held accountable — and are replaced if they get out of step with voters. That’s a healthy democracy, and it’s possible only with all three elements in place: elected officials, voters and political opposition.

* * *

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has dedicated most of his life to public service. He said he learned early on to care about his community because he grew up during the civil rights movement, “when they were sending dogs to attack human beings.”

Today, the 72-year-old is a 2026 gubernatorial candidate in California. He told me when it comes to the rise in uncontested elections, people have to remember “democracy is a living, breathing thing.”

“Not everybody can run for office, not everybody wants to run for office, but everybody needs to be involved civically,” he said. “We have an obligation and a duty to participate, to read about what’s going on to understand and yes sometimes to run when necessary.

“We got to stand up to the threat to our democracy, but we also got to fix the things we broke … and it’s a lot broken.”

Voters often want something better than the status quo, but without political opposition on the ballot, it can’t happen. That’s the beauty of democracy: It comes in handy when elected officials forget government is meant to serve the people — not the other way around.

Leanna Hubers contributed to this report. YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow