Cinecittà World

Cinecittà is the largest film studio in Europe, and is known as the home of Italian cinema. Alongside Italian films such as La Dolce Vita, international productions including Ben-Hur and Gangs of New York have used the studio's facilities. In 2009 Cinecittà began planning and construction of a theme park to celebrate the world of Italian cinema. Following an investment of €250 million, Cinecittà World opened in July 2014 near to Rome, Italy's historic capital city.

The park is lavishly themed. Guests enter through the mouth of the Temple of Moloch, which featured in Cabiria, a silent film made in 1914. They emerge onto a 1920s Manhattan street which, as part of the park's morning opening, is crowded with the park's "cast" who dance down the street to bring visitors to Cinecittà World's central Piazza Dino de Laurentiis.

Cinecittà World's major attractions include Altair, an spaceship themed 10-inversion rollercoaster from Intamin; Aktium, a water coaster with an Ancient Roman theme; and Inferno, a very impressive indoor rollercoaster.

I visited the park in August 2015, and found the rides and theming to be superb. However, the park clearly had problems: it was almost empty on a Saturday when other parks in the area were crowded. Some things were easily fixable, such as the ticket prices and lack of advertising (I was in Rome for three days and didn't see one billboard or advertisement for the park). The main issue though was the shortage of things to do: the headline attractions were brilliant and had clearly had considerable money spent on them, but unfortunately there weren't enough of them.

Since then, the park has had another round of investment with several new additions and rethemes which opened in 2017. Hopefully this will be enough to save what is substantively a beautiful park. Given its location and the wealth of movie material to draw on from the Cinecittà back catalogue, it could and should be enormously successful.

Attractions

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