Lord of the Rings theme park! Lord of the Rings theme park! This is SO happening.
Grab your Elven cloak and pack a second breakfast, because we’re taking a trip to The Shire. The town of Rincon de la Victoria in Spain announced that it plans to construct a theme park called “La Comarca” and when you translate that out, it means The Shire. That’s not a coincidence. They’re going to build a Lord of the Rings theme park that resembles the hometown of Bilbo and Frodo.
The news was announced at the international tourism fair, FITUR, which took place in Madrid earlier this month. It’s going to be roughly about 20 acres, and even though that’s not a park the size of like, Disneyland (which is 160 acres, for comparison), it still plans to pack a lot in. The area will be divided into different “lands” where visitors can stroll about, and then actually interact with the surroundings of the Shire, like actual Hobbit holes! It’ll also have swings, climbing walls, and I bet a zillion places to picnic, because the most important meal of a Hobbit’s day is all of them (breakfast, second breakfast, Elevenses, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner/supper).
It does not sound like the park will include any death-defying thrill rides, but that’s perfectly OK. Hobbits aren’t ones to seek out that kind of adventure, even though we know they do get wrapped up in it from time to time. Instead, the park will simply be a giant Shire park, and the town’s mayor, Francisco Salado, is pretty excited about it. “The Shire will become one of the major tourism attractions of our town. The material will have a very low environmental impact, to create an integrated image in nature,” he told EuroWeeklyNews. “It will be a place in which family leisure, sports and nature will go hand-in-hand in a unique space of great beauty set in a time of fairy tales and the magic of the elves.” And by elves, he probably means hobbits, but we’ll let it slide because it’s easy to confuse Legolas with Peregrin Took.
No opening date for the park has been set, and construction hasn’t even begun yet. But rest assured, we’ll be there to live out our Hobbit dreams when it opens.
