It’s been another year around the sun for Garmendale Engineering, and December is a time for family as well as a time for reflection. Our phenomenal team has grown this year and with it our reputation for safety and innovation. So, let’s have a look back on 2025 and some of the remarkable projects we’ve had the pleasure of being involved in. 

A Gate Way To Start The Year

In a year where we coined one of our new catchphrases, “Not Just Gates” we started the year adding to our fleet of RG-11 Gating Systems from around the world. Though Garmendale offers much more than just gates it’s still an area of the industry where we thrive by continuing to offer, reliable, safe, and customisable queueing systems for any ride system, from coasters to big wheels, and even water rides. 

This year, the RG11 family has grown once again, with two new gating systems completed and installed on some of the most thrilling rides in the world. We are proud to see our latest RG11 gates enhancing guest safety at one of the most prestigious theme parks in the United States. Designed to deliver exceptional safety, efficiency, and high throughput, this installation supports one of the world’s tallest and fastest roller coasters.

Our second RG11 installation can be found in Asia, now operating at one of the continent’s most popular theme parks. With RG11 gates installed across four continents, our systems are proving to be nearly as exhilarating as the world-class coasters they support. Though these aren’t the only gating systems we’ve developed this year there the only ones I can talk about for now, so watch this space to hear about where our RG11 gating systems will take us next. 

Winter Works @ The UK’s Finest Theme Parks

The first quarter at Garmendale Engineering is traditionally focused on winter works—an essential period for building strong partnerships with UK theme parks. This winter, our engineers supported the refurbishment of Go Jetters and Gangsta Granny: The Ride, ensuring both attractions are fully prepared to welcome families when the park reopened in March 2025.

At Alton Towers, we also completed a ride modification on Get Set Go! in CBeebies Land, working closely with the technical team to remove and refit the power rail in line with updated layout requirements.

Our continued collaboration with Alton Towers reflects the skill and dedication of the Garmendale engineering team, and our commitment to delivering trusted solutions for world-renowned attractions.

Brand New Faces In The Garmendale Red

The Theme Park Industry is ever-changing and reaching a very exciting moment of expansion, it seems the stunted growth caused by COVID is in the rearview. New projects launching in the UK, like Universal’s Bedford project and Middle Eastern projects like Disney’s collaboration with Miral demonstrate how truly exciting this industry is at this moment in time. With this in mind 2025 has been a huge year for development and adapting to this exciting themed entertainment landscape.

Garmendale are not afraid of change and have expanded our team to meet the demand of our capabilities. Bringing on board Claire Walker our brand new Quality and Compliance Officer, who alongside the rest of the team has had their work cut out this year with worldwide projects and different levels of compliance to meet different regions, Claire is a key element in upholding our high levels of safety and reliability.

Garmendale’s international work is slowly outweighing our UK based work, which made this year the right time to start the wheels turning for an international division of Garmendale Engineering Ltd. This all started by appointing our Global Strategy Director, Donnelly Williams. Donnelly brings a wealth of experience in not only electrical and mechanical engineering but also in developing business relationships worldwide. An Electrical & Computer Engineering Technologist with experience designing motion control systems using both servo, and variable frequency drives (VFDs), and programmable logic controller (PLC) programming using standard and safety PLCs. Extensive experience in the rides industry enables effective collaboration with customers across the globe.

Our final addition to our team this year is arguably the most important as he’s a part of our commitment to supporting the future of this industry. Our electro-mechanical apprentice Harry started with Garmendale earlier this year and has already demonstrated great promise and we are really excited for what’s to come. A Zoe mentioned in our Blooloop article, building our next generation of specialist engineers is of the utmost important to Garmendale Enginering Ltd. Coming in 2026 will be a new series of articles keeping you up to date with Harry’s journey, so stay tuned. 

Lights, Camera, (Show) ACTION!

2025 has also brought with it a selection of exciting projects delving into show action equipment and ride set pieces. In 2019 we crafted huge steel reinforced set pieces for a very popular ride in Japan based off a very famous video game. However, since then we haven’t had a project with the same level of excitement to get our teeth into. Cut to this year and we’ve been working on 2 major projects based off huge Hollywood blockbusters. 

Our team has been carefully recreating an iconic set piece for a breath-taking and world-renowned fantasy film series. This ride will open its doors in Japan later this year and we are very excited to be whisked away on this crowd-pleasing ride system. 

The other project required the crafting of show action supports and bases to be fitted onto a water ride. When a theme parks level of immersion for guests is at such a high level it is vital as a design team and manufacturing team that our work does not in any way inhibit this vision. As the ride opened earlier this year in the USA, we’ve only heard positive things. 

A Few Other Highlights

In a year of development and growth, we toured the globe meeting familiar faces and some brand new ones. Highlights included our regular appearances at IAAPA Europe in Spain this year and IAAPA Expo in Orlando. Always a pleasure exploring the cutting edge of the ever changing theme park landscape. Whilst attending IAAPA Orlando Donnelly, David, and Zoe took part in the 19th annual IAAPA Footprints from the Heart 5K, in aid of ‘Give Kids The World Village’. Donnelly, Zoe, and David had an absolute blast raising money whilst running alongside colleagues and friends. Somehow, they managed to run a 5K and still stay standing on the IAAPA show floor for the rest of the day. ‘Give The Kids The World Village’ supports critically ill children and their families through cost-free weeklong vacations. Congrats to all those who ran in support of this noble and worthy charity

IAAPA Europe will be in London next year so we look forward to welcoming the world’s finest to our doorstep. Other global events we attended this year include ASTM in Arizona, a truly special event continuing our endeavours to remain at the fore-front of theme park safety. It was a true pleasure for Garmendale’s David and Donnelly to hear from other like-minded safety conscious individuals from all 4 corners of the globe.

So What’s Next?

In a year where we’ve grown our key partners, as a team we are really excited to do work with the major players of this industry. Over the last 40+ years Garmendale has grown as a titan of engineering however, we proudly a relative underdog in industry in the likes of North America and Asia. 2026 might just be the year of the underdog something we will be delving into over on our socials throughout this year. 

As always if you have an exciting enquiry you’d like to see completed in 2026, make reaching out to Garmendale Engineering Ltd a New Years resolution. 2026 is well and truly here so that’s enough of looking back it’s now time to move forward into what promises to be another exciting year for Garmendale Engineering.