Britain's charming, old-fashioned theme parks are at risk of extinction

Telegraph

20 hours ago

If success was measured by the volume of screaming children, then business was positively booming on my recent visit to Wicksteed Park.
I was at Kettering's beloved amusement park, watching a few dozen children and their parents yelping in terrified glee on a chair swing ride. Their adrenaline rush was transient, but they were taking part in a ritual that has lasted for more than 100 years.
Since the 1920s, people have travelled across the country to swing, slide, drop and splash on the park's revolutionary amusements.
And revolutionary they truly are: the founder, Charles Wicksteed, designed many of the rides himself. To this day, you'll find his name embossed on playground swings and slides across the land.
But now, more than ever before, Wicksteed and other traditional theme parks face altitudinous struggles.
And in recent months, some have gone from wobbling on the tracks to being fully derailed. Why so?
The theme parks shutting their doors
In November last year, West Cornwall's beloved theme park, Flambards, closed its doors after 48 years.
Bosses pointed to 'rising costs and a steady decline in visitor numbers' as the main causes of the park's sudden closure.
Five months later, Wales's largest theme park announced it was shutting its doors. At its prime, 400,000 people per year would pass through the gates at Oakwood Theme Park in Pembrokeshire.
However, 'unrelenting economic challenges' ultimately killed the country's flagship theme park after 38 years in operation.
The Blackpool Pier Company, which owns the city's south, central and north piers, posted a 2023 pre-tax loss of £335,652 compared to a pre-tax profit of £354.231 in 2022.
Challenges include the ongoing improvement and maintenance of old structures, while overhead costs and minimum wage rises have also put pressure on profitability.
Similar seaside attractions, such as Dreamland in Margate, have pivoted to live concerts to stay afloat.
Just this week, Fantasy Island in Skegness announced it would be reducing to a five-day week in the off-season and is closing its doors earlier each day to save costs.
Bosses have also had to cut their seasonal workforce by 15 per cent, in part due to the rising cost of National Insurance contributions.
So far, so gloomy. But like a rollercoaster track, the success of Britain's theme parks has been up and down over the years.
In 2010, Alton Towers and Thorpe Park recorded their highest ever attendances. During the pandemic, rides gathered dust. So is the current lull at Britain's smaller theme parks entirely down to economic factors, or are there other forces at play?
A perfect storm of challenges
'We've struggled with hitting anything like the same number of paying visitors as pre-pandemic,' says Kelly Richardson, managing director at Wicksteed Park, as a flurry of dangling legs zoom above our heads. She points to the cost of living crisis as a primary cause.
'If people are making a difficult choice between food and heat, what drops off first is your spending money for days out.'
With no multimillion pound holding company behind it, Wicksteed Park feels the economic bumps more acutely than behemoths like Legoland or the Merlin parks of Alton Towers and Thorpe Park.
The charitable trust has recently used a £250,000 grant to recruit a fundraising team in a bid to balance the books.
'We're a high energy user,' Richardson says. 'There was an intensive energy relief scheme that the government released. It supported lots of industries that were recognised to be high users of energy. But theme parks weren't included.'
During the pandemic, Wicksteed narrowly avoided collapse after falling into administration with the loss of 115 jobs.
What makes Wicksteed unique is that you don't need to pay to enter. With 25 rides set across 281 acres of Grade II-listed parkland, a grandparent can enter for free and just pay £3-a-pop for their grandchildren to go on some rides.
So while Wicksteed's annual tally of 800,000 visitors sounds like a healthy number, only approximately 200,000 of those are paying customers. Unless more cash is found, the business may have no option but to start charging for entry to the park to meet the £1.4 million annual upkeep costs.
There are other challenges. Two consecutive poor summers for weather in 2023 and 2024 have hit business, while expensive flood damage and tree falls caused by storms have become more regular occurrences. Richardson says she has also observed broader behavioural changes since the pandemic.
'People don't seem to be planning family days out as much as they used to. Locally we've got Rushden Lakes which is a big shopping centre. It's always busy. People are going out to do something, but not necessarily the same types of day out that they were doing before.'
As we wander Wicksteed's well-kept gardens we pass the Wicky Bear Show, which is temporarily closed due to the cost of entertainment staff. Otherwise, its old-fashioned stalwarts are running as usual. There is a water chute, a miniature steam railway, plus the obligatory carousel, cup and saucers and dodgems.
I could see why comedian James Acaster (a Kettering local) made a Wicksteed-inspired showstopper cake when he appeared on Celebrity Bake Off in 2019.
There's a simple charm to the place, and I made a mental note to bring my son here when he's a little bit older. But then I had another thought. By the time he's of rollercoaster age, he may well be urging me to pull off the M1 a junction or two early so we can visit another theme park, just 22 miles south of Kettering.
Universal domination? It really could happen
As some of Britain's smaller theme parks struggle for survival, one of the biggest entertainment firms on the planet is preparing to open a theme park on British soil.
Universal Studios has purchased a 500-acre plot of land south of Bedford, where it plans to build a theme park at a cost of £50 billion with a scheduled opening date of 2031.
While details are thin on the ground, it is expected that the theme park will feature state-of-the-art technology incorporating some of its biggest franchises: the characters from Nintendo, Harry Potter and Minions are a few on its books.
Universal has the benefit of optimising its attractions to the current generation. The company also has plenty of experience in producing weather-proof indoor rides (drizzly Osaka, scorching Orlando), giving it the upper hand on Wicksteed, which sees daily visitor numbers plummet if weather apps are showing even a low-chance of rain.
I worry for Wicksteed, and all of Britain's traditional theme parks, as attention spans change, technologies accelerate, teen habits alter, and fanbases grow for recognised global brands (with all due respect to Wicky Bear, of course).
But hey. For now, on my visit, everyone at Wicksteed was having a lovely time and with the sun shining, attendance wasn't too bad. And Wicksteed has one thing that Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Legoland and Universal – and further afield, Disney – will never be able to say.