This was the trip of the year for generations of schoolchildren.
This is the tragic state of the UK’s ‘worst theme park’ now left abandoned and overgrown(Image: John Myers)
It was formerly a vast and enormously popular theme park which delighted generations of schoolchildren. Today its remnants lie peacefully in a rural corner of the UK with the buzz and excitement of thrill-seeking guests now a fading memory.
Oakwood Theme Park revealed in March last year that it would not reopen for the 2025 season and beyond, confirming a permanent shutdown which ended a roller-coaster journey of an attraction spanning nearly 40 years. The Pembrokeshire park declared the closure with “much sadness” as the dwindling number of guests led to financial difficulties. It was branded with the unfortunate title of the “UK’s worst theme park” by guests in recent years.
Aspro Parks assumed control of Oakwood in 2008 and pumped millions of pounds into the theme park. However, last spring it stated that “unrelenting economic challenges” from “ride parts to electricity costs, food and beverage inflation, increases in the National Living Wage and changes to national insurance thresholds” caused a considerable rise in expenses, reports the Express.
Despite expectations that the park would reopen, it has remained closed and deserted for the past 12 months, with rides having been taken apart and cleared from the location
It attracted enormous visitor numbers for almost four decades but today what was once amongst the UK’s finest visitor attractions stands dormant and hauntingly silent. The location is guarded by security with extra counter surveillance systems in operation to deter trespassers.
In 2024, journalist Taite Johnson paid a visit to the site filled with “many memories of her regular summer days out”. She expressed that “going as an adult it felt very different and the magic of it felt lost to me”.
Once upon a time, long queues would have greeted visitors at the entrance. However, Taite remarked: “When we got to Oakwood we were shocked at how few visitors there were. We arrived at 10.15am, just 15 minutes after the park opened, along with only a handful of other cars in the car park.”
She also noted the absence of security checks, which left her feeling uncomfortable: “I was slightly concerned with the lack of security checks before we entered the theme park. Both my friend and I had backpacks that didn’t get searched at all, which I would have expected when visiting a large park where a lot of people could have been – although granted that day there were hardly any visitors.
“The park seemed dreary and run down,” she continued. “Not much had changed since I visited as a child which did give me a sense of nostalgia, but didn’t fill me with excitement to explore it all again.”
One thing any visitor to a popular theme park will have experienced is the long queues for rides, which in Oakwood’s prime were as lengthy as any other theme park in the country. But in 2024, Taite stated “that was not a problem when I visited Oakwood this week”.
She remarked: “I did not queue for any of the rides I went on, and even got to stay in my seat and ride again for one of them. That may be due to the weather but one of the rollercoaster attendants told me that the day before – which did not see any rain – one visitor rode the same ride 50 times in one day!”
Whilst enormously popular during the 1990s, more recently it was frequently branded the “worst theme park in the UK” with numerous social media influencers using the attraction for content to entertain their followers. It had accumulated well over 1,000 negative reviews on TripAdvisor, and was also labelled a place to “avoid at all costs!”
Recurring gripes about value for money, inadequate maintenance and inconsistent ride availability were the most frequent criticisms.
When another journalist, Rhodri Harrison, visited in 2021, his initial impression was how expensive the entry fee was compared to other parks offering more attractions, noting: “Booking and paying online came to £35.50, a steep price when considering other theme parks in the UK are slightly cheaper with more rides.”
He arrived to discover straight away that its most celebrated attraction, Megafobia, was closed and commented: “Upon getting to the park the first wave of disappointment hit.”
Describing many of the rides as “worse for wear” even back then, he also noticed how few people there were: “Perhaps a sign of how much quieter the park has gotten in recent years, I remember waiting nearly an hour for Megafobia and even longer for Speed and Drenched but that wasn’t the case this time round.”
