[karajorma]

Saw this on the news last night. Apparently some fly by night operator decided to open a Christmas themed Lapland park in the New Forest.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/7760237.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/02/christmas

A newly-opened "winter wonderland" Lapland-style theme park has been described as a "joke" and a "scam" by hundreds of angry visitors. Many people have demanded a refund of the £25 they paid to enter the Lapland New Forest, at Matchams Leisure Park on the Hampshire-Dorset border. Several visitors have contacted the BBC saying the standard is extremely poor and does not resemble marketing photos.

April Chantler, of Dibden Purlieu, Hampshire, described the park as "hell". "The huskies were chained up in a pen howling, yapping and generally looking thin and unhappy. "The two reindeer were obviously not enjoying their surroundings and the 'log cabins' were a few green painted sheds with more or less nothing in them." 

There was the "tunnel of light" which turned out to be a line of trees with a few strings of fairy lights, the unusual ice rink which hadn't quite frozen, the nativity scene which was a painted hoarding in a clearing with some sand, and a "bustling Christmas market" which resembled a white marquee with four small stalls and a few piles of boxes.

One visitor, Anne Lenton, from Brighton, said: "It's like a derelict building site. I brought my grandchildren away crying." Steve Hull, from Fareham, Hampshire, said: "This is like a car boot sale."

By yesterday evening the elves had clearly gone on strike: the Lapland phone was permanently engaged, and the website appeared to be inactive. One mother, with lots of stamina, had eventually got to meet Santa on her visit but reported that she found him sitting in a bare wooden hut, accompanied only by a toy reindeer.

I do feel very sorry for anyone who paid to go to this place but there really needed to be a camera crew present while they were setting this whole thing up. "Oi!. Dave! string some fairy lights up on those branches! We'll call it the Tunnel of  Lights!"

Make sure you watch the video to see how truly dismal this place actually is.

[Kosh]

Terrible.....

[Herra Tohtori]

Reindeers typically don't look like they enjoy their surroundings... on winter they look as cold and hungry and miserable as they probably are, and on winter they are being eaten alive by insects. And when they are rounded up for slaughter in the fall I don't think they especially enjoy it either, but I could be wrong.

That said, the video and photos looks absolutely hilarious in their misery. The place looks even worse and/or cheesier than Finnish winter wonderland christmas themeparks which typically suck pretty badly, so cheers for that.

Is the web page of this marvellous theme park somewhere in the interwebs still?

[Mefustae]

See, this is testament to what you can achieve if you're a good web designer. This should be the final exam in a web design uni course! You're presented with this horrible, dilapidated park of utter trash, and tasked with making it into a wonderland that people will come from miles around to see!

They didn't lie, they just exaggerated a little.

[Polpolion]

It looks like a *****load of work went into setting all that up. It's not a scam, they just suck at it. Just like it sucks to be the people who spent money to go there. Tough luck, stop whining.

[Colonol Dekker]

I saw it too

They used about two cans of silly string / spray snow on the "Frozen forest" and they had a burger van.... Very christmassy

[Mars]

You don't get snow in Britain? 

[Colonol Dekker]

Yep, but our public services are too efficient and clean it up before we get a chance to play