A once-thriving theme park that delighted countless schoolchildren across generations now stands silent in a quiet corner of rural Britain, its days of excitement and adventure long behind it.

Oakwood Theme Park confirmed in March last year that it would remain shut for the 2025 season and indefinitely thereafter, marking the permanent end of an attraction that had operated for nearly four decades. The Pembrokeshire venue announced its closure with "much sadness" as dwindling visitor numbers led to severe financial difficulties. In its final years, it had been branded the "UK's worst theme park" by disappointed guests.

Aspro Parks acquired Oakwood in 2008 and pumped millions into the facility. Yet last spring, the company cited "unrelenting economic challenges" stemming from "ride parts to electricity costs, food and beverage inflation, increases in the National Living Wage and changes to national insurance thresholds" which caused operating expenses to soar dramatically.

Despite optimism that the venue might reopen, it has remained shuttered and deserted for the past 12 months, with attractions having been dismantled and transported away from the premises.

Oakwood opened in 1987 and for decades it attracted enormous crowds, but today what was formerly amongst Britain's premier tourist destinations sits abandoned and hauntingly still. Security personnel patrol the grounds with supplementary surveillance systems deployed to deter intruders.

In 2024, journalist Taite Johnson returned to the attraction which held "many memories of her regular summer days out" for her. She said "going as an adult it felt very different and the magic of it felt lost to me".

In the park's 1990s heyday, lengthy queues would greet guests at the gates. However, Taite said: "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 screening, 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 added. "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."

Extended waits for attractions are something every theme park visitor will recognise, and during Oakwood's prime years these were comparable to any other major park nationwide. Yet in 2024, Taite said "that was not a problem when I visited Oakwood this week".

She said: "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, in recent years it frequently earned the dubious title of the "worst theme park in the UK", with numerous social media influencers exploiting the attraction for comedic content. It accumulated well over 1,000 negative reviews on TripAdvisor, and was also branded a place to "avoid at all costs!".

Persistent grievances regarding poor value, inadequate upkeep and unreliable ride availability dominated visitor complaints.

When another reporter, Rhodri Harrison, visited in 2021, his initial observation concerned the excessive entry cost compared to rival parks offering more attractions, saying: "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 find immediately that its most famous attraction, Megafobia, was closed and said: "Upon getting to the park the first wave of disappointment hit."

Describing many of the rides as "worse for wear" even back then, Rhodri 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."