Park Profile
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Whilst some of the larger British park operators have stepped up their focus on young guests in recent years with the addition of new branded lands, a smaller family-owned chain of venues has been successfully catering to the children’s market for many years. Based loosely on
the Gulliver’s Travels books by English author Jonathan Swift, each of the three Gulliver’s parks provide guests with a kid- sized world to explore. In recent years the group has expanded with the addition of a Dinosaur & Farm Park and Splash Zone water play centre at its site in Milton Keynes, a hotel and Splash Zone in Warrington and a Spy Zone at its original park in Matlock Bath, Derbyshire. Here Gulliver’s founder Ray Phillips looks back on his 35 year career in the industry and notes that, amidst increase competition for families’ leisure time, the business is in safe hands for the future
Gulliver’s Story B
35 years of kid-friendly fun
MAIN PIC: Ray Phillips with children Nick Phillips and Julie Dalton
efore starting Gulliver’s I was involved for many years with construction and got very early into timber-framed houses; I would buy bits of land and put a couple of houses on them. An estate agent came along one day and offered me a big piece of land in Matlock Bath, but warned me that we might only get planning permission for one house. We bought the land and I went to see the planners to explore our options. They said they wanted a visitor attraction on there, anything so long as it was an
attraction. I’ve always enjoyed making models, so I said we’d do a model village, and we opened in 1978 as Gulliver’s Kingdom. After our first few years we observed that the kids were just walking around and throwing stones because there wasn’t much to do apart from looking at all the little houses. So we needed to give them something else to do. We started with a little train that just went backwards and forwards, then we bought a couple of second-hand rides and that’s how it all started.
The park quickly became a big hit with families in the Midlands but it offered us limited expansion opportunities because it was only 15 acres, so we started looking for a second site. The problems associated with planning meant that it was easier to look to places with “new town” status, which have more planning powers and things go through a lot easier. We looked at two or three places, but Warrington [about 60 miles north west of Matlock] was very keen to have us as part of a new town they were developing, which also included the UK’s first Ikea store. We committed to a 60-acre site and opened Gulliver’s World in 1989.
When it came to selecting our third site, we drew a 60-mile circle around Matlock and looked in the other direction. Eventually we decided on Milton Keynes, which is a little further away but also enjoyed new town status and brought us within reach of London for the first time. We opened as Gulliver’s Land in 1999, on a 30-acre site.
The Antelope wooden coaster – built in-house by the Gulliver’s team in Warrington 60 Although we still have the Gulliver’s Kingdom, World NOVEMBER 2013
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