Inside the beloved UK theme park that was left to rot
Eerie photos show the sad state of a once buzzing UK theme park, abandoned and left to decay.
The images offer a rare glimpse inside the gates of Pleasure Island in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, eight years after it closed down for good.
The seaside theme park opened in 1993 and was a hit with families for several years until visitor numbers started to drop and the attraction was forced to shut in 2016.
Photos, shared on Facebook group called Pleasure Island Archive, show decaying boarded up buildings with parts of rides left abandoned inside, alongside piles of rubbish.
One of the park’s popular rides, Tinkaboo Factory – where visitors were taken on a tour of a toy factory – remains almost in tact. Although the moat that ran through it has been removed.
A fort-like building once home to Pleasure Island’s dodgems is now surrounded by overgrown grass and bushes.
According to the Facebook group, a number of rides have been removed, with some taken to other parks.
There are plans to turn the park into a resort with 272 1950s style lodges, two hotels, a Costa drive-thru, a Lidl supermarket, and a retail unit with a food hall, leisure unit and garden centre.
One of the hotels features a casino and conference facility for up to 900 people.
Natural England, however, opposes the £65 million development, due to ‘potential significant effects on the Humber Estuary Special Protection Area,’ reports the Mirror.
A summer birds survey, undertaken by OS Ecology as part of the planning application, showed several bird species can be found at the site.
Earlier this year, we took a look inside another abandoned seaside theme park, Frontierland in Morecambe, Lancashire.
The attraction has been left to rot for 25 years, although the council have recently hinted that it could reopen.
Frontierland in Morecambe, Lancashire, (not to be confused with Disney’s Frontierland) attracted families for more than 90 years, with the fairground originally opening in 1906 as West End Amusement Park.
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