Parkcast - The UK’s Original Theme Park Podcast

2025 seems to be the year of the theme park VIP experience. We’ve seen more and more on offer and often they give us theme park nerds exciting unprecedented access to our favourite attractions. But are they really worth the cost and are “VIP” elements at theme parks going too far? Kip Hakes is fresh from the Chessington Tomb Blaster experience so in this episode we find out what he thought of it, and was it worth it?!

After the shock closure of Oakwood earlier this year we’ve been on edge about the future of some other UK theme parks. But recently there has been talk that the park could be saved by a mysterious local who promises they have the backing to bring it back to its former glory. There’s also been an odd job advert for a park ops manager to help reopen another “much loved park”. In this episode we’re joined by Danni from Off The Tracks as we chat about whether this is really the good news we’ve been wanting, or if these parks are now better left in the past.

2025 has seen huge announcement after announcement in the theme park world. It’s an exciting time to be a theme park fan so who better to join us than writer of “Theme Park Fan: The Musical” himself - Nick Hutson. You’ll have heard Nick’s work at Chessington or during the Oakwood fireworks but he also famously wrote and recorded a full musical about being a theme park fan.  In this episode we talk about that and the biggest announcements of the year so far….

It’s official - everyone is talking about Paultons Park. This family theme park has grown from strength to strength over the last decade and just a couple of weeks ago they announced they had no plans to stop. This week I’m joined by Kip Hakes who went to the Super Fans event and got all the details about their new Ghostly Manor attraction and their future investments. We discuss why enthusiasts are getting so excited about this park, and exactly why it is becoming so highly regarded.

This week we’re joined by industry veteran turned consultant Mark Shaw. Having cut his teeth at Thorpe and Chessington alongside legends like John Wardley and Glenn Earlam, Mark headed down under to turn around Adventure World in Perth. He took a park that was consistently scoring low on guest satisfaction to  become the highest rated in Australia. In this episode he tells us how he did it, and why creating fantastic customer experiences is vital to running a successful theme park.