As part of Skip the Queue’s mini-series celebrating 90 years of BALPPA, Laura Baxter is joined by Debs Griffin, Director of Sundown Adventureland, to explore the story behind one of the UK’s best-known independent family attractions. Debs shares how the family-run park has remained independent for 58 years, balancing nostalgia and tradition with the challenges of running a modern attraction on a lean budget. This episode also explores family ownership, staying independent, adapting to changing visitor expectations and what it takes to keep an attraction thriving for generations.
In this special episode of Skip the Queue, Laura Baxter is joined by our guest, Debs Griffin, Director of Sundown Adventureland in Rampton, Nottinghamshire.
This year, BALPPA turns 90. Our guest today runs a park that turns 58. Between them, that’s close to a century and a half of British attractions, and neither got there by accident.
Debs Griffin is a director of Sundown Adventureland, the theme park for the under-tens. It started in 1968 in her grandparents’ back garden with a donkey and a monkey called Coco. Today, it spans sixty acres, with rides and a holiday village, and is still owned and run by the same family. Debs, welcome back to Skip the Queue.
You heard Debs on the show earlier this year with Andy, where she told the story of how Sundown grew. There’s no need to tell that story twice. Instead, today’s conversation looks at the harder question, and one that doesn’t get asked often enough: not how you grew, but how you’ve kept going. Fifty-eight years, the same family, no outside money. So let’s start there.
This episode is part of Skip the Queue’s mini-series celebrating 90 years of BALPPA, looking at the people and businesses shaping the UK attractions industry.
Show references:
Our Guest Host; in partnership with BALPPA:
Laura Baxter - Founder of YourCMO
BALPPA - https://www.balppa.org/
Our Guest:
Debs Griffin -Director of Sundown Adventureland
Skip the Queue is brought to you by Merac. We provide attractions with the tools and expertise to create world-class digital interactions. Very simply, we're here to rehumanise commerce. Your guest host is Laura Baxter.
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Credits:
Written by Laura Baxter (YourCMO)
Edited by Steve Folland
Produced by Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle (Plaster)