As part of Skip the Queue’s mini-series celebrating 90 years of BALPPA, Laura Baxter is joined by Julie Dalton, Managing Director of Gulliver’s Theme Park Resorts, to talk about the story behind the UK’s only multi-site family-owned theme park group. Julie shares how Gulliver’s grew from a model village in 1978 into four resorts, the challenges of opening Gulliver’s Valley during the pandemic, and what it takes to run a growing theme park business without a corporate parent. This episode also explores family ownership, accessibility, accommodation, winter events and what the future holds for Gulliver’s.
In this episode of Skip the Queue, Laura Baxter is joined by Julie Dalton, managing director of Gulliver's Theme Park Resorts - and the head of what is, remarkably, the only multi-site theme park brand in this country that isn't owned by a corporate.
Gulliver's began in 1978 as a model village on a fifteen-acre hillside above Matlock Bath, built by Julie's parents Ray and Hilary Phillips - Ray a builder by trade, making the miniature houses himself. Warrington followed in 1989, Milton Keynes in 1999, and in July 2020, of all the moments to open a theme park, Gulliver's Valley in Rotherham.
Four resorts, more than fourteen hundred staff at peak, and a stubborn focus on the same audience it started with - families with children aged two to thirteen.
They talk about what it takes to run four sites as a family rather than a corporation, opening a park in the middle of a pandemic, and why so much of Gulliver's is still built in-house.
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:
Julie Dalton — Managing Director, Gulliver’s Theme Parks
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)