In this episode of Skip the Queue, Andy Povey is joined by Lawrence Roots, Founder of Theme Park Network, to explore what makes an award-winning theme park. With voting now open for the UK Theme Park Awards, Lawrence discusses this year's nominees, emerging trends across the UK attractions sector and what separates a good day out from a truly outstanding visitor experience. He also shares insights from his ambitious Guinness World Record attempt to visit every nominated UK theme park in the shortest possible time. The episode concludes with a special conversation from Crealy as Josh Haywoord discusses the park's new attractions, his Theme Park Personality nomination, and the excitement surrounding this year's awards.
Andy Povey is joined by Lawrence Roots to discuss the UK Theme Park Awards, industry trends, and his Guinness World Record challenge to visit every nominated UK theme park. Plus, Josh Haywood from Crealy shares his excitement for this year's awards and the park's latest developments.
Show references:
Lawrence Roots, Founder of UK Theme Park Awards
Theme Park Awards: How They Work and Why You Should Care - Lawrence Roots
Josh Haywood - Board Director of Crealy Theme Park Resort
Voting in the 2026 UK Theme Park Awards is now open from the 20th July until the 28th August 2026. Register now to vote.
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Credits:
Written by Emily Burrows (Plaster)
Edited by Steve Folland
Produced by Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle (Plaster)
Andy Povey: Welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast by and for people working in visitor attractions. Brought to you by Merac. I'm Andy Povey and I'm your host for today. I'm going to be joined by Lawrence Roots, founder of the UK Theme Park Network. With voting now open for the UK Theme Park Awards, Lawrence joins me to discuss this year's nominees, the trends emerging across the UK attraction sector and what separates a good day out from a truly world worthy visitor experience.
Lawrence Roots: Staff are walking the grounds constantly, looking out for anything that's dirty, anything that's damaged, any litter that needs to be picked up. It doesn't matter who you are within that attraction, you spot an issue and you deal with an issue.
Andy Povey: And as if all nights in the awards wasn't enough, Doris is also attempting a Guinness World Record by visiting as many UK theme parks as he possibly can in the next 14 days. It's an ambitious challenge that gives him a unique perspective on the innovation, investment and guest experiences shaping the industry today.
Lawrence Roots: There is nothing like getting to experience it for yourself, seeing the guest experience, meeting the teams behind those experiences and listeners.
Andy Povey: Wait till the end where you may hear a brief chat with Lawrence and Theme Park Personality of the Year nominee Josh Haywood at Crealy when we set Lawrence off on his epic trip.
Lawrence Roots: So Theme Park Network itself is a platform that brings together theme parks companies that provide goods and services to theme park industry and all kinds of industry professionals and people come to us for industry news, industry events insight and recruitment opportunities. The UK Theme Park Awards were founded back in 2020 and they celebrate excellence in the UK's theme park industry. The voting for the UK Theme Park Awards opened this week. The public will be able to head to the website and start voting for their favourite theme parks and attractions. And while they are doing that, I will be embarking on a mammoth tour to visit hopefully pretty. Seven nominated theme parks around the country in just 15 days.
Andy Povey: Wow, 37 parks in 15 days and that's obviously two in a bit a day. Good at maths and a ridiculous amount of driving.
Lawrence Roots: It's a lot of driving, but because I'm doing it as one continuous circuit of the country, it's far fewer miles than it would be to keep traveling out to individual parks one after another. I am not stopping. I'm leaving my home, setting off on the road and hopping from one theme park to the next, staying as I go. So for that reason, it actually makes the whole thing, you know, much more sensible from a travel perspective.
Andy Povey: I might take that snippet and play that bet to you on day 16.
Lawrence Roots: To remind me how straightforward and easy I said it would be.
Andy Povey: Absolutely. That's actually potentially a Guinness World Record, isn't it?
Lawrence Roots: Yeah. To our knowledge, nobody has, maybe rather sensibly, nobody has attempted to visit 37 theme parks in 15 days before. So, yeah, it may well be. I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to get out there on the road and see, you know, so many of those nominated attractions. There is nothing like getting to experience it for yourself, seeing the guest experience, meeting the teams behind those experiences. And I'm doing it peak season, so, you know, everything is in absolute kind of full swing. Really excited about it.
Andy Povey: So voting's now open. I would assume the majority of nominees are promoting the links to vote and to vote for them across all of their social media channels and everything right now.
Lawrence Roots: Absolutely. So as the UK Theme Park Awards, we very much promote the public vote and we're doing that throughout the campaign trying to encourage people to get out and vote. The tour is part of that. So as you see me navigating the country, visiting all of these nominated parks, I will have a rather fetching 5 foot tall vote now marker upon my person. So we'll be capturing video and photo content from all of the parks with the teams encouraging as many people to get voting as possible. As you say, you know, the parks themselves, they'll be promoting voting online, they'll be using their social media channels.
Andy Povey: So can anyone come along with you?
Lawrence Roots: It's just me on this road trip, but I will be meeting a lot of people along the way and I'm really looking forward to that kind of aspect of it. It's a big logistical challenge and I've subjected myself to that logistical challenge and the driving involved. I decided not to subject anybody else to the same experience.
Andy Povey: I have in my mind. It's a sort of romantic picture of, you see the celebrities doing their 10 marathons for children in need or those kind of road trips and loads of people coming out to cheer them on the way. So listeners, if you see Lawrence, then get out and give him a wave.
Lawrence Roots: If I was a fitter and healthier person, then maybe I would have attempted to have completed the entire trip by bicycle, but unfortunately that is well and truly beyond me at this current stage.
Andy Povey: And how many miles is it?
Lawrence Roots: Just out of interest, it's just over 2,000 miles. So it's not actually quite as many as you might imagine because it is continuous. One continuous track around the country. And I should say it does also include a ferry trip because the fantastic Blackgang Chine toy park on the Isle of Wight is one of our nominated parks this year. It does mean I've got to hop on a ferry to get to the Isle of Wight and back. We try to keep the awards fresh and interesting every year. We've actually introduced 10 new categories into the awards the year, which is exciting. So a number of the awards which you'll have seen kind of before, which are kind of staples of the event, obviously haven't got anywhere. So we're still got Best Value Theme park, we've still got best customer service, those kinds of categories. But what we have been able to do with the awards this year is just shine a spotlight on some areas that haven't been in the awards before, or maybe not for a few years. So we've got quite an interesting category called Best Brand Activation. And this is where we are looking specifically at how theme parks are engaging kind of well known brands from outside theme park world and introducing them for time limited experiences at theme parks around the UK. So that's quite an interesting one. We've also got a category for best Landscape Theme park, which is something that came about through suggestions from some of theme parks when were seeking feedback last year. Every time we do the awards, we try to identify areas of theme park experience which have not kind of necessarily received the kind of recognition that maybe they should do. And actually when you think about many of our theme park experiences, they are in beautifully landscaped grounds. The horticultural gardening teams work incredibly hard to keep those spaces looking green and beautiful. You know, if you think about the flower bed displays, the hanging baskets, all those kinds of things, it's not something that you would see typically represented in an industry awards, but we think actually those teams deserve some recognition. So Best Landscaping Parks made it into the awards this year as well.
Andy Povey: It's interesting, that is the third conversation I'm having about landscaping and gardening in as many days.
Lawrence Roots: Oh, really?
Andy Povey: So a longtime friend of mine, Dom Stern, who's now at Warner Brothers, posted on LinkedIn about a visit to Bolton's and where they have some beautiful gardens at Bolton's. I'm sure they're one of the nominees in that category.
Lawrence Roots: They are indeed.
Andy Povey: But Dom positioned this as a sign of age as he started to appreciate the gardens rather than just the rides when he's at a park.
Lawrence Roots: It just feels like an essential part of the experience for some parks. Obviously it's not relevant to all Parks, you know, seaside parks, pier based amusement parks, they will do things in different ways. But that's the beauty of the awards. We can flex those categories. We're not fixed to a set that has to be repeated year after year. So every time we review that list we can just explore slightly different avenues. Another couple of examples from this year, we've got best theme park animal exhibit, because again, for some parks, actually their animal collection and their conservation work is integral to their visitor experience. So it's a good opportunity to look at that. We've got best theme park Holiday Village. So where previously, say we've had an award for best theme park hotel, that's fantastic for those theme parks that do have kind of built hotels. But a number of theme parks now are diversifying into lodges, glamping camping, you know, alternative forms of on site accommodation and creating holiday villages for their guests to stay in. So that feels like another one that, you know, it's nice to be able to look at that this year.
Andy Povey: Absolutely. I'm the father of twins. I know you're not allowed to pick your favourite, but out of all of the nominees, what's really stood out for you in this year's nominations?
Lawrence Roots: I won't give you a favourite, which unfortunately is not the answer you would like, but I would say what stands out to me is the diversity within the nominees. This year you have got some fantastic nominations across categories from all kinds of different theme parks and there's some parks in there that, you know, people might not necessarily expect, but then they'll have seen the list and then I've gone, oh, yeah. Actually there is this amazing thing there that I'd forgotten even existed. So I think it's really nice to see a mix of, you know, very large, high volume, highly visited theme parks, some of which are a part of wider groups, but then lots of independents that are still relatively small, independent family businesses. They're all in there. They're all in there. It's a right mix, which I think is really nice to see.
Andy Povey: I love that about the industry, I must admit. I think that diversity of ownership, I suppose, but that's the wrong term. But that diversity of size of venues and whatever is not just all the big scares, big thrills. So looking at the nominations and looking at the water, I mean, what's. This is the fifth year of the awards?
Lawrence Roots: Sixth, in fact.
Andy Povey: Sixth.
Lawrence Roots: I know. How's the time gone by? Gone by so quickly. So the first couple of years were virtual because of the times. But yeah, since then we've been an in person event. We've taken the awards to all kinds of different venues into Drayson Manor and Thorpe Park, Tressington, Wixtey Park last year and off to Blackpool's Pleasure Beach this year. So it's really nice to be able to take the awards some way different every year, giving different theme parks an opportunity to show off what they've got. Because you know you get theme of the UK theme park industry in the same room at the same time as well as obviously one or two watching the live stream.
Lawrence Roots: So it's nice to be able to take them to a different park that they may never have visited before because you know everyone's very busy and you know there'll be parks that will take the awards to that. It'll be people's first time experiencing that place which gives them an opportunity to see how somebody else does things and pick up some ideas along the way.
Andy Povey: Having done this for so long, what trends are you seeing in the UK sector right now?
Lawrence Roots: Category I mentioned earlier is probably new because that is a trend. So these kind of IP based brand partnerships, it's not new to use third party IPs within a theme park setting. You know, we've had attractions like CVV's Land, Peppa Pig World for a number of years now, so that's not new. But we are specifically seeing a surge in using kind of third party IPs major brands for these very short time limited experience offerings. So it might be something that just runs for two weeks or six weeks over the summer holidays. So it kind of pops in and pops out. So that's definitely a trend that we're seeing in terms of nominations coming in. So when we saw, you know, a number of those obviously being nominated this year, we decided actually deserves its own category.
Lawrence Roots: There's also sort of trends within specific categories. So I think within Best New Entertainment this year there's not one but two K-pop events that have been nominated. Yeah, that suddenly quite a significant thing within the attractions industry. And there's two that have made it into our shortlist for the public vote. But there are several more other K-pop themed events which have popped up at theme parks and other visit attractions across the UK and actually across Europe this year. So that's another little trend I think we're seeing.
Andy Povey: That's not just theme park industry. My daughter's school, 50% of the kids there go crazy for it. I'm lucky that my daughters aren't in that 50%.
Lawrence Roots: Okay. Otherwise you would be listening to a lot of K-pop at home.
Andy Povey: I'm aware of what it is. Should we say.
Andy Povey: If there was one thing that you had to pick out the all of the best parks have in common, what would it be? Is it going to be the staff, the storytelling, the investment? What's the one thing that's coming across great?
Lawrence Roots: All of those things are really important. It's a tough call kind of between two things. For me the two things are absolutely the staff, it's the people that deliver the experience day in, day and day out. It's the faces that people see, it's the service they receive. It's everyone from kind of ride operations to food and beverage, to retail, to ride photography, the entertainment teams, the cleaning teams, the gardening teams. I think if you work in the industry, you do have an appreciation for the enormous machine really in terms of that staff base which it takes to deliver that guest experience.
Lawrence Roots: Most guests probably do not appreciate that they're not consciously thinking about the huge number of people that have had to work so hard to be able to deliver the experience they're getting on a day out. But those of us in the industry know what it takes to pull that off. And I think the most successful parts when it comes to the awards quite often are those where their commitment to investing in those teams right the way from recruitment, induction, training, loyalty, reward, the day to day management and leadership of those teams. It is the parks that have got all of those things right. And that is so hard. I mean leading kind of large teams, delivering particularly in customer facing roles, delivering that experience of visitors is really hard work. So hats off to those parts that deliver such a fantastic experience for their staff who then obviously repay that tenfold in terms of what they give to guest 100%. The other one which doesn't the staff have to come first? If I'm choosing between the two, the other one is the attention to detail in terms of presentation standards.
Lawrence Roots: For me, throughout my whole career I've been going out to visit attractions, looking at the way that the sites are visually presented and it's the parks where they have maybe really strong duty management actually for, you know, staff are walking the grounds constantly looking out for anything that's dirty, anything that's damaged, any litter that needs to be picked up, anything that's gone a bit wonky. And it doesn't matter who you are within that attraction. You spot an issue and you deal with an issue. It doesn't matter. You know, you could be, you know, working in one of the front of house Teams, you could be the director of that theme park. It's your responsibility. If you see something across your attraction in terms of those presentation standards isn't quite right and that's jarring, you fix it straight away. It's those parts which I think tend to come up more in denominations where they're absolutely on top of those standards and it's everyone's responsibility to keep those standards high.
Andy Povey: I love that. And I actually think the two are interconnected. Very, very interconnected. Yeah. And I do wonder whether as people in the industry, we notice this attention to detail much more. Something like an overflowing litter bin. I struggle to walk past and I still, when I see someone taking a photo of family and friends, I will still offer to go and take the photo for them.
Lawrence Roots: It's ingrained within you. It's become part of who you are. Yeah, exactly the same with me. Exactly the same.
Andy Povey: In fact, I did this once, an airport, and I went and took the camera off the person taking the photo and said, go on and join the group. Only to find out that the person who was taking the photo was nothing to do with that group, it was a server from the restaurant that they'd go up to them.
Lawrence Roots: How funny.
Andy Povey: While we're talking about stuff, then, I think a new category this year is the award for individuals working within theme parks.
Lawrence Roots: Yeah, so we've got some interesting ones this year. So the first of three categories is Theme Park Personality of the Year. So this one we are opening up as part of the public votes as well as the jury scoring. These are for individuals who are very much the face of their theme park, particularly in the online environment or on site. You know, they're regularly out and about engaging with visitors. So we've got a fantastic selection of nominees in that category. I mean, people who I have admired hugely for many years, people who I, you know, I think are just synonymous with their attraction. They almost can't be separated from their attraction. So it's really nice to have some nominees in that category where, when we're building the voting system.
Lawrence Roots: Obviously we're incorporating images, so we're populating the voting system with images of all of those nominees and just seeing all of those faces lined up just, it made me very happy to see that recognised. And we have two other categories for individuals this year. These two are voted for by the public. So these are down to our judging panel to decide. And we have introduced an outstanding achievement award recognising somebody that has delivered a significant contribution to theme park industry and maybe their particular attraction that they work at. So maybe somebody that's worked there for a long time and has made a, you know, a huge impact on that attraction, the people around them and the wider industry as well.
Lawrence Roots: So we've got that Outstanding Achievement award. We've also got to go alongside that, a Rising Star Award. So in this one we are seeking to recognize and award somebody that maybe is actually at the very early stages of their career. Maybe they haven't worked within the industry for that long or for that particular attraction for that long, but they're already making a significant impact and contribution to their attraction. There's kind of signs that they could be. They could be a star of the future. Maybe in the future they'll be picking up the outstanding achievement.
Andy Povey: Absolutely.
Lawrence Roots: I love it.
Andy Povey: I fully support the recognition of individuals, but it's also an individual is only as good as the team that sits around.
Lawrence Roots: Absolutely. I imagine there might be some significant thank you speeches when those categories are announced. I'm sure there'll be many people that those individuals want to thank.
Andy Povey: So you're on your big road trip. 37 Parks in 15 days. Which one are you looking forward to most?
Lawrence Roots: Which one am I looking forward to most? The last. So what is fantastic about our nominees this year? The parts I'm Disney again, it's the variety of attractions I'm going to. I'm going to so many different kinds of parks on different scales. I'm seeing all kinds of different attractions. I'm so looking forward to it. I think my halfway point around the country is probably Fantasy island, so that'll be a major milestone. Getting to Fantasy island and stick. There's knowing that I've. I'm halfway through the tour. Yeah, no, it's going to be. It's going to be quite an experience.
Andy Povey: And are there any of the parks that you're visiting for the first time?
Lawrence Roots: There are parks that I'm visiting for the first time because, yeah, there's so many theme parks in the UK and I have visited many of them before. A great deal of them. I don't know exactly how many actually, I've not worked that out, but no, there's definitely parks on the itinerary. There'll be my first time getting to see. So that's really important to me as well, getting to know some of the parks better from my own personal experience.
Andy Povey: Are you actually going to get time to go on any rides?
Lawrence Roots: I hope so. So there is time. So, you know, there's sufficient time allowed every park to have a good explore. I'm going to be meeting the teams, doing some photo ops, but yeah, getting to experience some rides. You know, particularly I'm looking to see anything that's new, any kind of new projects, any new rides have opened recently, any new shows that are being delivered this year. So it's those kind of bits which I'll be hunting out. Looking forward to getting on some rides as well along the way.
Andy Povey: Fantastic.
Lawrence Roots: I'm a little bit jealous.
Andy Povey: I think we'll see.
Lawrence Roots: Maybe next year you can join me on the road trip. If you can clear your diary for two weeks, you can join me and we'll get a bit bigger. Bigger car.
Andy Povey: You've positioned an idea in my head now and I have a picture of Cliff Richard in a double decker bus. To sort of bring the episode to a close. In summary, I suppose in one sentence, why should people vote in the UK theme park awards?
Lawrence Roots: To make your views known and to reward the teams that deliver these experiences day in, day out. This is your opportunity to show your appreciation and recognition of the huge amount of work that teams working at theme parks across the UK put in every year to deliver that guest experience. So please vote, help those teams get the recognition they deserve at the awards in September.
Andy Povey: Fantastic. And listeners, if any of you can get a photo of Lawrence at a theme park and you manage to publish that with our hashtag. Hashtag skipthequeue, then we'll work out a little prize. Now back to fob.
Andy Povey: So I'm sitting here with Josh from Crealy and Lawrence and we're outside Pirates Plummet on site at Crealy. Lawrence, you're just about to set off on your road trip.
Josh Haywood: I am. This is theme park number one.
Andy Povey: Feeling nervous. Still think it's a good idea?
Lawrence Roots: I do. Still think it's a good idea at this point in time.
Andy Povey: Josh, you've been on Rotor with Lawrence. I saw you this morning.
Josh Haywood: Yet. So due to open at the end of next week, our second new ride for 2026. We thought it'd be a good idea to test Lawrence's knowledge on his own road trip which I. You'll see the results if you watch our video. But I think we did okay. But it was difficult trying to maintain some equilibrium whilst reading the questions and trying to be entertaining. But yeah, the ride is fantastic and we just to note we only had it on a very slight setting. It was a very modern mild.
Andy Povey: It was very mild.
Josh Haywood: It didn't really rotate as much as we will have it in the next couple of weeks, but it was a Bit of fun, something different. And of course, while the weather's like this, what a great place to start the road trip from.
Andy Povey: And you're going to post that video on your site
Josh Haywood: As we speak. The guys are busy editing and trying to get all that content ready. I think today is obviously a big day for theme park world, having the vote now open for the Theme Park Awards. So we want to maximise all the opportunity and get behind what is a fantastic event with the Theme Park Awards. And we're desperately looking forward to going to Blackpool in September.
Andy Povey: I'm assuming you're anticipating coming home with a couple of things?
Josh Haywood: Yes, I think in an earlier post I said that we're trying to get a man with a van ready booked from Blackpool, packing cases and maybe even the security corps to bring us home with more awards than we won last year. We were, were very privileged to win two awards last year at Wixtey Park, and hopefully we can come back with one or two more. And I've been personally nominated for Theme Park Personality Award. I don't know what that means, but it's nice to be recognised for some social media content and just keeping people up to date with what's going on at Crealy. I think people love to see certainly the management and the owners of the business getting involved and showing their secrets. And certainly for the enthusiasts and for the smaller parts, it's good to be Able to show your wares
Andy Povey: Listeners. By the time you hear this, Lawrence will already have completed the first few days of his road trip. You can see where he's been and where he's going next by following him on LinkedIn. I must admit I'm slightly jealous and I'm tempted to join him next year. Anyone with me on getting a bus together, thank you for listening. I hope you found the chat interesting. If you like the what you've heard, please do take a moment to like comment or review the podcast on whatever platform you use. It really helps people to find us and means we can have many more chats like this one.
And thank you all to the back office team supporting us. Steve Folland edits all of the audio and makes us sound professional. Today's episode was produced by Emily and Sami at Plaster. Thank you ladies for everything you do to support us. Socialing, schedules and distribution was all managed by Wenalyn at Merac HQ. Thank you, Wenalyn. Listeners, I've been your host, Andy Povey, and until next time, thank you and goodbye.