Over more than four decades, Paultons Park has evolved from a regional amusement park into a major UK family theme park. Set on 140 acres on the edge of the New Forest, the family-run Hampshire attraction now features more than 80 rides and attractions across six themed worlds.
For years, the park was best known as the home of the UK’s only Peppa Pig World. Over the past decade, however, its investment programme has broadened the proposition beyond the IP-based land.
Lawrence Mancey, marketing and technology director at Paultons Park
Investments including Lost Kingdom, Tornado Springs and the newly launched Valgard: Realm of the Vikings have added increasingly immersive, themed environments to the park, while broadening its appeal beyond its traditional audience.
With the launch of Valgard in May 2026, the addition of the award-winning Ghostly Manor dark ride in 2025, the UK’s first water coaster’s debut in 2027, and plans for a 600-guest on-site Scandinavian-style holiday resort, Paultons Park is entering its most transformative era yet.
We speak to Lawrence Mancey, marketing and technology director at Paultons Park, about the thinking behind this expansion, from its approach to themed environments and family attractions to its plans to develop the park as an overnight destination.
Valgard: Realm of the Vikings
On 16 May 2026, Paultons Park opened Valgard: Realm of the Vikings, its largest themed world to date.
Representing a £12 million first-phase investment, the land is designed to broaden Paultons’ appeal to older children and teenagers while retaining the park’s multi-generational focus.
“Valgard is designed to keep speaking to that multi-generational side of the park, and to captivate older children, teens, the whole family. It's very immersive; there's lots of storytelling in the area. We really wanted it to expand our demographic.
“Children are getting braver and braver, so we wanted to make sure that when you hit 7, 8, 9 years old, you weren't growing out of Paultons.
"It is still very much a family area; we’ve got the Vild Swing in there, and that's for children aged 95 centimetres tall and up, but there is a step up in terms of our thrill factor to appeal to that slightly older child.”
The layout of Valgard was masterplanned in partnership with experience design company Leisure Expert Group, which has collaborated with Paultons for nearly ten years.
The land is anchored by Gerstlauer Eurofighter Drakon, the park’s first-ever roller coaster with inversions, featuring a steep vertical lift hill and two twists that take riders upside down.
The theme is carried through custom timber architecture, stone-look hand-sculpted statues and more than 15 animatronics, developed with Themics Philippines Inc.
Details include Valbaa, an animated sheep running inside a giant wheel on Drakon’s lift hill, appearing to power the coaster’s ascent. This is complemented by Raven, a bobsled roller coaster re-themed from the former Cobra coaster. Raven features animated ravens, including Skald, an interactive raven that talks directly to guests.
Vild Swing at Paultons Park is the UK's first Wild Swing from ART Engineering
Image courtesy of Paultons Park
Valgard also features Vild Swing, the UK's first Wild Swing by ART Engineering, which swings guests 12 metres into the air and features themed trolls in its queue. For younger children, there is a Viking-themed playground by Bristol-based Touchwood Play.
A balanced approach
Valgard's design also reflects Paultons’ focus on creating a mix of attractions, food, and other activities within a single themed environment.
Valgard: Realm of the Vikings opened at Paultons Park in May 2026
Image courtesy of Paultons Park
This holistic environment includes the Feasting Hall, a highly themed Scandinavian restaurant. Mancey sees the Feasting Hall as an important part of the experience:
“The Feasting Hall has been a great success. It's beautiful in there, and we're so proud of that. It's definitely one of my favourite parts of Valgard, because the immersive experience doesn't stop when you enter a restaurant.
“The food choices had to be carefully picked because we've got to make sure it’s a good balance between themed Viking dining and food that people will actually want to eat and purchase and enjoy, and it's got to be quick to serve. It's a very modern kitchen, but still a very highly themed dining experience.”
An emphasis on theming
The depth of theming in Valgard builds on a design philosophy that has become increasingly central to Paultons over the past decade, following the opening of Tornado Springs, a Midwestern-themed land inspired by a 1950s American town, in 2021.
This has meant placing greater emphasis on storytelling and environmental design alongside the ride hardware:
“It definitely got more and more important,” Mancey says.
“Tornado Springs really set that benchmark for what we can do in terms of the detail, the storytelling, making sure that guests really felt immersed in that world... and families are looking for that now. They want immersive experiences.
“I'd rather invest equally across storytelling, theming, and ride hardware than spend the whole budget on ride hardware because it really enhances that experience tenfold.”
The Midwestern-themed Tornado Springs land opened at Paultons Park in 2021
Image courtesy of Paultons Park
In designing these spaces, he adds that the team is inspired by European destinations such as Efteling, Phantasialand, Europa-Park, and Parc Astérix, as well as Disney and Universal.
"They're so successful with their themed areas, and we try to give people that immersive experience. It's escapism, at the end of the day, when you feel like you don't have to worry about anything outside of that microcosm you're in.”
Ghostly Manor, an interactive family dark ride that launched in May 2025, provides another example of this approach, using existing space to introduce a new interactive attraction.
Built within the park's former 4D cinema, the attraction uses the innovative Gameplay Theatre concept developed by Mack Rides and Lagotronics Projects.
Guests use hand-held Phantom Phasers to capture virtual ghosts rendered in real time, triggering physical special effects and interacting with projection-mapped media.
Ghostly Manor won the Immersive Attraction category at the 2025 blooloop Innovation Awards and was an IAAPA Brass Ring Award finalist.
A family-run business
Paultons Park is an independent, family-owned business, which Mancey says gives it greater agility in making decisions.
“The decisions are driven by us, by the family. We're always pushing our core values and delivering that high-quality experience is what we're all about.”
Mancey says this approach extends beyond individual attractions to operational details including staff training, landscaping and the modelling of guest flows and circulation. Rather than viewing the park as a collection of individual attractions, Paultons focuses on the guest journey as a whole.
He emphasises that ride choices are designed to keep the entire family in the same area:
“It's all about having rides that the whole family can enjoy all in the same area together. People are here to enjoy the experience together as a family, so, no matter where you are in the park, there should be something for everyone to enjoy.”
The Orchard play area is part of the new Valgard land at Paultons Park
Image courtesy of Paultons Park
Paultons also takes a deliberately simple approach to pricing. The park does not offer fast passes or skip-the-line upsells that create a multi-tiered guest experience:
“The ticket price on the website is all you have to pay to get into Paultons and have a good day. There's no fast passes; we don't sell any of those queue jump offerings because we feel like when you visit the park, everyone should be having the same experience.”
Paultons says this approach is reflected in its guest feedback. It recently revealed that 71% of its more than 12,000 TripAdvisor reviews are rated five stars. With over 12,000 total reviews, the park was crowned Theme Park of the Year and has won Best Customer Service three years running.
Paultons Park is also home to Peppa Pig World, with rides, attractions, and character meet-and-greets
Image courtesy of Paultons Park
Mancey attributes this success to a disciplined balance between growth and maintaining existing facilities:
“One of our core values is to deliver a quality experience. And we always say that growth should never come at the expense of queue times, cleanliness, staff friendliness, or landscaping.
“You need to make sure that you're still delivering a high-quality experience on everything you do, and that's about going back to other areas of the park as well, and reinvesting.”
Mancey also welcomes new competition in the UK, including the planned Universal resort and Puy du Fou project.
“Keep giving me more competition because it pushes the whole industry on! They are high-quality destinations, and I welcome their arrival into the UK because I think it's going to help all of us increase our quality and help all of the guests in the UK who like to visit theme parks have better experiences.”
The next chapter for Paultons Park
Paultons Park is hoping to transition from a single-day visitor attraction into a multi-day overnight resort.
Currently, the park operates partnerships with local hotel providers to offer short-break packages. However, the proposed on-site accommodation would give Paultons greater control over the short-break experience and provide another way to attract visitors from further afield.
“Having on-site accommodation provides that convenience to families to visit us and stay on site and maybe stay one or two nights here on a short break and experience the whole park in a relaxed setting.”
The proposed holiday village is designed to cover a four-hectare site situated on the edge of the New Forest.
Masterplanned by the landscape architecture and urban design practice Gillespies, the resort will feature woodland lodges, custom treehouses, and underground "hobbit houses" designed to accommodate up to 600 guests.
With animals, gardens as well as attractions, Paultons Park offers plenty of activities for a multi-day visit
Image courtesy of Paultons Park
Rather than a conventional hotel, the accommodation would be arranged around a village-style street, with a central hub for family dining, retail, play areas and evening entertainment.
The site plan incorporates open meadows, woodland glades, native planting to boost biodiversity, and a central lake.
Paultons submitted plans for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) screening and pre-application reviews to the New Forest National Park Authority in 2025, ensuring that architectural and material choices are sustainable.
Mancey explains that the design reflects its location: “It's been designed with our surroundings in mind, but it's also got a Scandinavian feel.
"We wanted to make sure it was very sympathetic to the New Forest because nature is at the heart of Paultons; we want to make sure what we're doing is not in any way detrimental to the environment."
The development is planned in phases, and Paultons intends to submit a formal planning application this year.
Looking long-term
Alongside the accommodation plans, Paultons is preparing for another significant addition to the park.
Opening in 2027, Serpent's Curse will represent the UK’s first-ever water coaster from Mack Rides, positioned adjacent to the Feasting Hall restaurant patio in Valgard.
Developed as a large-scale, unique ride system, the attraction is designed to offer a water experience that will play a major role during increasingly hot summer seasons.
Additionally, the park's long-term master plan includes built-in room for further expansion, ensuring the land continues to grow with its audience.
The broader aim is to change how Paultons is perceived beyond its existing regional audience.
“What excites me is breaking those preconceptions of the park, from Peppa Pig World and a few rides to Peppa Pig World and Paultons Park, which is an amazing destination and a multi-day visit, pushing us out there as more of a major national player in people's eyes.
“We're very well known in our local area, but we need to try and stretch that brand fame into the rest of the country.”
