Back in the dog days of summer I asked Simon Usborne, one of the best features journalists in the country, to write the definitive inside story of Winter Wonderland — the sprawling event that takes over Hyde Park at this time of year. After a few months’ reporting, and as Christmas gets closer, we’re ready to bring you the tale of how it became London’s most divisive festive event.
Simon’s work normally appears in national newspapers — but this piece is exclusively for readers of London Centric. He has found a commercial juggernaut that the capital’s celebrities beg to be a part of. But behind it lie an allegation of employee drug-taking, a leaked staff handbook that instructs on how to “keep the magic alive” and a link to the tragic death of a young girl.
By Simon Usborne
Dig hard enough online and you’ll find a map of the Winter Wonderland site in its second year. It dates from 2008, a pre-smartphone era, when people might have needed help navigating the funfair in Hyde Park, now a mainstay of London’s festive calendar. Arranged along the traffic-free road between Hyde Park Corner and the Serpentine, Winter Wonderland featured a small ferris wheel, some bungee trampolines, a simulator based on the film Bee Movie, an ice rink, and a little Bavarian Village where a pint of imported beer cost £4.
Viewed today, the map of the 2008 event, featuring two dozen attractions, looks like an antique. The current-day Winter Wonderland, which opened its high-security gates on Friday, features more than 100 attractions, including a 70-metre ferris wheel and a flatpack rollercoaster that is transported in 50 articulated lorries. The hangar-like hall at the heart of the Bavarian Village can now seat up to 1,500 people drinking £7.95 pints of Gold — plus a £5 deposit for the stein.
Hyde Park Winter Wonderland in 2024.
In less than two decades, Winter Wonderland has spread north towards Marble Arch, becoming six times bigger than its original incarnation. It’s now large enough to cover Trafalgar Square 20 times. It employs more than 5,000 staff and attracts 3.5 million visitors each year. Seen from the Heathrow flightpath over central London, it burns like a supernova in the otherwise dark space of Hyde Park.
The event has also become a cultural landmark, where celebrities move among the crowds – the biggest and best of the pop-up Christmas festivals that spring up across the UK from November to January. There are plenty of Londoners who would sooner clear landmines than set foot in the place, but millions more love it, drawn to the rides, instagrammable bright lights and the chance to impress dates by winning cuddly toys at the funfair.
Yet behind the festive facade, there is a darkness. An investigation by London Centric has revealed that some of Winter Wonderland’s most popular rides are run by a couple who went to prison for manslaughter after a bouncy castle they were operating flew away in a storm, killing a young girl.
Former employees also allege that, after the couple’s release from jail, they employed a man who regularly took cocaine and harassed women while in control of one of Winter Wonderland’s rides.
This and other revelations sit at odds with Winter Wonderland’s Disneyland-esque staff handbook, a copy of which London Centric has obtained. It describes the way employees at the event, which has just been bought by an American company fronted by a billionaire Hollywood entertainment mogul, are trained to keep “the magic of Winter Wonderland alive”.
“Don’t you own half of London?”
The magic wasn’t immediately in evidence at Friday lunchtime, when London Centric was among the first visitors to Winter Wonderland during its soggy opening weekend. A film of leaf-flecked water covered the O2-sponsored ice rink. A single pair of wet legs flailed beneath Airborne, a towering pendulum swing. Tourists peered out of their ponchos, marvelling at the scale of it all.
At a Christmas market, Sparkl, a Welsh tooth-whitening brand, boasted about being the first cosmetics company to bag a stall at Winter Wonderland. There had presumably been low demand for whiter teeth on Thursday night, when the event hosted its annual VIP charity preview. Guests included Holly Willoughby, Professor Green, and Myleene Klass — along with Cruz Beckham and a number of cast members from The Only Way Is Essex.
Actor Jason Statham attending a previous Winter Wonderland VIP event.
Celebrities beg to get into the VIP preview night on the eve of the public opening. A person familiar with the event recalls an email that arrived not long ago from the family office of a London property tycoon. “You could feel in the typing the jitteriness of the poor assistant. We’re thinking, ‘don’t you own half of London?’ But it doesn’t matter how important or well-connected you are as a parent, you bend over backwards to get to Winter Wonderland.”
Visitors have ranged from the Princess of Wales and David Cameron, to Skepta, Stormzy and dozens of Love Islanders. Rihanna slipped in incognito in 2019 and ate a hot dog, while last year’s star guests included Janet Jackson. “Harper Beckham has to go every year, and that’s just how it is,” my source adds.
Above all, Winter Wonderland has become a commercial juggernaut. It brings in revenues of £60m a year from ticket sales, pitch fees and partnerships. Winter Wonderland has global appeal; earlier this month its parent company was acquired by Mari, a new company founded by veteran Hollywood powerbroker Ari Emanuel who has also snapped up the Frieze art fairs, the Taste food festivals and Secret Cinema.
How did a modest collection of old-school funfair rides grow to become so huge in the space of two decades? And is it all festive cheer and jangling tills for the small businesses and workers who keep the place running in all weathers? It’s late in my reporting that word reaches me of alleged drugtaking by one ride operator, as well loss-making food stalls, and a link between one of the ride owners and a child who died in a bouncy castle accident.
