Landmark Forest Adventure Park at Carrbridge to close for two days due to government's fairground ride ban
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One of the Highland's leading attractions has had to close for two days to make changes to its lay-out because of a blanket ban on 'fairground rides'.
Landmark Forest Adventure Park in Carrbridge will reopen on Thursday.
Its owners said it was hugely disappointed by the Scottish Government's move having been given the safety all-clear last week to keep on running everything.
The operators have now had to close the Wild Water Coaster and the runaway timber train rollercoaster putting pressure on other parts of the park.
Fears that visitors will find it much tougher to keep to social distancing guidelines means that the owners are having to rethink lay-out in busier areas.
The statement reads: "It is with huge disappointment that we need to announce that the park will now be closed on the 4th and 5th of August.
"This is due to the recent decision that the Scottish Government has made to close all 'fairground rides' in Scotland. This means that, for the time being, the Wild Water Coaster and the rollercoaster at Landmark will remain closed.
"This is despite us being given clearance to continue operating just last Tuesday. We received official notice of this closure from Highland Council who were responding to a Scottish Government statement released on the 31st of July.
"The closure notification was formally communicated to us this afternoon. We have had no other official advance notice.
"This is particularly disappointing given the fact we have been operating under strict Covid-19 safety measures for these attractions since July 15th.
"We are hugely grateful to our staff who worked above and beyond on preparing all of the Covid-19 mitigation we had in place on these attractions. We sincerely believe that we have managed the risk to acceptable levels of safety for staff and visitors.
"Given that the rollercoaster and watercoaster have a large ability to ‘process’ visitors and we have now lost some of that capacity, this has presented us with a serious problem with visitor management in the park.
"As we have large numbers pre-booked, and we have not yet put in place similar capacity attractions we would have crowding problems in certain areas which is unacceptable.
"We have no option therefore, other than to close the whole park for the next two days while we deal with this issue. We hope that everyone will understand that this is entirely due to circumstances outwith our control."
The park added: "This period will enable us to accelerate the reopening of five high-level and low-level rope challenge attractions which need specialised mitigation measures in place to enable them to operate. These will allow us to welcome visitors in the prebooked numbers we have in place from Thursday onward."
Re-opening on Thursday will be the RopeworX high challenge course; the Tarzan Trail challenge course; the Wee Monkey challenge trail; the Pinnacle Climbing Wall and Skydive parachute jump simulator.
Refunds are being offered to anyone booked for a visit who no longer wants to go because of the changes forced on the park. The two rollercoaster and Wild Water Coaster will be out of operation until the Scottish Government gives the go-ahead for fairground rides to return.
Visitors can find out more information about the closure and what to do if they have a booking here.
