park

Disneyland Paris may be France’s most famous theme park but there’s an underrated, lesser-known gem that I discovered with my son which I’ve been telling everyone to visit immediately

Theme parks are not my thing. Like many first-time parents, when my first son was born, I was wildly optimistic about the prospect of travelling with him.

I imagined my sweet boy hanging off my hip as we wandered around restaurants and museums on city breaks, enjoying all the things I enjoy.

The reality, of course, is that children like children’s things. And if you’re lucky, they’ll tolerate your interests for half an hour at most. Which is why, for years, the idea of a theme park holiday filled me with dread.

So, when I found myself taking my 11-year-old to Futuroscope in France, I approached it with an endurance test mindset. What I didn’t expect was that by the end of the trip, I’d be recommending it to other families.

Getting there

The journey, in both senses, was easier than I expected. Just months away from starting secondary school, my son has reached that fleeting sweet spot between childhood and adolescence where he still wants to spend a weekend away with his mum.

Our route from Manchester involved an Avanti train, a night near St Pancras station, an early morning Eurostar, the Paris Metro and a high-speed train to Futuroscope station near Poitiers. On paper it sounded like a lot.

In reality, it became very much part of the adventure and my son was enjoying all the responsibility – checking maps and practising his French on DuoLingo.

As a mum of three, I realised how rarely we get this kind of uninterrupted time together. Even before we’d reached the park, the journey itself had already brought us closer.

Staying at the Ecolodgee

A short walk from Futuroscope station and we were there. In fact, the journey via Eurostar was so seamless that my son repeatedly asked whether we’d actually left England yet.

We stayed at the Ecolodgee near the park entrance for really easy access. It’s made up of nature-inspired cabins overlooking a beautiful lake with very lively families of frogs to provide endless wonderment for curious kids such as mine. My son along with some neighbouring kids named themselves ‘the frog hunters’ for the duration of our stay, which says it all really. Nature is the best playground.

The cabins themselves are thoughtfully designed with cabin beds for kids cleverly separated from the master bedroom area yet in the same space. According to my son, the hand-delivered breakfast basket that arrived on our cabin doorstep each morning filled with French delights was the best meal of the entire trip.

I couldn’t agree more. Sitting on the terrace together, listening to frogs and looking out across the lake with no screens, was just perfect.

The rides and attractions

As someone who once rode Blackpool’s Pepsi Max Big One six times in a row without hesitation, I’ve reluctantly had to accept that age has made me considerably less fearless.

Two fun-packed days with my son however, meant stepping out of my comfort zone and straight into the arms of a nine-metre-high robot. Dances with Robots is a ride that throws you around to music at a fear factor of your choosing. Speaking on behalf of both of us, that fear factor was apparently “expert level” according to my son.

I emerged feeling slightly shaken and wondering how I was going to survive an entire weekend of being flung upside down. Thankfully, I quickly realised that Futuroscope isn’t really a theme park in the traditional sense.

Yes, there are plenty of thrilling rides; my son called Objectif Mars (Destination Mars) “the best ride ever” before immediately asking to go on it again. But much of what makes Futuroscope special isn’t physical at all. It’s immersive, imaginative and distinctly French in a way that truly sets it apart from most theme parks.

If needed, English language translation is available through the ListenWIFI app for many of the story-led attractions, but I found myself happily dusting off my GCSE French for the most part and embracing the fact that this is a park built with French families in mind.

Chasseurs de Tornades (Tornado Chasers) was a favourite. We were plunged into the heart of a tornado on a revolving platform, combining blockbuster storytelling with a thrill factor that doesn’t make you question your life choices. My kind of ride.

I also loved La Clé des Songes (The Key to Dreams), a spectacle of water screens, projections, lights and pyrotechnics in the most grand and beautiful setting, that really was like stepping into a dream.

What I appreciated most though was the overall balance.

One minute my son was absolutely wired on the water rapids ride Mission Bermudes, the next he was peacefully gliding around the world with me on The Extraordinary Journey.

Each attraction activated different parts of his imagination. And, more importantly, gave me just enough recovery time.

The food

Futuroscope offers a huge variety of food options ranging from French dining and buffets to gelato and street food – without a nugget in sight.

La Table d’Arthur is great for most tastes with its generous self-service buffet, while L’Atelier des Saveurs offers a more traditional French dining experience.

The most enticing option for children, however, is Space Loop Restaurant, a futuristic dining experience where your meal travels from the kitchen to your table via a rollercoaster suspended above your head. The star attraction is the famous blue burger, which is as blue as a bottle of WKD and, unsurprisingly, is a child’s dream, as is much of the food at Futuroscope.

For us, though, enjoying it all required extra planning.

My son has multiple food allergies, including sesame, nuts and fish, so eating anywhere new can be very stressful. Throw in a language barrier, an overwhelming buffet and you have a familiar challenge for many allergy families.

Thankfully, Space Loop had a delicious pasta option and fries, which kept my son very happy and full. Meanwhile, when I felt stressed by the choices at La Table d’Arthur, staff were able to give a detailed allergen information sheet which was reassuring.

Travelling with food allergies will always need extra vigilance, but once I knew how to ask, our meals became easy and enjoyable.

My overall verdict on Futuroscope

What I loved about Futuroscope overall was that rather than stepping into a global brand, I felt like I’d genuinely travelled somewhere both unique and affordable. The food, language, attractions and even the families around us reminded me that we were in France at every turn. And for me, that’s its biggest selling point.

It also gave me something I hadn’t expected from a theme park holiday.

As my son edges closer to his teen years, uninterrupted one-on-one time can be surprisingly hard to find.

Whether eating food delivered on a rollercoaster or exploring virtual worlds, the trip gave us space to try new things and just be together and that’s what I’ll look back most fondly on.

Of course, he’ll treasure the rides the most. And strangely, we’ll probably both remember the frogs.

Book the holiday

• Stay three days and two nights at Futuroscope from €896 (£774) for a family of four staying at Hotel Ecolodgee, with Futuroscope tickets as well Aquascope tickets. Find out more and book at futuroscope.com.

A theme park less than two hours away from the UK is adding a brand-new land with two rides and five Japanese-inspired eateries.

Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen will open the area in a few weeks’ time with “thrilling adventures for the whole family.”

The theme park, which opened in the 1840s and even inspired the creation of Disneyland, currently has 30 rides and will be adding a few more.

Called Hikari, the upcoming Japan-themed area is the biggest development in the park’s history and said to cost a ‘three-digit million amount’.

It has been under construction for two years and has actually been made up of elements from Japan.

It has reclaimed doors, windows, artwork and around 60 tonnes of traditional Japanese roof tiles.

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It will span across more than 2,000 square metres – the park itself is 80,000 square metres in total.

There are two new attractions, the first is Hotel Hikari where ‘nothing is quite as it seems’.

It’s essentially an immersive family funhouse with illusions, a vortex tunnel, tilted rooms and infinity mirrors.

Another new attraction is called Typhoons Eye which gives riders the feeling of weightlessness. According to Tivoli, it’s the only attraction of its kind in Scandinavia.

The zero gravity attraction is a rotating drum ride that suspends riders against the wall as the floor drops away.

The final ride in Hikari is actually one that will be familiar to previous visitors.

Called The Demon, the rollercoaster has stood in Tivoli for years but has undergone a transformation to blend into its new home.

There aren’t just rides either, there are five new eateries in Hikari.

Yaki-Tak! will serve up Japanese street food from yakitori skewers to yakisoba noodles.

Katsu Kitchen is where visitors can pick up chicken sandwiches to popcorn-style karaage to crispy prawns.

Comé Rice Kitchen will have onigiri, otherwise known as Japanese rice balls, served with the likes of spicy tuna, Teriyaki chicken and shiitake mushroom.

For sweet treats there’s Oishii Bubbles for creative drinks from fruit teas to slushies, or Kawaii Bites will have fish-shaped waffles and mochi ice cream.

Two new shops will open too; one selling Japanese-style ceramics and gifts, another will have a mix of snacks, drinks as it’s inspired by konbini, Japanese convenience shops.

The project has taken two years to build and will open later this month – no official date has been announced yet.

For anyone who wants to visit, Copenhagen is easy to get to as it’s under two hours away from the UK.

Bunia, Democratic Republic of the Congo – As Ebola cases continue to emerge in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Virunga National Park – Africa’s oldest – is strengthening health measures to protect communities and the endangered mountain gorillas living in it.

The measures are part of the park’s emergency response after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola outbreak in the DRC and neighbouring Uganda a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in May.

“It is a terrible disease and one that poses a threat first and foremost to human populations. Protected areas such as Virunga National Park are vast natural spaces where there are no human populations. They act as barriers to the spread of the disease,” Emmanuel de Merode, director-general of Virunga National Park, told Al Jazeera.

Virunga previously supported efforts to contain the DRC’s 10th Ebola outbreak between 2018 and 2020, which killed nearly 2,300 people in North Kivu and Ituri provinces. De Merode believes the park can again contribute to slowing transmission during the country’s 17th outbreak, which has killed more than 1,400 people, according to Congolese health authorities.

Rangers and health workers join the response

The park has established six health checkpoints within and around its territory, a 300km (186-mile) stretch of protected forest that park officials describe as a natural barrier across North Kivu. It has also deployed 40 paramedics alongside 80 rangers as part of an initial six-month emergency response.

De Merode told Al Jazeera the checkpoints on roads crossing the park allow authorities to monitor movement through the protected area.

“We are setting up checkpoints, which act as roadblocks, together with health units for handwashing and temperature screening, and a first-level isolation centre next to each checkpoint,” he said.

In Ituri province, the epicentre of the outbreak, checkpoints north and south of Bunia, the provincial capital, are screening travellers arriving from areas affected by Ebola.

“We have supported the health service with protective equipment, body bags, thermometers and vehicles because, when the disease first broke out, the health services faced real difficulties, particularly in North Kivu,” de Merode said.

Virunga, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site since 1980, is located in a region that has experienced more than two decades of armed conflict. More than 800 rangers protect the park, which is home to a number of the world’s most threatened species.

A wider role in the Ebola response

De Merode said experience from previous outbreaks has strengthened cooperation between Virunga and Congolese health authorities, particularly in surveillance and early detection.

Reflecting on the 2018-2020 Ebola response, he said members of the outbreak response committee considered Virunga an important factor in limiting the spread of the virus.

“The response committee at the time noted that the fact the disease never widely spread to Goma or to other parts of the country was also due to Virunga National Park, which was considered a major factor in preventing the disease from spreading southwards or eastwards,” he said.

De Merode stressed that Virunga remains only one part of a wider response led by Congolese health authorities and supported by technical and financial partners.

“All the information collected at our checkpoints is immediately transmitted to the Congolese National Institute of Public Health for follow-up,” he said.

In Ituri province, three checkpoints managed by the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation within Virunga are screening travellers arriving from areas most exposed to Ebola.

Park officials say two suspected cases have been identified at the checkpoints and referred to public health authorities for monitoring.

“If, unfortunately, cases do arise beyond the checkpoint, we are able to trace them and all the contacts who were travelling with them, and this enables us to monitor any potential cases that may be on the move,” de Merode said.

The threat to the world’s remaining mountain gorillas

Mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) are among Virunga National Park’s most iconic species. Classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), their population is estimated at just above 1,000 across the Greater Virunga Landscape, which spans the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda.

The DRC is home to a significant share of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas, with Virunga protecting one of the last populations of these great apes.

Eddy Syaluha, a veterinarian with Gorilla Doctors, a conservation organisation working to protect the health of great apes in the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda, told Al Jazeera that the close biological relationship between humans and mountain gorillas makes them vulnerable to diseases carried by people.

“Mountain gorillas share more than 90 percent of their DNA with humans, which means they are susceptible to many of the same infectious diseases, including Ebola and respiratory illnesses,” he said.

Syaluha said the risks underline the importance of a One Health approach, which recognises that human, animal and environmental health are interconnected.

Keeping Ebola away from the forest

Despite repeated Ebola outbreaks in the region over the past five decades, Syaluha said no mountain gorilla has ever been infected with the virus in Virunga National Park or elsewhere in the DRC.

He said conservation teams continue to monitor gorilla health and screen visitors to reduce the risk of human-to-animal transmission. Previous Ebola outbreaks have shown the devastating impact the virus can have on great apes, with some studies documenting mortality rates above 90 percent among western lowland gorilla populations in Central Africa.

Syaluha said the close relationship between humans and great apes makes prevention and surveillance essential to keeping Ebola away from Virunga’s gorillas.

“We are doing everything we can to ensure that what happened in other countries does not happen to our gorillas here,” he said.

“We are focusing primarily on preventive measures centred on humans to prevent transmission to our gorillas. We regularly monitor the health of our gorillas to remain on high alert.”

One of the most read — and debated — stories from the Arts team this week was an interview with Oskar Eustis a day after he announced that he would step down as the artistic director of the Public Theater in 2028. The New York Times broke the news July 22 in an interview with Eustis in which he also said that the American nonprofit theater movement was over.

I followed up in a phone interview the next day and asked him to explain what he meant, which he did, noting that the broad consensus that nonprofit theater mattered to the country — a belief held by national endowments, state arts agencies, public policy institutes and corporate philanthropic departments — had disappeared. So, too, have many of those very same agencies and their budgets that provided funding to the arts. The case for sustaining any particular theater now comes down to that theater and how relevant and necessary it can make itself to its surrounding community, Eustis said.

There is never enough room in an article when you’ve had a good conversation with someone, so I thought I’d use the newsletter to publish a bit more of what Eustis shared with me. I was particularly interested in something he said about the Public’s famed Shakespeare in the Park program, which is free and takes place every summer at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Since its inception, more than 160 productions have been staged, reaching more than 6 million people.

The free tickets the Public gives away for these shows are “the prime driver of our income at the Public, and this has been true since our founding,” Eustis told me.

That may sound counterintuitive, but it goes directly to the case Eustis is making for modern nonprofit theaters to be as relevant as possible to their communities. Ticket sales will never bring in the kind of money theaters need to sustain a robust slate of diverse programming — that will always have to come from donors. These very same donors, Eustis said, are the ones who feel most excited to be sitting among the citizenry in Central Park, watching the beauty of public art unfold in a joyous communal atmosphere.

“It’s not just when they make a donation that they get to see the show,” said Eustis of uber-wealthy donors. “They absolutely viscerally feel that — sitting in that theater when 75% of the audience hasn’t paid a penny to be there — they are getting to be part of their dream city. They’re feeling, ‘Oh, this is what New York is supposed to feel like.’”

By giving away free Shakespeare in the Park tickets, Eustis said, the Public is “making an unbelievably powerful case for why we need subsidy … and that’s why the money comes, because we are [showing] that democratic access is more fun for a better city.”

I like the idea of free theater being more fun, and rich people paying for the privilege of being a part of that fun when it is so removed from their cordoned-off daily lives. But I do worry that so much of what we now rely on culturally comes down to the whims and fancies of a handful of ultra-rich patrons. Newspapers are run by them, public school art and music programs rely on them, as do museums, symphonies, ballets and operas.

As Eustis pointed out, these donors no longer represent a broad consensus that is channeled into a civic vision via government support, but that is precisely why the situation feels so precarious. We might be one serious AI-driven stock market crash from artistic oblivion.

I’m Arts editor Jessica Gelt staring gloomily into the distance. This is your arts and culture news for the week.

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

“Ulises Carrión, a bookwork in many places” exhibition at Joan Los Angeles.

(Evan Walsh)

Ulises Carrión, a bookwork in many places
The exhibition, in its final two weeks, examines the Mexican-born conceptual artist’s influence on reimagined systems of exchange through printed matter by artists, librarians, publishers and alternative spaces. The show focuses on Southern California in particular, spanning the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, featuring artist books, correspondence, video and ephemera.
11 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. Through Aug. 9. Joan, 1206 Maple Ave., Suite 715, Fashion District, downtown L.A. joanlosangeles.org

Puppet Up!
Brian Henson’s adventurous stage show featuring improv and sketch comedy with the iconic Henson puppets and puppeteers is back for a limited eight-performance run. Also on tap is “A Conversation With Brian Henson,” a live presentation by the Emmy-winning producer, director and puppeteer about the rich history of the Jim Henson Company, 2 p.m. Sunday at the Montalbán.
8 p.m. Friday; 3 and 7 p.m. Saturday; 5 p.m. Sunday; 8 p.m. Aug. 7; 3 and 7 p.m. Aug. 8; and 5 p.m. Aug. 9. Ricardo Montalbán Theatre, 1615 Vine St. puppetup.com

Tchaikovsky Spectacular with Fireworks
L.A.-based circus company Troupe Vertigo and the USC Trojan Marching Band join the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by France’s Chloe Dufresne, for the 1812 overture — with pyrotechnics.
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

SATURDAY

A scene from “Acquaprofonda” at the Aquarium of the Pacific.”

(Andres Leon for Long Beach Opera)

Acquaprofonda: A Deep-Sea Opera for Families
Long Beach Opera Education collaborates with the Aquarium of the Pacific for this free, family-friendly, 30-minute adventure about a young girl who finds an ailing whale and stands up for what’s right. Music by Giovanni Sollima, libretto by Giancarlo De Cataldo and English libretto by Elle Moody.
Noon and 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, through Aug. 9. Aquarium of the Pacific, Honda Pacific Visions Theater, 100 Aquarium Way, Long Beach. longbeachopera.org

Boleros De Noche
The 10th annual celebration of romance, nostalgia and cultural pride features Puerto Rican singer iLe and a special performance by the L.A.-based trio Voz Bohemia.
8 p.m. Ford Amphitheatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East. theford.com

Free 4 All
Claremont Lewis Museum of Art opens its doors for this annual one-day takeover by local artists who will display their work with no fees to exhibit and no gatekeepers to choose whose work gets seen. With live music by the Kamran Curlin Trio, Home Again Home Again and Coupe Deville.
1-8 p.m. Claremont Lewis Museum of Art, 200 W. First St., Claremont. clmoa.org

People of Pompeii
A new comedy by Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award-winning playwright Bernardo Cubría, co-directed by Ellen Geer and Xochitl Romero, is set in Topanga Canyon itself and focuses on community in a time of climate catastrophe.
Through Oct. 4. Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga. theatricum.com

Two Gentlebots of Verona
The annual Actors’ Gang Free Shakespeare in the Park for Families features a cyber-inspired Shakespeare adaptation by Rynn Vogel, directed by Adam J. Jefferis.
11 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays, through Aug. 23. Media Park, 9091 Culver Blvd., Culver City; noon, Aug. 29-30. Buena Vista Branch Library, 300 N. Buena Vista St., Burbank. theactorsgang.com

SUNDAY

Sidney Jacobs & the Monsters
The jazz vocalist and his sextet perform original music with reimagined standards.
8 p.m. Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd. sierramadreplayhouse.org

St. Vincent with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra
The six-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter guitarist goes orchestral with the HBO led by conductor Jules Buckley.
7 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

TUESDAY

Louis Langrée
The French conductor leads the L.A. Phil in works from Felix Mendelssohn and Joseph Haydn on Tuesday at the Hollywood Bowl; two nights later, Langrée returns with pieces by Johannes Brahms, Georges Bizet and Louise Farrenc.
Mendelssohn & Haydn, 8 p.m. Tuesday; Brahms & Bizet, 8 p.m. Thursday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

“Saint Luke” from Irmengard Codex shortly after 1053. German. Tempera colors, gold, and ink on parchment 22.2 × 18.7 cm (8 3/4 × 7 3/8 in.)

(Getty Museum)

The Making of a Medieval Manuscript
If you ever wondered how the beautiful manuscripts in the Getty’s extensive collection were created, this is the exhibition for you. Tools and materials used illustrate each phase of the process from parchment making, writing and illuminating through the final binding. Christian manuscripts from Europe, Armenia and Ethiopia, plus objects of Jewish and Muslim origin, will also be on display, along with a video component.
Through May 2, 2027. Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, L.A. getty.edu

WEDNESDAY

Kalean Ung as the Chanteuse in “The Comedy of Errors.”

(Mike Ditz)

The Comedy of Errors
Melissa Chalsma directs Indie Shakes’ production of the Bard’s wordplay and slapstick set in a Mediterranean port town, with an original score.
7 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday; through Sept. 6. Old Zoo Picnic Area, Griffith Park. indieshakes.org/free-shakespeare-2026

THURSDAY

Annie and the Caldwells/The Campbell Brothers
The Skirball concludes its 29th season of Sunset Concerts with this family-fueled pairing of disco soul and sacred steel gospel groups, respectively, plus DJ sets by Sonrisita.
7 p.m. Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd. skirball.org

JazzPOP 2026
The summer series marks its 19th season with three concerts showcasing West Coast creative jazz: Kasey Knudsen Sextet (Thursday); Malachi Whitson Quartet (Aug. 13); and Machado Mijiga Trio (Aug. 20).
8 p.m. Thursdays, through Aug. 20. UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. hammer.ucla.edu

— Kevin Crust

Retrospective

L.A. Times arts coverage from the the past …

Playwright/director Moises Kaufman of “The Laramie Project” was on the cover of Sunday Calendar, July 29, 2001.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

At the Heart of a Modern Tragedy

Sunday Calendar, July 29, 2001

NEW YORK — Moises Kaufman could not turn off the television. He could not put down the newspaper. Like much of America, he was mesmerized by the news of the horrific beating, robbery and eventual death in 1998 of Matthew Shepard, a gay university student attacked and left for dead by two young men near Laramie, Wyo.

“For the five days until he died, you couldn’t turn on a television or a radio and not hear about it,” says the 37-year-old playwright and director. “Matthew Shepard put a face on hate crimes. He was young, beautiful, starting his life. The nation as a whole said, ‘Oh, my God. What’s going on?’ ”

It was exactly the sort of question that Kaufman and his colleagues at the Tectonic Theater Project here try to ask, if not answer, onstage. So unlike much of America, Kaufman did not simply move on to the next news tragedy. The man who created the widely produced “Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde” had found his next theater project. READ MORE

— Barbara Isenberg

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Artist Betye Saar visits her pet tortoise named Ms. Rojo on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in Los Angeles.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Pioneering Los Angeles assemblage artist Betye Saar died Sunday, just a few days shy of her 100th birthday. The Times had the privilege of profiling her a few weeks earlier in a story that also included some wonderful photos of Saar still hard at work in her Laurel Canyon home studio. After Saar’s death, we published an obituary written by former Times columnist Carolina Miranda, and I put together a list of five of Saar’s most compelling works.

Watts Towers is poised to break ground in October on a $22-million campus renovation — the first such work done to the arts campus since it opened in 1970. The work is set to begin as funding for a 15-year project to preserve the towers themselves has dried up, with work about 90% complete. Community leaders say the situation represents the frustrating piecemeal approach taken over the years to preserve one of the city’s most important cultural landmarks. Times contributor Jane Horowitz has the scoop.

Evan Lugo (George Page), Sonya Cooke (Margaret Page), Zane Caputo (Abraham Slender), Zach Trent (Skateboard Fenton) and Heriberto Cruz Jr. (Doctor Cayo) in “The Merry Wives of Windsor Cove.”

(Elijah Waller)

“The Merry Wives of Windsor’” got a ’50s-themed SoCal beach blanket bingo musical makeover at UC Irvine’s New Swan Shakespeare Festival, and Times theater critic Charles McNulty was there to weigh in on the result. “The pastiche score, indebted to the pop charts of the 1950s, isn’t allowed to dominate,” McNulty writes. “As modern musicals go, this is a low-key affair. The comedy is still the thing in this frolicsome outdoor production, which takes place in the charming ambiance of the festival’s portable, mini-Elizabethan venue.”

McNulty also took time to praise the work of stellar older actors in a rare revival of Nöel Coward’s “Waiting in the Wings,” which is running in repertory at Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum through Oct. 10. The play, “which is set in ‘The Wings,’ a charity home for retired actresses, provides a feast for veteran thespians for whom it would be impolite to ask their age,” writes McNulty. “Led by Susan Angelo, Jan Wikstrom and Ellen Geer, this ensemble, under the direction of Willow Geer, diverts and distracts from the mustier aspects of Coward’s style.”

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art announced its inaugural film programming, which is set to screen nonstop during museum hours in two dedicated 299-seat theaters. One theater will play mostly documentary films, and the other will be devoted to the more experimental aspects of the art form.

Alaska Thunderf— will play Mary Todd Lincoln in “Oh, Mary!” at the Ahmanson.

(Daniel Rampulla)

“RuPaul’s Drag Race” star Alaska Thunderf— will play Mary Todd Lincoln in Cole Escola’s Tony-winning comedy “Oh, Mary!” when it arrives at Center Theatre Group’s Ahmanson Theatre in the fall. Broadway star J. Harrison Ghee has been cast opposite Alaska in the role of her famous husband.

Joey McIntyre of New Kids on the Block performs during Audacy’s 11th annual We Can Survive at Prudential Center on Sept. 28, 2024, in Newark, N.J.

(Manny Carabel / Getty Images for Audacy)

The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts announced some additions to its 2026-2027 season, including the world premiere of a new play, “Radio Galaxy,” written by Michèle Aldin Kushner, directed by Kimberly Senior and starring Joey McIntyre (yes, that Joey McIntyre) and Olivier Award winner Lesli Margherita. The show is about a 17-year-old from a working-class New Jersey town who wants to become an astronomer but must deal with the harsh realities of daily life, including his half-sister’s need for a bone marrow transplant. The show is scheduled for 18 performances in the Lovelace Studio Theater Nov. 6-22. Tickets are available here.

A few reduced-rate spots remain for Camp Build at the Gamble House in Pasadena, which runs from Aug. 1 to 5 for three hours each day. Two hours are devoted to learning the art and craft of woodworking, and a third hour is spent on activities inspired by nature and architecture in the historic home. The cost of the camp is assessed on a sliding scale according to income and need with four payment tiers ranging from free to $650. The remaining slots are in the second tier, which costs $350.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Want a glimpse into the hedonistic L.A. of yore? Check out this story about Eve Babitz’s personal letters. It will not disappoint.

As we head into August and look to the fall, two burning questions are front and center when it comes to the Dodgers.

Will they win a third straight World Series championship?

And will the $500-million proposal to ferry fans by gondola from Union Station to Dodger Stadium remain aloft or crash and burn?

I can’t answer the first question, although I wouldn’t bet against a three-peat.

As for the second question, if I were former Dodgers owner and aerial tram godfather Frank McCourt, I’d fasten my seat belt, because the gondola is about to hit some heavy turbulence.

The gondola would slice through a section of L.A. State Historic Park, wipe out dozens of trees and trample a space that was carefully designed with years of community input. And the mounting opposition now includes seven former state park officials and four former members of the state Park and Recreation Commission.

The former staffers have sent “don’t you dare” letters to the commission, and one of them argued that the view of the downtown skyline would be cluttered and commercialized.

“Gondola cars encased in digital ads, flying 26 feet overhead every 25-30 seconds would irreparably impair the vista, and the sense of calm and escape from urban life,” wrote former state parks director Ruth Coleman.

The four former commissioners have signed a joint letter arguing that the gondola proposal “would enable a private development to permanently and irreparably shrink, degrade, and destroy the integrity of a state park.”

They’re speaking up now because the state is considering an amendment to the park’s general plan that would allow for “consideration and review of the proposed Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit (LA ART) gondola project.”

That was McCourt’s brainchild, back in 2018, and he’s a guy with lobbying muscle and friends in high places. McCourt later handed off the project to an environmental group, but the idea is still to deliver fans to Dodger Stadium, where he has financial interests.

A hearing on the matter is expected in the fall, and it’s sure to be a cage fight. Last December, throngs of supporters and foes squared off at a raucous Metro board meeting. The board ultimately green-lighted the gondola, which the L.A. City Council has almost unanimously opposed. So the showdown scheduled for this fall could be at least as interesting as the World Series.

For the record, I’m not anti-gondola. They’re fun, right?

But I’m not buying the proponents’ claim that this is a public transit project. They say several thousand people would soar up to Chavez Ravine and help relieve the miserable traffic in and out of parking lots, which McCourt took part ownership of after selling the team back in 2012 for a cool $2 billion.

But how much is gained if gondola riders ditch the free shuttle buses that now run to the ballpark from Union Station?

Then there’s a much bigger question, which my colleague Bill Shaikin explored in 2022: Is the gondola phase one of a plan to develop stadium property into some kind of Dodgertown commercial extravaganza?

Unclear, but let’s not be naive.

A Dodgers executive told Shaikin the Dodgers support the gondola project, although they are “really not involved” in it. But we’re talking about fabulously wealthy people whose only real job is figuring out how to make more money.

Team McCourt has suggested the gondola will be built with private money, perhaps from selling advertising rights, and that rides will be free to Dodger ticket holders.

But how would any of that pencil out with Dodger Stadium closed most of the year, and with gondola traffic chipping away at revenue from parking fees that start at a monstrous $40?

There’s something they’re not telling us, and if you think there’s no threat of taxpayers getting dinged one way or another at some point, you’ve either been hit in the head by a line drive or you’ve had too many $18 beers at Dodger Stadium.

If you want more details on the history of the gondola gambit, I suggest you check out all the reporting by Shaikin, who has been on the case for years, and offered up a far better idea than a gondola: Make it easier for fans to walk or bike to the ballpark.

But let’s get back to L.A. State Historic Park.

Much of the early gondola opposition was from Chinatown residents who didn’t like the idea of living under what would resemble an amusement park ride. But on Wednesday evening, I met with some people whose focus is the impact on the park.

“All of these trees would be gone,” said Sean Woods, a former state parks employee who penned one of the letters to Sacramento, and who was involved in some of the 65 public meetings and workshops at which community members helped with the design and mission of the park.

We were in a shady spot, where the gondola would run parallel to the existing Metro train tracks. There’d be supporting towers on park property, with cables dangling overhead, and a gondola station just outside the park. The gondola would occupy only a small slice of the 32-acre space, but it would be a visible distraction from every inch of the park.

“I think it’s a betrayal of California State Parks’ commitment to the communities that surround this park, that fought dearly for this park,” Woods said.

He was reflecting on a time when the former railyard was destined to become a giant industrial warehouse complex. And this followed the history of Chinatown having been relocated to make way for Union Station, and residents of Chavez Ravine being relocated to make way for Dodger Stadium.

Jon Christensen, Sean Woods and Susan Lai chat at Los Angeles State Historic Park.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Joining us was Susan Lai, who along with Woods represents Friends of Los Angeles State Historic Park.

Lai is small in stature, but she swings for the fences.

“This is called a historic park for a reason,” she said, “and McCourt … has no historical connection to the park, no community connection to the park, and no cultural connection to the park.”

Lai is steeped in the archaeology of the park, the Gabrielino establishment here, the Zanja Madre irrigation line that served the early pueblo.

As we strolled, she told me this is another case of politically connected profiteers trying to impose their will on the local community, and she won’t stand for it. Lai is carrying a torch lit by her husband, Collin, who died last year at the age of 96 after years of fighting to make the park a reality.

“She’s brought an extra fire to this whole effort, and really inspired a lot of young people,” said Jon Christensen, gondola foe and co-founder of the Los Angeles Parks Alliance.

Christensen led Lai, Woods and me to the top of a grassy hill. When the park opened in 2006, I thought it seemed too flat and shapeless, too hemmed in by Broadway and Spring. But it later expanded, the trees filled in and the whole park grew on me as a place to see and feel Los Angeles.

I loved two things most of all.

The unstructured activities enjoyed by a broad mix of people picnicking on the grass, napping under a tree, kicking a ball around or doing what 10 guys were doing Wednesday evening — playing a game of Frisbee football in the meadow below us.

And the unfettered skyline view, which could soon be lost. And consider the optics: Dodgers fans soaring over a public park enjoyed by families who might need to hit the lottery to afford tickets to a game.

It was almost Dodger game time, and if the gondolas were up and running, they’d be close enough overhead that you could hit one with a tomato.

Not that I’m recommending that.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

When you take a guided tour of the nearly completed Harvard-Westlake River Park Sports Complex in Studio City, you lose count how many times you’re saying, “Wow.”

From the underground parking lot to the 8,200-square-foot weight room, from the two gymnasiums to the 52-meter pool, from the eight tennis courts to the two all-weather turf playing fields, from the yoga room with a million-dollar view to the 11 locker rooms with projector screens, the $200-million project is certainly living up to expectations.

There’s also a cafeteria, a smoothie machine, 117 toilets, wrestling room, fencing room, training room, community rooms, more than 150 security cameras, an underground water basin and facial recognition technology from the parking lot to enter the coaches’ area. In the main gym foyer, there’s an area for people to watch live streams of games while purchasing food.

With two gyms and two sports fields, the school would be capable of holding basketball or soccer tournaments. The P.A. system in the main gym is state of the art.

Not only will students who attend the upper school on Coldwater Canyon enjoy the facility but so should fans and visiting teams with all the amenities such as large visiting locker rooms. The only question is when an official opening will take place.

Construction is nearing completion, but it’s unclear when teams will start practicing and playing there because the facility still needs to go through inspections and receive a Certificate of Occupancy from the city. The school is targeting early 2027 for activity to begin at the site.

The basketball teams are unlikely to use the main gym this coming season unless they are allowed to practice there.

Construction began in April of 2024. The project replaces the beloved Weddington Golf & Tennis Center and took several years of obtaining permits, having community meetings and receiving city approval to overcome a vocal group within the community objecting to losing the Weddington center.

There are still 14-foot-high covered fences hiding the progress off Whitsett Avenue, but those will be coming down soon to give community members a peak what’s been going on.

Head of athletics Terry Barnum and communications director Ari Engelberg have been providing updates to school administrators. The school added two new sports this year, flag football and girls lacrosse, in anticipation of the new field space.

The first year it opens is expected to be trial and error on how to best use the facilities, figuring out traffic patterns and welcoming the public to grounds that can be used during the school day, from the tennis courts to a privately run cafe to a walking path next to the L.A. River.

IF YOU love theme parks and often feel like you don’t get enough time in the day to see and do everything, then you might want to listen up.

Alton Towers is extending its opening hours from Friday, August 14 to Monday, August 31.

The park will stay open until 7pm each night, which gives guests an extra hour in the park.

Mina Fattahi at Alton Towers Resort said: “More time to experience thrills is always a good thing, but the classic mistake that people make is to head straight for the big rollercoaster they see from the entrance.

“Instead, head to the rides at the back of the park first.

“You’ll beat the crowds, spend less time queueing and fit in more rides throughout the day.”

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This summer Alton Towers also has “one of its biggest summer line-ups yet” with a Minecraft experience from July 18 until August 28.

And currently day tickets to the park cost less due to the Government’s Great British Summer Savings scheme.

Tickets cost £34.13 per person, instead of £39 per person when bought online in advance.

Guests under 90cm still visit for free.

Sometimes visiting for a day is just not enough though, even with the additional hour.

If this applies to you, you can also book to stay at Alton Towers Resort for short breaks from £87 per person.

The offer is available for stays between July 20 and September 1 and includes a day’s access to the theme park and free kids entry to the waterpark.

You can choose between either the Alton Towers Hotel, Splash Landings Hotel, CBeebies Land Hotel, the Woodland Lodges at the Enchanted Village, Luxury Treehouses or the Stargazing Pods.

If staying at the Alton Towers Hotel, you can book into a themed room including ones with beds that look like a bathtub, a hot air balloon or even a princess carriage.

Alternatively, if you have toddlers the CBeebies Land Hotel is a great option, with live shows, games and meet and greets with CBeebies characters.

A SMALL but much-loved holiday resort in the UK is set to get a load of new attractions.

Ribby Hall Village near Kirkham, Preston, has announced plans for a new high ropes course, netted play area and outdoor activity zone.

The new attractions would be at the Wildlife Discovery area in the five-star holiday park and also feature a go-kart track.

A new entertainment centre is already approved for the holiday resort as well.

Ribby Hall Village has a range of accommodation including self-catering cottages and an adults-only spa hotel.

Guests also get unlimited access to a family pool with waterslides and an adult pool.

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And much like Center Parcs, you can book onto a number of different activities including heading to the indoor soft play as well as an onsite zoo and wildlife centre.

For more entertainment, there are also a number of daytime and evening shows.

Across the village, guests can head into a number of family restaurants, bars and cafes.

Summer breaks cost as little as £32 per person per night.

One recent visitor said: “Not our first visit to Ribby hall but as usual had a fabulous break with the family – we have chosen Ribby hall over our former choice of Center Parcs as Ribby represents so much better value for money.”

Another visitor added: “Loved it here, obvious comparison is with Center Parcs and I would pick Ribby Hall.”

Fylde Council has not yet announced when they will make a decision on the application.

YOU’LL need plenty of Gaul to brave the rides at Parc Asterix.

As an experienced theme park fan, I thought I’d seen it all but some of the rollercoasters at this theme park, north-east of Paris, left me feeling like a Roman soldier on the wrong end of a clobbering from Obelix.

I took my wife and our daughters, aged five and three, and I must confess I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Despite having been a fan of the Asterix comics growing up, I had no idea France had its own theme park dedicated to the combative Gaul.

But in fact, Parc Asterix predates Disneyland Paris by three years, and in the past decade or so has really ramped up its offering to compete.

And sacre bleu, does it ever!

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The park is divided into areas themed around parts of the ancient world, including Rome, Greece, Egypt and Gaul itself, with Londinium on the way in 2028.

Rides include Cetautomatix, a spinning chariot coaster; Trace du Hourra (Trail of Hooray) which is like a juddering luge track; and the bone-shuddering Tonnerre 2 Zeus (Zeus’s Thunder) wooden coaster, which left me feeling elated but also like I’d been in some sort of crash.

There is also a clutch of river rapids and log flumes, refreshing on a hot day, including one called Le Grand Splatch (I’ll let you work out the translation), although it was actually the Menhir Express — menhirs being the enormous boulders beloved by Obelix — that left me thoroughly drenched and giggling.

Despite the play parks and small rides for toddlers, I did feel that at three, my youngest Alyssa was a bit too ­little to get the most out of it. My five-year-old, Bronwyn, had more ride options but I think from seven up would get the best experience.

One thing to also take on board is that Parc Asterix is proudly French, and a smattering of the language is useful, especially for the shows, although even if you don’t understand a word, attractions such as the 4D cinema Attention Menhir! are certainly a hoot.

We stayed at Les Quais de Lutece — one of three themed hotels and counting on site — designed to look like a fort on the ancient River Seine, and it made a great base for exploring the park, with early entry to the park to beat the crowds.

Being so close was also helpful for the late-night drone, laser, water and fireworks show over the park’s lake, which was a memorable way to ­finish the day.

I’ve left the biggest rides until last, and I’ve been showing people back home the “POV” videos on YouTube to show how impressive they are.

First we were steered towards the Pegase Express, and as it was dark I hadn’t seen in advance what awaited us.

Assuming that as Bronwyn passed the height limit it would be fine for her, I soon realised I’d miscalculated and as she clung to me, even I was wondering if I’d ­bitten off more than I could chew.

A rollicking rollercoaster took us up to Medusa’s temple, where the Gorgon lost her temper and sent her snakes chasing us BACKWARDS down another twisty-turny track.

Once she’d recovered, Bronwyn enjoyed the far gentler Vol d’Icare (Flight Of Icarus) rollercoaster much more and asked to go back on it two further times over the weekend.

Definitely for bigger thrillseekers only was the Goudurix, a barrelling coaster that at one stage had the most loops in Europe.

Same with the OzIris, which was probably the most exhilarating ride — a Nemesis-style leg-dangling coaster.

Finally — having saved the very best until last — there’s the Toutatis, and just looking at this one made me gulp.

It’s France’s tallest, fastest rollercoaster, which launches you forwards at speeds of up to 66mph and features a backwards element, an ingenious switch-track, and a vertical arch that you only get up and over on the second attempt before going straight down the other side.

So there’s only one question you have to answer to see if you’re ready to take on Parc Asterix:

Are you a menhir or a mouse?

Leonard R. Garner Jr. loves roller coasters. And the mostly-retired television director and actor has a place in his heart for Universal Studios Hollywood, the theme park atop the studio where he spent many days behind a camera.

He also adores the tranquility of his home. As a resident of Toluca Lake, the tiny neighborhood nestled below the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Super Nintendo World and other park staples, Garner watched with curiosity as Universal Studios began erecting Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift, its new outdoor, high-speed thrill ride. He continued to track the construction over the next three or four years while out on afternoon walks.

At last, when Universal Studios began testing the ride this spring, Garner breathed a sigh of relief. “I was amazed at how quiet it was,” he said. “I could not hear it at all.”

But he wasn’t considering one detail: There were no people on it.

Everything changed, Garner and numerous other Toluca Lake residents said, the summer day when Universal Studios began running the coaster with a full slate of riders. There were screams. They were loud — piercing even double-paned windows. And they were constant.

“Disturbing,” said one resident, Dr. Christopher Zito.

“You think something is happening,” said Patrick Nazari, another resident. “Like someone is getting murdered out there.”

Garner said he stopped in his tracks. “I heard it, and I thought to myself, ‘There are going to be problems with this.’”

Universal’s new Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift coaster can be seen (and heard) from Toluca Lake.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Headaches at least, both for the residents of Toluca Lake and for Universal Studios Hollywood in the days before the ride’s opening this summer. For residents, there’s panic as to what, if any, recourse they may have at this late stage, with one man joking he may forever have to blast loud music all day to mask rider screams. For Universal Studios Hollywood, the complaints, first reported on social media and quickly picked up by media outlets, have added a sudden jolt of negative publicity around what was intended to be the North American ride of 2026.

Longtime Toluca Lake residents have had to get used to its high-powered neighbor making changes over the past few decades. Through the last 10 years in particular, Universal Studios Hollywood has accelerated in growth, evolving from a behind-the-movie-magic showcase to a park that’s increasingly ride-centered, each addition bringing with it new worries of disruptions to the community. None, say residents, have been more tone-altering than this one.

Karen Rogers has lived in Toluca Lake for more than 20 years. “It was a never a roller coaster kind of park,” she said. “When a lot of residents moved in, it was about the history of film, and everything was inside the park. This is different because it’s hanging over a neighborhood. It’s just disappointing.”

Rob Cerny remembers the moment he heard the screams. He had just exited the Metro B Line across the street from the studio.

“Every minute you hear this big scream,” he said. “When I got home, my wife was upset. It’s made our backyard unusable. It’s extremely prominent, the noise. I really don’t think this is going to be tenable.”

Around the issue of noise, Universal Studios Hollywood has been proactive with Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift, devoting a website to just how silent and unobtrusive its groundbreaking coaster would be. Multiple noise mitigation efforts were undertaken — sound walls, scream shields and even pea gravel in the coaster’s tracks.

And those were all welcome, say Garner, Cerny and other residents. All are eager to speak out, but they’re also cautious. They’re aware that some of those who have gone to the press have been attacked on social media, with many a non-Toluca Lake resident appearing unsympathetic to their cause, comparing them to not-in-my-backyard complainers.

Toluca Lake residents are fearful Universal’s Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift will be constant noise.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

If you live next to a theme park, goes the primary argument, what did you expect?

“That’s a good point,” said Cerny, who has resided next to Universal Studios for 30 years, around the time the park was opening what is now known as Jurassic World: The Ride, but long before additions such as the “Harry Potter” franchise or Nintendo.

“This was not Magic Mountain,” Cerny continued. “I grew up here. It was a studio tour place. Now it’s a major thrill theme park. That’s a different deal.”

And it’s not, he said, background noise, such as the barely audible soundtrack from Wizarding World. “It’s screams,” he said. “Screaming is a disturbing noise. It’s not a lullaby.”

Universal says it’s listening.

“We appreciate hearing from the community, and that feedback is an important part of the process,” reads a statement from Universal Studios Hollywood. “The coaster is currently in its testing and commissioning phase, which is designed to evaluate the attraction over time and under a variety of operating conditions. As part of that process, we are actively reviewing sound levels to ensure the coaster is operating in compliance.”

Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift has been about a decade in the making. It’s a feat of engineering, situated on a hill between the park’s upper and lower lots, extending out toward Lankershim Boulevard. Universal has its own interest in limiting noise from the ride, beyond being a polite neighbor, as it is still a working studio.

The theme park has made outreach into the neighborhood over the years in an attempt to assuage concerns, be it distributing fliers or attending community meetings. And many a Toluca Lake resident enjoys some theme park perks courtesy of Universal, such as free parking, and invites to pre-opening events at the park. Garner still speaks fondly of getting on Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge before the bulk of the public.

“We all went to meetings about it,” Rogers said of Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift. “Universal says they want to be a good neighbor. They made a big deal about making it the quietest coaster ever. Well, that’s nice, but you can’t put tape over people’s mouths.”

While residents say the screaming is crushingly loud, there’s no indication as of yet the ride violates any county standards. The path for the coaster was cleared with 2013’s Universal Studios Specific Plan. Presented to and approved by the County of Los Angeles, the documents outline studio, theme park and hotel expansion plans, detailing requirements such as as height, noise and more. While nothing in the papers explicitly previewed any potential ride specifics, such as a 72 mph coaster with 360 degree rotating cars, county officials note there was also nothing in the pitch for Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift that would violate terms of the plan.

Thus, say county officials, there was no requirement for Universal to hold public hearings to be granted approval to build the coaster. That’s left some residents feeling slighted, saying they were unaware of the attraction until ground was moved.

Universal Studio Hollywood’s Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift will reach speeds of 72 mph and take riders on multiple inversions.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

It should be noted, however, that before construction began, Universal Studios did place speakers on its old special effects and stunt buildings to see how noise traveled down the hill. And as per the documents, Universal Studios Hollywood must track noise at six designated monitoring sites outside and around the park. At least three are in the heart of Toluca Lake, situated on or near Valley Springs Lane.

Residents are also given a number to call for complaints such as a noise. Zito has been in touch with park technicians near his home, noting they are sitting with microphones and equipment to capture sonic readings. “I always go up to them and say, ‘You’re not here when it’s really noisy,’” he said. Another resident spoke of downloading a smartphone app to track decibel levels throughout the day, intending to document the noise of the coaster screams and report any violations.

Allowable decibel levels in the neighborhood vary depending on the time of day, as well as the type of noise. Operational sound, such as those from an attraction, are classified differently than “impulsive noise,” such as a gunshot from a film production. A scream, said county officials, is considered operational noise, and decibel levels should hover somewhere around 50 dBa during peak hours.

Most decibel charts consider that moderate noise, somewhere between steady rainfall and a dishwasher. Over the years Universal has been required to make alterations to its attractions, such as replacing some live special effects in its “Waterworld” show with prerecorded digital tracks.

The office of county supervisor Kathryn Barger is aware of the complaints of Toluca Lake residents. Her staff has been facilitating a conversation with people at Universal Studios and has found them to be “very willing partners,” said Helen Chavez Garcia, Barger’s communications director. “They are very interested in finding common ground to address the community concerns, while also meeting their bigger objectives of bringing a new attraction to keep their theme park thriving. They’ve been good partners at the table and this is going to be a continued work in progress.”

With the coaster slated to open in the coming days or weeks, residents aren’t optimistic for change or the sudden construction of more noise buffers. Rogers, for instance, said her and husband have begun shopping for water fountains, wondering if installing them in their backyard will mask the screams. Coaster fan Garner, however, said the only recourse may be to find a way to live with — and enjoy — the ride.

“I’m dying to get on it,” he said. “I’m sure it’s going to be something to experience and I’m sure it’s going to be great.”

Then he pauses for a moment. “But I don’t want to have to listen to it all day and into the night.”

This small seaside town has had to install a park and ride due to the sheer number of visitors, and its narrow, winding streets are a difficult place to find a parking spot in the summer holidays

If you’ve ever taken the kids to a seaside town or popular attraction during the six week summer holidays, you’ll know the pain of driving around in circles looking for a spot.

A lot of tourist hotspots, such as beach towns, have old, narrow roads, and often, car parking is expensive and a long walk away from any attractions. It’s one of the most annoying things about trying to enjoy a day out in the summer.

A new study, which looked at parking across the UK’s seaside towns and tourist hotspots during the summer break claims it has found the worst place to find a parking space during this time.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the worst place to park is in Cornwall, which, as a county, welcomes around four million overnight visitors and 14 million day trippers a year. The pretty fishing town of St Ives took the top spot, with a huge number of visitors heading to its beach or art galleries finding it tough to grab a parking spot.

The study, carried out by Indigo Car Hire, looked at average parking costs, the number of parking spots per 1,000 visitors, and the number of car parks within a mile of the town centre. It also looked at the number of Google reviews that mentioned tourists facing parking problems.

These factors were then scored out of 100, with St Ives easily topping the list with 92 out of 100. A recent TripAdvisor review said: “Felt we should visit as we’re in Cornwall for a week, but having failed to find any parking anywhere we were glad to get out.”

Another claimed: “We had to re-attempt visiting St Ives due to a lack of parking. In order to park we had to come between 8am-9am, just FYI. Locals are very friendly and try to help.” While one said it was a “Very nice place with lots of restaurants and shops, but totally crowded with tourists in July. You can hardly find a parking space which are very expensive!”

But the small town is tackling its parking issues. Visit St Ives has tips on where to park when visiting, and recommends either using a park and ride car park just outside the town, or parking at nearby St Erth station and taking the St Ives Bay Line, a 15-minute train ride that gives you incredible coastal views as you arrive at the town.

St Ives wasn’t the only Cornish spot to make the list. Padstow came in fourth, while Newquay came in tenth. In second place the seaside town of Whitby in North Yorkshire scored 89 out of 100 for poor parking, with some visitors parking at the neighbouring village of Sandsend and braving the 45-minute walk into town.

A recent review said: “We saw car parks, but they were totally full no matter what time of day it was, same with the on-street parking near the front.” While another claimed there was “plenty of parking. However very expensive. £2.60 for an hour.”

Cherie Carter, managing director at Indigo Car Hire, said: “According to an RAC survey earlier this year, a third of drivers struggle with parking anxiety. The aim from this study is not to discourage drivers from visiting hotspots like St Ives or Whitby, but to help travellers enjoy their summer break with fewer unexpected frustrations when they arrive.”

Top 10 worst places for parking in the six-week holidays

1. St Ives, Cornwall – 92/100
2. Whitby, North Yorkshire – 89/100
3. Tenby, Wales – 87/100
4. Padstow, Cornwall – 85/100
5. Salcombe, Devon – 82/100
6. Southwold, Suffolk – 80/100
7. Bournemouth, Dorset – 79/100
8. Brighton, East Sussex – 77/100
9. Robin Hood’s Bay, North Yorkshire – 76/100
10. Newquay, Cornwall – 75/100

Have a story you want to share? Email us at webtravel@reachplc.com

After an 18-month closure prompted by the Palisades fire and subsequent damaging floods, Temescal Gateway Park reopened Friday, restoring access to beloved trails in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Hikers can walk along Temescal Creek, crossing a few charming wooden bridges, or take one of the steep ridge line trails to gape at the ocean as they gasp for air. But the popular Temescal Canyon Trail, which takes hikers to Temescal Falls, remains closed.

In this edition of The Wild, our weekly outdoors newsletter, I will quickly outline what you need to know about returning to Temescal Canyon. My visit Friday was actually my first, but given the serenity I found in this coastal alcove, I will absolutely return. (Note: As of this morning, Google Maps still showed the park was closed; that is inaccurate.)

The Michael J. B. Allen memorial bench sits on a nice overlook in Temescal Canyon.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

Temescal Gateway Park is a 141-acre expanse in Pacific Palisades that features a babbling brook, oak and sycamore canyons and trails that zigzag up the mountains, providing views of the Pacific Ocean and its coastline. It is owned by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy but managed by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority.

From the park, you can hike into Topanga and Will Rogers state parks, although some state park trails remain closed. Those include:

People who frequented Temescal Canyon before the Palisades fire will notice the inevitable changes that come after a fire. Trail crews removed several fire-damaged trees, including multiple mature oaks, as dead trees can and do fall unexpectedly, according to the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority. The agency plans to continue reforestation projects in the park as money becomes available.

You can easily enter the park through its entrance off Sunset Boulevard. Upon entry, you’ll need to pay the $12 day-use fee at one of the machines stationed around the parking lot if you’re parking on the property. (And it’s not something to roll the dice on — I saw at least one couple get ticketed.)

A burned wayfinding sign on the Temescal Ridge Trail, which was left from the Palisades fire.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

I parked under a large coast live oak and headed northwest onto the Temescal Ridge Trail, which is exposed and has minimal shade but offers multiple options for day hikes, including:

• A quick out-and-back up Temescal Ridge Trail to one of the route’s popular lookout points.
• A 3.1-mile lollipop loop, taking Temescal Ridge Trail about 1.4 miles north to Bienveneda Trail, which loops you back around to the Temescal Ridge Trail at 2.3 miles into your journey.
• Or even farther up, as Temescal Ridge Trail leads to other longer trails in the Santa Monica Mountains.

A hiker heads up Tesmescal Ridge Trail in the Santa Monica Mountains.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

I huffed up the trail and was pleased with how quickly I could see the ocean. Several burned trees and shrubs remain, but they’re surrounded by an abundance of plant life coming back, including cliff aster and laurel sumac.

Along the route, I was pleasantly surprised by the exuberance of my fellow hikers. Multiple people stopped me — a fun experience for a reporter — to just share how wonderful they felt being back in the park. “Isn’t this great?” one hiker shouted to me as she headed up the ridge line. A couple from Minnesota told me they’d flown in the day before and were eager to get back to Temescal Canyon, their favorite spot to hike in L.A.

A burned tree with native plants growing up and around it.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

My next stop was along the Sunset Trail, a 0.4-mile trail that runs along Temescal Creek. While I marveled at the gnarled and twisted old oak trees along the trail, I met a 14-year-old Parson Russell terrier named Finnegan. She seemed just as happy to be back as the people I encountered, especially on this shady trail next to running water.

Workers have installed three wooden bridges that cross over the creek, giving this short jaunt a whimsical feel. It ends near the road, and I turned back north, taking the sidewalk past picnic tables and rock shelters in a sycamore grove.

The Sunset Trail along Temescal Creek.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

I would have loved to visit the Temescal Canyon Trail to see Temescal Falls, but as I mentioned, that trail remains closed.

Isabela Noriega, a project manager at the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Agency, said the agency will work with California State Parks officials to begin restoring the route, as only a portion of the trail is within the boundaries of Temescal Gateway Park and the rest is on state land.

“You’ll remember the fires happened Jan. 7, and then we got storms in February,” Noriega said. “So there was a lot of erosion [and] dirt debris that washed out the trails. [It’s] two disasters piling up on top of each other that we’re working to deal with.”

Instead, the third trail option you’ll have is the Rivas Canyon Trail, a fun jaunt up the hillside that features several sets of wooden stairs. You can access the trail at either of its trailheads (see map).

I started at its southern trailhead, which is behind a few buildings and near some machinery and felled trees. From there, I walked north along a wide path shaded by oak trees before taking the first set of stairs up.

One of multiple sets of stairs along the Rivas Canyon Trail.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

You’ll continue up the stairs, the views of the ocean growing better as you gain elevation. I was able to spot four sailboats as I hiked.

Although the trail is well maintained, there was a short stretch that was thick enough with cliff asters to make me grateful I wore pants. There were also a few spots where I paused to lightly stomp because low-lying branches of native shrubs covered the trail. These shady sites are great nap spots for rattlesnakes, which are common to the area.

Burned trees surrounded by native plants growing back after the Palisades fire scorched the hillside.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

About half a mile in, you’ll reach the Michael J. B. Allen memorial bench, built in honor of a UCLA professor and avid hiker. This is a nice spot to take a break and have a snack.

Right after this first bench, the trail is speckled with rocks that reminded me of dinosaur eggs or little bits of the moon. These moments always make me wish I’d paid far more attention in geology class, as I can generally only provide such riveting commentary as “Look at that pretty rock” or “Hey, is that a geode?” (It’s never a geode.)

Stairs lead to the overlook point where there’s a memorial bridge for local trail legends Rob and Mary Ann Webster.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

I continued east to the second memorial bench, built in honor of Ron and Mary Ann Webster, two beloved advocates of the Santa Monica Mountains. It’s often said that, if you’ve hiked in the Santa Monicas, you’ve likely stepped foot on a trail Ron designed.

The view from Rivas Canyon Trail in Temescal Canyon.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

I decided to end my day on the Websters’ bench. The self-care app I use had recommended I spend 15 minutes outside that day reading, and this felt like a fine spot to finish a fascinating piece about how to properly measure a mountain.

I paused, though, first to take in the view.

All around me, there were reminders of both the fire and its aftermath — burned-out trees and plants. But past the hillsides dotted with native plants returning in force, I saw the wooden frames of several houses being rebuilt. It was a reminder that this park’s reopening is another signal that nature, ourselves included, will continue onward.

3 things to do

A stargazer calibrates a telescope to look at the Orion Nebula during a star party hosted by the Los Angeles Astronomical Society in L.A.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

1. Savor s’mores and the stars in Chinatown
Los Angeles State Historic Park, a 32-acre expanse of public land in Chinatown, will host a “Park After Dark” event with the L.A. Astronomical Society from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday. Telescopes will be set up, and park workers will help guests make s’mores around a community campfire at the park’s roundhouse bridge. Learn more at the park’s Instagram page.

2. Doddle along the dunes in Santa Monica
The Santa Monica Helping Hub and the Coastal Alliance will co-host a dune walk from 9 to 11 a.m. Sunday in Santa Monica. Conservation biologist Ashley Oelsen, the alliance’s founder, will lead guests through the dunes and share why the stretch of beach is ecologically significant, serving as important habitat for threatened shorebirds and native coastal plants. Register at eventbrite.com.

3. Bend under the Buck Moon in L.A.
We Explore Earth, a local outdoors nonprofit, will host a full-moon hiking experience from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday in Elysian Park. Attendees will start meeting at 5:45 p.m. before heading on the hike at 6:25 p.m. After taking the Elysian Park west trail, participants can continue the evening with yoga, live music and stargazing with telescopes. Free, but donations of $5 to $10 are appreciated. Register at eventbrite.com.

The must-read

Crowds hike their way up the Mist Trail, one of the more popular trails in Yosemite National Park.

(William Hale Irwin/For The Times)

I am seemingly always planning my next adventure, including frequently pondering how soon I can return to Yosemite National Park. I last went in August and swam in the Merced River, hiked to Taft Point, saw Tunnel View at sunset and even went skydiving. But this past summer, that itch has felt more like a siren’s call as, like many outdoors lovers, I’ve been saddened by reports of serious overcrowding at one of America’s crown jewels. Over the past few weeks, I spoke to park-goers who’ve been to Yosemite this season, and I asked them: “Is it possible to still have fun there?” The answer, as I wrote in this story, was essentially, “Yes, but only if you plan accordingly.” Thankfully, they shared some tips on how to do that.

Happy adventuring,

P.S.

A bald eagle believed to be Jackie, one half of the celebrity raptor couple in Big Bear, was taken to a wildlife rehabilitation center in Ojai after being rescued this past weekend. Times staff writer Lila Seidman reported that a team with the San Dimas Raptor Rescue arrived around 1:30 a.m. Saturday in Big Bear Lake and found a weak and tired eagle on the lake’s shoreline. The eagle was then transported to the Ojai Raptor Center, where the reason for her deterioration remains unknown. “Queen Jackie is in the best of care! And will be able to return soon!” one YouTube user wrote Tuesday evening in the livestream’s chat. “Sending all our love & prayers to her and the kiddos and her amazing hubby super Shadow holding it down!”

For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.

A CLOSED theme park set to become a new housing development will reopen for one last hurrah.

Camelot Theme Park in Chorley was once a beloved theme park for families but closed back in September 2012.

Now, a huge event has been announced for the abandoned park before it disappears for good.

Scare City – who are responsible for some of the best scare events in the UK – are planning to open its “largest, darkest and most psychologically brutal evolution to date” at the park.

As part of the experience, visitors will be able to see areas never seen by the public before, including a never-used entrance.

The event will be spread across nine different zones, of which many of the themes are yet to be announced.

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One zone confirmed is CarniValley, which will feature outcasts and a carnival-like atmosphere, albeit more creepy.

However, Scare City has confirmed that it will be the “most intense event yet”.

Adding on its website that: “What was once a kingdom of rides and laughter has become a sprawling nightmare of darkness, fear, and chaos.”

There will be towering outdoor sets, different pathways to the scare zones, live actors – and they will all be in the decaying former attractions of Camelot.

Scare City has been running at Camelot for the past five years, but this will be the last year before the abandoned theme park is turned into a large housing estate.

The event will run from September 26 to November 7.

THE longest outdoor tubing slide in the UK has finally opened at an adventure park – and it’s just in time for the summer holidays.

Families can now enjoy the new attraction, which offers visitors the chance to slide down 315ft on a doughnut-shaped inflatable.

Located at Roarr! park in Norfolk, Fossil Falls is even bigger than the 288ft-long Forest Tubing experience, which opened at Heaton Park’s Zip World in May.

The £300,000 ride was officially opened on Saturday by Matty Campbell, better known as Bionic from Gladiators.

He said: “It was amazing to see so many people turn out for the opening of Fossil Falls and the atmosphere has been incredible.

“I’m delighted to have been here to officially open it and see so many families enjoy it.”

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Ben Francis, park director at Roarr!, said: “What a way to open Fossil Falls.

“We’ve had thousands of visitors joining us over the weekend and it’s been fantastic to see families enjoying the ride for the very first time.”

Fossil Falls attraction joins other popular features at the 85-acre park.

This includes Dippy’s Splash Zone and Predator High Ropes.

Other attractions at Roarr!, which is billed as the UK’s largest dinosaur theme park, include the Swing-O-Saurus and the Raptor Contraptor.

All attractions are included in the price of entry.

A HOLIDAY park has been given the green light for a major glow up.

Unity Holidays‘ Skirlington Coast Yorkshire site will soon undergo a £20million project with several new openings.

There will be upgraded dining spots and leisure facilities, as well as a new entertainment zone and outdoor pool.

There will be extra food spots too, with a new pavilion home to restaurants.

The project will also include new fairground attractions and cabanas.

Kids aren’t left out either, with a new splash pad including a tots’ pool.

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Accommodation at the park will be expanded as well, with 92 new caravans planned for the site.

A spokesman for Unity Holidays said: “We thank the council’s planning committee for approving our application to redevelop the land on our park currently occupied by Skirlington Market, as well as the buildings on that land used by the market.

“We look forward to commencing work on that project as soon as possible, which will see us add indoor and outdoor sport and leisure facilities as well as re-landscaping the entire area.”

Unity Holidays took over the site at the end of 2024 and underwent lots of renovation work, including adding new attractions.

Currently, the holiday park is home to 680 caravans and 400 pitches for tents.

Attractions added included an outdoor children’s play area and The Wonky Donkey Kitchen and Bar.

A spa was also added with a hot tub, steam room and sauna.

When Sebastian Dollinger and his colleagues first drove into Yosemite National Park, they felt like they were entering the world at its finest — a prehistoric beauty of hulking rocks with every waterfall flowing in the valley.

It reminded Dollinger, who lives in Sweden, of the Swiss Alps in summer.

The moment didn’t last long.

As the group, in the park in early May for a fashion shoot for California luxury brand Robert Talbott, neared Mirror Lake in Yosemite Valley, Dollinger’s party felt like it had been overtaken by a massive swarm of bees as droves of other tourists buzzed around them, he said.

A tourist stands in front of an overlook near Yosemite Valley during a sunrise in mid-June in Yosemite National Park.

Tourists wait at the Yosemite Falls bus stop.

“I could have taken up climbing and gone up El Capitan just to escape the people,” Dollinger said, referencing Yosemite’s famous rock wall, “but I’m just a creative director.”

This summer, Yosemite is seeing a significant uptick in visitation, driven by the park’s internationally known splendor, its popularity on social media and a lack of its politicized reservation system. As droves of tourists flock to Yosemite, it raises the question: Is it still possible to have a fun time there despite the crowds?

Hopefully, yes, but that answer comes with a few heavy asterisks. Park-goers and local business owners say it’s crucial for those venturing into Yosemite this summer to plan their excursions outside peak times to avoid the worst of the crowds, and even then, pack their patience. The best-laid plans can still result in visitors facing significant lines at the park’s gate and restaurants, crowded hiking trails and a relentless search for parking.

By the end of June, Yosemite had seen at least 183,000 more visitors than last year, according to preliminary park visitor data. Just over 2 million people visited the park by the end of June, a 10% increase compared with last year’s visitation data.

Crowds pose for photos on the Mist Trail.

The increase in visitors is, in part, because the National Park Service is not using a timed-entry reservation system this year.

The National Park Service announced in February — after the agency under the Biden administration studied extensively how to best implement a reservation system — that officials would instead use “targeted management.” This has included sending congestion alerts to visitors’ mobile phones and encouraging visitors to venture outside the valley, as it represents only a fraction of its almost 1,200 square miles of parkland.

When asked how the agency planned to address overcrowding in Yosemite this summer, a National Park Service spokesperson who declined to give their name to The Times said in an emailed statement that temporary traffic delays can occur during peak times but aren’t evidence of “operational failure.”

“They reflect the reality of managing one of the nation’s most visited national parks while keeping visitors safe and protecting park resources,” the spokesperson said. “Claims of widespread ‘overcrowding’ are not an accurate characterization of current park operations. Visitors have benefitted [sic] from expanded access for months now, and we are seeing operational efficiency from managing traffic only when and where necessary, rather than blanketing the park with restrictions for entire seasons.”

Dozens of tourists hike their way up the Mist Trail in mid-June, one of the more popular trails in Yosemite National Park.

Visitors like Dollinger say this new approach is not working.

“After we hiked for about three hours, we met a couple from Japan, and when I talked to them they were almost in tears,” said Dollinger, who has visited other state and national parks in California. “They saved for five years to do this trip, flew to San Francisco from Tokyo, stayed in San Francisco and hired a car, and went to the park for five days, which I can only describe as hell.”

Not every Yosemite visitor that The Times spoke to for this story had as bad of a time as Dollinger, but no one disputed crowds being an issue.

Chidumebi Ajaero, who lives in L.A., said he was “very concerned” when he and his friends left for their trip in mid-April over how crowded the park would be.

It was Ajaero’s first time to visit Yosemite after moving to California about 2½ years ago from Houston. He has been to other national parks and said he knows they can get “quite chaotic” when busy.

Tents set up in Upper Pines Campground on a June weekend in Yosemite National Park.

Ajaero and his friends arrived in Yosemite on a Friday afternoon and were surprised to find there was no line to enter the Big Oak Flat entrance.

They set their campsite up at Upper Pines, a campground in the valley, and headed out early on the Mist Trail, which takes hikers to Vernal and Nevada falls via its large stone steps. There were a considerable amount of people on the trail with them, he said.

“It’s not until you get to the waterfall itself and you have the steps, and everybody is taking pictures,” Ajaero said. “There’s actually a line to move up. You’re just waiting for your turn to step up” to capture the waterfall.

Ajaero said he’s glad he went before Memorial Day, when visitation started to increase more significantly.

But because of how curated Yosemite Valley is, with a grocery store, souvenir shops and restaurants, Ajaero said it felt more like an amusement park than his trips to Joshua Tree National Park, where visitors are far more on their own.

Hikers walk on a boardwalk designed to prevent erosion in sensitive meadows.

“I didn’t love it as much as the other because of the commercialized feeling of it, and just the fact it never felt you were alone in Yosemite,” he said. “I think there’s too much going on.”

How developed Yosemite should be for its visitors has been a debate since the park’s existence.

Michael W. Childers, author of “The Mountains Are Calling: Tourists and the Unmaking of Yosemite National Park” (Nebraska), said people often use the metaphor of not wanting to turn the park into Disneyland, but a more apt comparison is how closely Yosemite resembles a resort.

Concessionaires have been in Yosemite since its beginnings, as the federal government didn’t have the money to construct its own amenities in the 1850s, he said. Yosemite Hospitality, a subsidiary of hospitality giant Aramark, manages much of Yosemite’s lodging, dining and activities (including the park’s Starbucks inside the valley).

Childers, an associate professor of history at Colorado State University, said his concern is that, since the late 1970s, conservative intellectuals have pushed to privatize the park even further.

He said the chaos being created by the Trump administration through cutting park staff and ending the reservation system is “very intentional” in the quest to argue the only way to manage the park is to privatize Yosemite.

“If you privatize the entirety of a national park, that means that your only one measuring stick is profit, and arguably, national parks are not solely designed for profit,” said Childers, an environmental historian of the American West. “They’re for experience. They’re for democracy. They’re for preservation of natural resources.”

Vehicles stop to pay the fee at the El Portal entrance gate.

Vehicles line the road near El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

One of park officials’ most significant management challenges started when tourists began entering Yosemite by automobile. Since 1913, people could enter in a personal vehicle, but visitation numbers remained reasonable until 1926 when the “All Year Highway,” a segment of the 140 Highway, opened.

This new thoroughfare created an easy and direct route to reach the park by car that avoided steep mountain roads, according to park history. The road’s opening resulted in a near doubling of total cars visiting the park in just one year, park staff said in an Instagram post.

“The summer of 1927 has clearly demonstrated that parking is one of the most urgent, menacing problems of the entire Yosemite Valley,” said Don Tresidder, president of the Yosemite Park & Curry Co., that year, according to the park.

And has thus remained for 100 years.

The first attempt in recent years to get a handle on car traffic was the reservation system, implemented initially to spread guests out during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 but rolled out in 2021, 2022 and 2024 as the park service tested how to best employ it to cut down on traffic and help more visitors enjoy the park.

“Over the past decade, many parks have seen significant increases in visitation and crowding in popular areas, especially during peak seasons,” the agency wrote in 2024 as it sought public comments on park management. “In some parks, the level of demand is exceeding the capacity for which infrastructure was designed or is outpacing the National Park Service’s ability to sustainably support visitation.”

The park service planned to use visitor feedback and research to guide how reservations would be rolled out in 2025. Environmental and park advocates argued for the reservation system, saying that it not only protected the wildlife and land, but also that it was popular among guests.

But when Trump started his second term in office, not only did park management strategy change, so did the way the federal government viewed the park service. Hundreds of park workers were laid off, although some got their jobs back. Others took buyouts, and overall there was a 24% decline in permanent workers, according to the National Parks Conservation Assn.

One of the reservation system’s biggest critics is Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove), who said the system was decimating the economies of local gateway communities, the term used for the small mountain towns around Yosemite.

Parking lots are filled to capacity during peak hours, creating traffic congestion in Yosemite National Park.

“This is not to say that crowding in the valley hasn’t been a big problem, but the solution is better management and more capacity, not restricting access,” McClintock said on the House floor in June, noting the park had more parking, rooms and campsites before the 1997 flood destroyed infrastructure that he said wasn’t replaced.

Under the timed-entry system, visitors could still enter the park without a reservation if they arrived early — before 6 a.m. in 2021 and 2022 and 5 a.m. in 2024 — or after 4 p.m., and would be required to pay an entry fee for a three-day pass allowing them to reenter outside of peak hours.

But entering the park early or late in the day still wasn’t doable for everyone, including Ronny Shields, a father of two children from Ventura.

Shields, a lifelong Southern California resident, struggled to book a reservation when Yosemite implemented the system until he finally snagged one in 2024. His family had a great time and was eager to return.

In early June, Shields, his wife and kids, ages 4 and 7, made the trek back to Yosemite, staying outside the park at Tenaya at Yosemite in Fish Camp. Shields had researched and found information online suggesting the nearby southern entrance was less crowded.

His family arrived on a Saturday afternoon and entered the park without a wait. They found the valley was quieter than they’d ever seen it as people left.

Tourists stand in a meadow with a perfect view of Yosemite Falls.

For the rest of their trip, they entered the park before 8 a.m. or after 3 p.m., except for one day when they entered later in the morning and waited 40 minutes to enter. The other times, they found no wait.

Once inside the park before 8 a.m., their first stop was the Bridalveil Fall Trail, a short trek that takes visitors right to the base of the thundering cascade. When Shields and his family left the trail about 9:30 a.m., they noticed other guests couldn’t find parking.

They faced the same problem after they went to get food and then tried to park near the Lower Yosemite Falls trailhead. After 20 minutes, they found a spot — and joined the masses.

The trail “doesn’t feel like a hike — it feels like you’re in a crowded mall, but I think that’s the nature of the beast because it’s very short and very scenic,” Shields said.

Comparing his two visits to Yosemite, Shields said he preferred not having to deal with the reservation system, but that came with some caveats. He noticed far more visitors, although he’d expected even more. He saw more trash, several guests going off trail and trampling plant life, and far fewer park rangers to tell them to stop.

He said he didn’t see any park staff in the outdoor areas, and instead, he and his wife made sure to take their kids into the park’s buildings so they could speak to the rangers.

Tourists swim and play in the Merced River in Yosemite National Park.

“It’s nice for the kids to be able to ask questions and learn from people that love it,” Shields said. “Even I learned something.”

Jennifer Liu, a Moreno Valley resident, was at the park the same time frame as the Shields family and was able to mostly avoid the crowds on her backpacking trip through the park’s backcountry.

Liu meandered through the park using a few different trails, including the Sunrise Lakes route, to reach her ultimate destination: Half Dome on her birthday. She left her backcountry campsite about 4:30 a.m. to reach Half Dome by 6 a.m., catching the sunrise at 8,800-feet elevation from the granite monolith.

“I got lucky — the clouds cleared out and there was a nice sunrise,” she said.

Not in a hurry, Liu stayed at the top for four hours. Her fellow hikers sang her happy birthday, and she witnessed a couple get engaged.

Sunset over the Half Dome lookout in Yosemite National Park.

“By 10, when I headed back down, that’s when the crowd was starting to pick up,” Liu said, adding that she was grateful there was still space to navigate the dome’s cable system without being rushed by others.

As a means of crowd control, the National Park Service has attempted to funnel people out of the valley, where the majority of tourists spend their time and into its less frequented locations.

Park officials have tried to rebrand Hetch Hetchy, a massive reservoir surrounded by glacier-carved rock walls, by claiming that “many have compared Hetch Hetchy’s grandeur to the more well-known Yosemite Valley,” according to a recent update on the park’s website. (Previous versions of the Hetch Hetchy page made no such claim, according to archived versions of the website viewed through the Internet Archive.)

The park service doesn’t cite a source for such claims. California naturalist John Muir compared the two valleys’ beauties, but that was before Hetch Hetchy Valley was transformed by the O’Shaughnessy Dam into a massive reservoir.

“John Muir lost the fight over Hetch Hetchy, and the dam was built. And people who live in San Francisco today drink the water of Hetch Hetchy,” historian William Cronon said in the Ken Burns national parks documentary. “Muir died feeling that he’d been defeated by that, and that was a great tragedy at the end of his life.”

Still, Hetch Hetchy has long been whispered among Yosemite regulars as a place to find a little quiet.

That’s changed too.

An empty road under El Capitan in Yosemite Valley National Park.

“We used to have these secret spots we could tell people about,” said Elisabeth Barton, owner of Yosemite Basecamp in Groveland, which offers lodging, trips by local outfitters, gear and more. “‘Go to Hetch Hetchy,’ you’d say quietly and look over your shoulder. ‘Go to this waterfall’ or ‘Do this hike.’ … One of the things we’re noticing is, very quickly on a weekend, [the park] is sending out that alert that Hetch Hetchy is full or that Hetch Hetchy has ‘extreme visitation.’ It’s weird.”

Barton, whose company runs a visitor center in downtown Groveland, said there’s not much she and her team can recommend for people coming Thursday through Sunday into the park. It will be crowded regardless.

On a recent Saturday, Barton met a hiker who was devastated he couldn’t easily enter the valley without dealing with crowds. Barton let him in on a less popular trip that involved a great swimming hole, fish tacos at Whoa Nellie Deli, an adventure around Mono Lake and a drive through a stunning mountain pass. She recommended that he take a long way to reenter the park, enabling him to see the valley at a time he’d miss the crowds.

He called her a week later and told her to never recommend that to anyone ever again. He’d had a great day until he tried to reenter the park and instead waited four hours at the Tioga Pass in a line that stretched for miles. “You’re right, it was beautiful,” he told her, “but to what end?”

“I just wasn’t prepared for that,” Barton said. “It just broke me.”

Even sacred sites — with signage directing visitors away from the area — have been trampled by crowds.

The American Indian Council of Mariposa County, also known as the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, fought for decades to establish Wahhoga Village, which is an ancient village site and the last place that Indigenous people lived in Yosemite Valley before being driven out by the National Park Service.

Today, Wahhoga Village includes a traditional roundhouse, traditional cedar bark houses known as umachas and the only cabin that the park service didn’t burn when it evicted the remaining families from the site in 1969.

Wahhoga is not listed on Yosemite maps and is not intended to be used by those who aren’t either authorized or invited by the council to be there, said Deborah Tucker, a council member whose father advocated for years for Wahhoga.

But, Tucker said, in recent weeks, tourists have been found picnicking in the site. Hikers were tromping right through the middle of the village, led by a user-generated route on a popular outdoors adventure app, she said.

And while there, someone peed all over the village’s grinding stones, which are used for processing acorns into flour, along with other foods, said Tucker, whose father is Paiute and Shoshone and her mother was Choinumni, a branch of Yokut, tribes indigenous to the region.

Tourist beat the heat and float on tubes in a river in Yosemite National Park.

Under the current administration, “it’s a free-for-all,” Tucker said. “You can come up there and do what you want, park where you want and you’re disrupting not just sacred sites but other park sites that the park service has [established],” leading to littering and other pollution, noise that harms the birds and speeding cars that threaten the safety of bears and other wildlife.

Tucker said because the current administration seems fixated on money over conservation, she hopes that when people visit the park this summer, they will at least hold themselves accountable, showing respect for the land and its inhabitants.

“Clean up after yourself, maybe clean up after one another, and don’t take anything home with you that you didn’t bring,” Tucker said when asked what she’d say to the park’s visitors. “Enjoy that experience, and [you’re] welcome to come back again.”

LONDON is getting its very first ‘amazement’ park – and it’s set to be Europe’s largest immersive art experience.

Visitors to its other UK venue have dubbed it ‘dystopian Disney‘.

Wake The Tiger has announced it will open at London‘s Westfield on October 15.

The new indoor attraction will spread over two floors across 80,000sqft.

The experience is called Absurd City and will transport visitors to different districts which will be a “surreal, parallel world of imagination, transformation, and otherworldly art”.

Through the experience, visitors will discover secret passageways and see the new installations all in a makeshift cityscape.

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In a previous statement, Luke Mitchell, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer at Wake The Tiger, said: “This is a culmination of over 20 years of creative world-building, from the ground-breaking Boomtown Fair Festival to a new genre of immersive visitor attractions in Amazement Parks®.

“The space in Westfield London has totally blown our mind. It’s as if it was created for us and we can’t wait to transform it into an alternate dimension.”

Tickets have been released today and can be bought from £27.

On its website, the experience has also teased that ‘After Hours’ adult-only sessions will be held which will be on Thursday and Friday evenings.

It’s not the only one in the UK – the very first Wake The Tiger opened in 2022.

It calls itself the world’s first ‘amazement park’ and previous guests have raved about the attraction, with some comparing it to Disney.

One person who said he used to work at Disney said: “The Imagineers who create the rides would be in awe of this also.”

Another said: “Felt like a dystopian Disney land.”

In the Bristol venue, visitors can explore the world of Meridia which has 27 unique art installations including strobe lighting, hidden portals and doorways, and rooms with moving parts.

Tickets at the Bristol venue start from £16.50 for adults and £13.50 for children.

Kids under five go free.

HOLLYWOOD filmmaker Guy Ritchie has been given the go-ahead to create Airbnbs on his historic airfield.

The Brit director angered local residents with his scheme to turn staff accommodation at Compton Abbas Airfield in Dorset into holiday lets.

They have accused him of trying to build an “aviation theme park by stealth” and “by any means” with no consideration for he local environment.

They fear his ultimate goal is to have a hotel on the sensitive site which is in the Dorset National Landscape and part of the Cranborne Chase International Dark Sky Reserve.

The Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels director has already opened a smokehouse restaurant and re-routed a 130-year-old public footpath since buying the airfield in 2022.

He puts on Spitfire flight experiences and has turned the airfield into a popular visitor destination with events held throughout the year.

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Now his plans for two holiday apartments – one two-bedroom and one four-bedroom – have been won planning permission.

They will allow guests to stay overnight while they enjoy flying experiences during the day.

The airfield has had permission for a flat for live-in staff since 2005.

Locals argued this was for a member of staff to live on site to provide “security and safety”.

But Dorset Council disagreed and said there was no planning reason to refuse it.

Planning officer Jamie Francis said: “The owner has been open that they are seeking to generate additional income streams for the airfield, which would have personal gain, this is also considered to bring economic benefits to the area.

“Overall, the re-use of the building for tourist accommodation in place of staff accommodation is considered acceptable.

“A condition has been applied to ensure that the accommodation is used for short term lets only and not for permanent residential accommodation.

“The conversion of one unit of staff accommodation and one office unit to two units of holiday accommodation is considered acceptable.

“In addition, two units of accommodation to two units of holiday accommodation are considered acceptable.

“Therefore, the Council see no reason to refuse the application on this basis.

“The impact of holiday accommodation is anticipated to have a negligible impact on neighbouring amenity, air pollution, and the overall business of the airfield and flight activities.”

The airfield is near Ritchie’s Ashcombe Estate on the Dorset/Wiltshire border.

He previously shared Ashcombe House with ex-wife Madonna and now he and wife Jacqui split their time between their London home and the country estate.

He has hosted celebrity pals there, including David Beckham and Robert Downey Jnr.

Neighbour Christopher Dymond said the regular flying events caused a nuisance and disturbance to neighbours and likened going into his garden to “walking onto a WW2 film set”.

Mr Dymond said: “Compton Abbas Airfield, until recently, was a polite small grass airfield run for local flying enthusiasts and was managed carefully to reflect the incredibly sensitive location and the proximity of local villages.

“The airfield now is run on a much more commercial basis and largely by stealth is morphing into an aviation theme park with numerous events, shows and visitor attractions.

“The nuisance and disturbance to local residents has increased significantly and many of the historic planning restrictions governing the airfield are not being adhered to.

“Often, on a summer weekend, entering your garden is like walking onto a WW2 film set with noisy historic aircraft constantly flying overhead.

“The current apartment was only allowed on the basis it was an absolute necessity for a member of staff to be on site for safety and security reasons.

“If this safety and security requirement is no longer a necessity there are provisions in the planning legal agreements for the use to cease, not for it to be opened up for paying visitors to stay on the site, without any staff presence.”

Philip Cayford, a neighbour and member of the Compton Abbas Airfield Monitoring Group, said: “It began as a small private strip capable of hosting up to six small aircraft.

“It has long since been accepted that the original permission was a planning mistake; councils since that time have accepted the need to curb the expansion pushed for by successive owners.

“The current application would appear to be a further attempt to increase the size and profitability of this site by any means with no regard whatever for environmental issues or the inconvenience to local residents.

“Approving this application would constitute one further step in the commercial development of one of the most beautiful and sensitive rural landscapes in southern England, and as such is quite inappropriate.”

The Sun has approached Ritchie’s reps for comment.

Universal Studios Hollywood has long been slated to have the biggest theme park opening of 2026 with its new high-speed coaster, Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift. But with no officially announced opening date, questions have started to intensify and rumors have begun to swirl as to what may be causing the park to go radio silent on what is expected to be its centerpiece attraction.

According to Universal, there is no need for concern.

Yet speculation has zeroed in on the potential noise of the coaster as being a problem for residents of the nearby of Toluca Lake. Rumors were fueled Friday by Fox 11 Los Angeles reporting, via a since-deleted post on social media network X that Hollywood Drift’s opening had been delayed at least until the end of year due to neighborhood complaints. Videos of audible screams of riders on the coaster have gone viral in recent weeks.

A spokesperson for Universal said reports that the coaster’s opening is postponed until the end of 2026 are “not accurate” and disputed the notion that the coaster has been delayed. Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift, the spokesperson said, is still on target to open before the end of summer.

“We expect to announce an opening date soon,” read an official statement from the company. “The information online is incorrect.”

The summer season lasts through the end of September. The park begins its popular fall Halloween Horror Nights on Sept. 3. Tickets for the latter are currently on sale, and Universal is promising access to Hollywood Drift for those who purchase its line-skipping express pass, which starts at $259.

Sources familiar with the coaster’s operations have also disputed the notion that noise is a cause for the coaster having not yet opened, instead pointing to more routine mechanical issues that have arisen during its test and adjustment phase. One theme park insider, however, stressed that when Hollywood Drift does open, it will likely be considered a “top-5, or top-10 coaster, in the world.”

The view of Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift from Universal Studios Hollywood’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift is unique in that it is a 72 mph ride with vehicles created to rotate 360 degrees through multiple inversions. Designed to mimic the feel of stunt cars, its four-seated vehicles will twist and turn through banks in the track in an effort to create a drifting sensation.

Universal’s own website earlier this summer posted June 26 as an opening date, and while that was once the targeted launch, the date was quickly removed from the site. Universal began hosting media for walkthroughs of the coaster in May.

Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift has been in the works for than a decade. Built essentially on a cliff between the park’s upper and lower lots, the ride’s existence is a feat of engineering, and Universal has described it as among the most intense attractions in its global park portfolio.

Before land was moved, Universal began a series of tests to track how noise would travel through the surrounding neighborhood. Universal placed speakers on the old special effects and stunt buildings to see how ride screams traveled down the hill.

Ultimately, the tracks would be complemented with multiple sound walls and shields, the latter clear structures designed to block coaster rumbles and audience screams. And because the cars can rotate 360 degrees, Universal can in theory direct rider yells away from the studio below and the neighborhood nearby. The actual track has been filled with pea gravel, designed to minimize noise from any reverberations.

“It’s incredibly quiet,” said Jon Corfino, the lead creative at Universal Studios Hollywood. “We were able to do that by putting materials inside portions of the track to deaden the sound. I’m not sure we would have needed it, but it was important to do the right thing. It’s pea gravel and rocks. It’s quieter than I ever thought it was going to be.”

Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift isn’t the only notable coaster slated to open in Southern California this year. Buena Park’s Knott’s Berry Farm initially intended to launch its reimagined Montezooma’s Revenge, now known as Montezooma: The Forbidden Fortress, on Monday. Late last night, the park indefinitely delayed its public unveiling, with a spokesperson citing additional fine-tuning that surfaced during its final days of testing.

The delay is not expected to be a prolonged one.

“We appreciate everyone’s understanding and look forward to welcoming media and guests in the coming days when we can showcase the attraction exactly as intended,” read a statement from the park. Montezooma: The Forbidden Fortress has been in development for the past four years.

THIS popular East Yorkshire holiday park has undergone an epic multi-million pound transformation for 2026.

Skirlington Coast holiday park in East Yorkshire has received plenty of exciting additions this year, including a range of new activities – plus a brand new lido and waterpark to splash about in.

Even better, the holiday park is available to book as part of The Sun’s Holidays from £9.50, meaning you can bag yourself a seriously affordable stay to check out all the new upgrades.

The holiday park have invested 10 million pounds into upgrading its grounds and facilities, such as introducing a new bandstand and festival gardens.

But perhaps the most exciting new additions are its waterpark, lido and family activities.

The waterpark spans both indoor and outdoor areas, centred around two large swimming pools.

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Indoors, kids can splash about under the umbrella-shaped water feature, while grown-ups can unwind in the sauna or hot tub.

Outdoors, kids can burn off their energy on the Giant Aqua Bounce inflatable, while adults can sunbathe on a comfy lounger.

As well as the waterpark upgrades, the park have also opened up a brand new lido.

The large outdoor lido is the perfect place to cool off on a sunny day, but if the weather does take a turn, it is sheltered by a large yellow-striped roof.

Next to the lido there are plenty of colourful deck chairs, parasols, loungers and even some beach huts that give the area that seaside holiday feel.

The lido and outdoor waterpark sit in the Festival Gardens area, a brand new section of the holiday park which is filled with brightly-coloured decorations and pretty fairy lights.

Here you can grab a refreshing drink from the Festival Bar and soak up the scenery.

As well as housing the lido and outdoor waterpark, this area is also home to a brand new dog agility park – so if you like to bring your furry friend with you on holiday, this is the perfect place to teach them some new tricks.

The area also includes a new bike pump track, where younger children can zoom around a course and practice their skills on pump bikes that require no pedalling.

The other two zones within the Festival Gardens area are the outdoor playground and the activity tent, where you can have a go at new activities like axe throwing, rifle shooting and firing mini crossbows.

When it comes to food and drink, this park has plenty of options.

Grab a bite to eat at Sea Salt Fish and Chips to keep in line with the seaside holiday vibe, or tuck into a hearty full English breakfast at the cosy Wonky Donkey cafe.

Menus here are made with fussy eaters in mind, so expect lots of familiar favourites like burgers, pizzas, chips and nuggets.

Accommodation ranges from camping and touring pitches to well-stocked holiday homes split up into Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum categories.

The most simple Bronze caravan comes with a roomy open plan design with a modern kitchen and spacious living room, with a sofa that pulls out to turn into an extra bed.

The caravans also all come with central heating, double-glazed windows, Wi-Fi and beds made-up on arrival, so no need to worry about bringing your own linen like elsewhere.

The holiday park sits on Yorkshire’s beautiful, rugged coastline, with popular seaside town Hornsea a 10-minute drive away and Skipsea Beach just five minutes away.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is proposing to improve security around the White House by putting up a fence around nearby Lafayette Park to help limit public access when law enforcement authorities determine doing so is necessary.

The proposal is scheduled for consideration on Thursday by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, according to a meeting agenda and the plans posted on the agency’s website. The agency has oversight over the design of construction on federal land in Washington.

The commissioners are also set to take another look at the design for an underground facility to screen the thousands of tourists and others who visit or work at the White House. All seven commissioners were appointed by the Republican president.

The proposals are being considered at a time when security for the president has become a top concern. President Trump has been the target of multiple assassination attempts, including two during the 2024 campaign and a third this past April as he attended a dinner in Washington with White House journalists.

Those concerns were heightened the following month after U.S. Secret Service officers fatally shot a man who opened fire near a White House security checkpoint.

The administration says the projects will be an improvement over temporary structures that have long been used to aid perimeter security, like barriers fashioned out of bicycle racks, and for screening the many guests who access the White House and its grounds.

A look at both projects:

Lafayette Park last had a permanent fence in the late 1800s

Trump was accompanied by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on a recent tour of the park to see updates being made at his direction. The president has worked with the Interior Department and one of its agencies, the National Park Service, to restart dormant park fountains.

“We’re really doing a job at Lafayette Park, which is really the entrance to the White House, and that’s going to be completed very shortly and it’ll be incredible,” Trump said in June.

The administration’s 79-page proposal for the 8-acre (3-hectare) park calls for fencing it all the way around with gates at the north and south entrances to control public access. Options call for either including or excluding four monuments located at each of the park’s four corners.

The proposal, which is backed by the Secret Service and the Executive Office of the President, in coordination with the Interior Department and National Park Service, notes that leaving out the monuments would expose them to vandalism.

The report says the goal of the plan is to “enhance long-term safety,” preserve the Lafayette Park’s identity as a significant National Park Service landscape and “maintain public access to this nationally symbolic space.” Throngs flock to the park to protest or celebrate major events.

Lafayette Park has not had a permanent fence around it since the 19th century. The Secret Service anticipates the fence would start going up sometime next year.

The administration wants similar fencing along Pennsylvania Avenue on the north side of the White House complex, from the Treasury Department building at 15th Street to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at 17th Street. The report said that will be treated as a separate proposal and submitted to the commission at a later date.

White House visitor screening facility could replace currently used tents

The commission is set to review a revised design for the facility, which would be built beneath Sherman Park, federal land southeast of the White House, to support screening for public tour participants, guests attending large events, White House staff and contractors.

The original design called for locating the facility’s entrance at the southern end of the park, but meetings and consultations led to a revised proposal that shifted the entrance to the western edge of the park to avoid conflicts with infrastructure and minimize the impact on the surrounding views, according to the report submitted for the commission’s review on Thursday.

The administration said the permanent facility will eliminate the need for a series of temporary screening tents currently used for events, improve security on the White House complex and enhance the experience for visitors.

The Secret Service, Interior Department, National Park Service and Executive Office of the President want to start construction in August on the 33,000-square-foot (3,066-square-meter) underground facility. They have set a July 2028 date for it to be operating.

White House visitors would face an initial ID check before they enter the facility through a pavilion located above ground, then head down to a lower level and a second checkpoint. After they are cleared, visitors will ride escalators that will take them up to the White House grounds.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

Local residents living in the Lake District National Park have complained of visitors leaving litter and leaving tents behind after illegally wild camping on the banks of lakes

Wild campers and locals are going head-to-head in the UK’s best-known and most visited national park as overtourism tensions threaten to boil over.

Paths blocked by campervans. Discarded tampons and nappies. Dogs let loose on the fells. Sausages grilled in the shadow of ‘BBQs forbidden’ signs.

These are just some of the hundreds of complaints from locals fed up with what they see as unacceptable tourist behavior in the Lake District.

A great number of instances of littering, wildfires, and campers leaving equipment behind (known as fly camping) were logged in the Friends of the Lake District’s annual survey.

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“Some people have no social conscience and do not care about the impact of their behaviour on the environment or other people. We see litter on the fells, on lakesides and thrown out of cars onto grass verges. We even saw someone having a BBQ sat right next to a sign prohibiting it on Ullswater last year,” one unhappy local wrote in this year’s survey.

Another added: “I’m from the Lakes and have always appreciated the tourism and what it does for the area. However, I feel we have now got to the stage where tourism is over capacity and negatively impacting the area and the quality of life for residents and animals. Frequent traffic jams, poorly parked cars, and most upsetting of all, litter. Today we came across a discarded used nappy and a tampon. My children and I frequently go out with our litter pickers. It really saddens me to see the Lake District in environmental decline.”

It is difficult to know quite how acute the problem is. The surveys collect anecdotal evidence and solid figures on littering and anti-social behaviour are hard to come by.

What is undeniable is the shifting demographic of those coming. In 2018, 52% of visitors to Cumbria were under 50. By 2022, that’d risen to 74%.

Surprisingly, overall visitor numbers were down at the last count (2024) compared to both 2023 and the pre-Covid year of 2019. Roughly five million fewer people visited in 2024 than in 2019.

Jeremy Smith is head of campaigns and engagement at Friends of the Lake District. He believes that relations between visitors and locals have been tense since the Covid years, in part due to the changing nature of the tourists coming.

“With the increase in the number of people taking holidays in the UK, in terms of behavior, what may have been happening in Ibiza and Cyprus has been domesticated in places like the Lake District,” he told the Mirror.

Local laws were tightened earlier this year in response to resident complaints. Those causing environmental damage by littering, starting fires, or committing anti-social behaviour linked to camping or the “inappropriate use” of motorhomes can now be fined up to £100, under Westmorland and Furness Council public protection orders.

Wild camping rules are a little more complex. It isn’t legally permitted without landowner consent, but is widely tolerated if strict ‘Leave No Trace’ guidelines are followed. These require visitors to camp only above the highest fell wall (around 400m+), well away from roads and towns, stay for just one night, and never light a fire.

According to some locals, the rules are being flouted regularly.

“The path by the shore had a tent pitched in the middle of it, and when I politely pointed this out to the occupants, they swore at me aggressively,” one survey respondent wrote.

“People do not like to be questioned about leaving litter, loose dogs, motorbikes, it’s a sense of entitlement to do just as they like. There are very few authority figures, such as police or wardens. It should not be up to pensioners to police the park.”