A DELABOLE family who spent £355 on tickets to visit a Lapland-style theme park were shocked and disappointed to find out it had closed down after numerous complaints.

Lapland New Forest opened at the end of November on the Hampshire-Dorset border but was criticised by hundreds of visitors.

Brenda Burnard of Delabole said she booked 14 tickets to the theme park at the beginning of November as a Christmas treat for her grandchildren and to celebrate her wedding anniversary.

She said: "It would have been our 28th wedding anniversary. We were going to go on Sunday, December 7 and take the family.

"It sounded so lovely on their website so we thought we'd go and celebrate by taking them all there."

Mrs Burnard heard about the park from neighbours who had seen it advertised in a newspaper: "We had a look on their website and it looked lovely. The snow scenes were supposed to be by the same people who made the scenery for Narnia."

Since booking the tickets, Mrs Burnard said her grandchildren had been getting very excited about the trip.

However, when her son read the negative comments people had written on social networking site Facebook about the park, he did not know how to break it to his parents.

Mrs Burnard said: "Then we saw on the news what it really looked like and it was awful, very disappointing.

"We rang Consumer Direct to ask for advice and they said that at that time it was still open to the public and unless we went all the way up there and saw for ourselves that it wasn't up to our expectations there wasn't anything legally we could do.

"If we went up there we would have a legal right to claim that it wasn't as advertised. But there was no point travelling all that way, the children would have been so disappointed so we decided that we would not do that."

However by the end of the week the park had closed down.

A statement from Victor Mears, director of Lapland New Forest, was published on the website. It read: "With my deepest regret and sincerest apology I am left with no option but to announce that I am forced to close the children's entertainment theme park Lapland New Forest for 2008.

Mr Mears said it was due to: "Intentional organised crowd manipulation and event sabotage during and since our first trading weekend."

Mrs Burnard said: "Consumer Direct said that now we could send a letter to say that we would like a full refund as they had been in breach of their contract. We sent a letter, very polite, and said how many tickets we'd bought and for what date and asked for a full refund in reasonable time.

"Now we'll have to wait and see if we get a reply."

Looking on the bright side, Mrs Burnard said: "At least we didn't actually get up there and all the children be disappointed."

She added: "We're hoping we can look for somewhere else locally to take the children and see Father Christmas, something special."

Giving advice to others who may have bought tickets for Lapland New Forest, Mrs Burnard said: "Consumer Direct were helpful and gave us advice."