Fairytale Farm

About

Mixing classic fairy tales, animals and adventure play, children will love Fairytale Farm. With our exciting adventure playground, an enchanted walk with a surprise around every corner and a chance to meet our amazing animals, there is so much to see and do. It is a sensory and learning wonderland for all the family.

Autism friendly

We offer a positive sensory friendly experiences along our trail. It is uncluttered but contained within boundaries with transitional spaces and quick escape routes. We are 90% outdoors offering natural light. The visitors are in control of sound and stimulation using push buttons on the attractions. There is space to let off steam in the playground and animal areas. Our animals are friendly, calm and approachable to feed or handle and we provide choice to feed the animals by hand or scatter and watch. Our inside space has calming colours with no overwhelming patterns and our café food is prepared before service, so no overwhelming food smells.

Fun at the Farm

Race a rubber duck along our pump-powered waterway or see a family of mice going about their daily business in our beautifully crafted indoor model village. Where else can you meet mermaids, rabbits, sleeping beauty, alpacas, rheas, sea horses, ducks, chickens and magic?

And make some time for the Beanstalk Café, serving freshly ground coffee, locally baked cakes and home made meals.

New for 2022

There are a whole host of new attractions at Fairytale Farm opening in 2022, with our biggest ever investment in new developments:

Explore our magical new indoor play area, Rapunzel's Kingdom, themed around a fairy tale forest, with castles, slides and fairy houses to visit, role playing and interactive features. Now open.

From February 2022 we open our brand-new Combine Harvester, with two levels, multiplay activities and a slide, it is perfect for imaginary farm play!

Also from February 2022 step inside our new Musical House. Operate the fairground organ or the brass band – everything is people-powered!

New for Summer 2022 is our brand-new dinosaur-themed area, Dino Valley, with a collection of life-sized (but very friendly) dinosaurs. 

Our Story

Nick and Nicola Laister, whose eldest daughter Olivia has cerebral palsy, had always wanted to visit an attraction that catered equally to children with and without disabilities. Like a large proportion of families with a severely disabled child, Nick and Nicola had children who were not disabled too. Although there are a number of centres for disabled children, these tended to be somewhat institutional, always requiring advance booking and they don't really provide for the children who are not disabled, leaving them somewhat on the sidelines. On the other hand, most mainstream visitor attractions (theme parks, zoos, farm parks) do their best to accommodate disabled children but are generally not fully accessible, leaving the disabled child on the sidelines.

Nick and Nicola noted that there was no provision in this middle ground - an attraction that the whole family can enjoy together, whether disabled or not disabled, where no pre-booking was required. Nobody seemed to be filling this huge gap in the market. Noting that there were very few rural facilities for disabled children and their families, and that much of the countryside is effectively out of bounds, they decided to build an inclusive farm-based attraction, which would be the first of its kind in the UK.

Nick and Nicola decided to create a visitor attraction that everybody could visit - whether disabled or not - but where disabled children and their families would not be left on the sidelines. Their vision was to create the sort of attraction that they would have liked to have visited with their own children, which Olivia could have enjoyed alongside her brothers and sister.

Nick's experience as a planning and development advisor to a large number of visitor attractions around the UK meant that he had an insight into the attractions industry and could use his professional experience, as well as his experiences with his own family, to create something truly unique.