Welcome to Digital Kent

View Synopsis AMANDA FISHER, Kent TV reports.

ALISON BATTLE, Founder, Lapland UK: ‘Christmas is such a special, special time and children visiting Father Christmas is such a magical experience for families, we felt somewhere in the UK had to do it absolutely beautifully -- perfectly -- and as a premier experience, so that's what we set about to do, it's too important a subject not to do properly.'

MIKE BATTLE, Founder, Lapland UK: ‘My wife is a primary school teacher of 20 years and we have four children. Alison and I set out to create a simple fantastic day out for a child and that was the motivation from the very beginning and remains the motivation today.'

Welcome to Lapland UK, deep in the heart of the Weald of Kent. What started as a simple idea for a quality day out for families looking for festive fun close to home has grown into a multi-million pound award-winning venture, occupying 12 acres of woodland on the Bewl Water Estate.

Now in its third year of operation, this recreation of a Nordic wonderland has no problem attracting thousands of visitors prepared to pay for the five hour experience, considering it cheaper and kinder to the environment than taking a plane to visit Father Christmas's mythical home in the Arctic Circle. As Lapland UK's popularity and reputation have increased, so have its imitators, with copycat theme parks setting up around the country, determined to cash in on Lapland UK's success.

ALISON BATTLE: 'I think the idea was such a powerful one to create Father Christmas's Arctic home here in the UK, other people thought they would emulate it. Most people who have tried don't dedicate their whole lives to doing that in a proper and just way; they generally tend to be funfairs or theme parks that add some tinsel and have likewise an Easter event, a Halloween event throughout the year. We're not.'

In 2008, a Christmas park in the New Forest in Hampshire left hundreds of families disappointed and some out of pocket when the experience failed to live up to their expectations.

ADELE RICHARDS: 'It was just really awful, it was really expensive as well, because once we got there we found there was a travelling fair attached to it as well, at which the children's eyes lit up, so that was more expense for us. When we saw Father Christmas, it was a two hour wait in the freezing cold, the hut was absolutely freezing, it was an experience that was invaded by everybody else, there was nothing private for the children as well, it was just atrocious.'

The national press had a field day with the story, but the adverse publicity had little affect on Lapland UK.

MIKE BATTLE: 'By the time the story broke, we had already sold out, so technically I suppose financially it didn't affect us. The reason it became such a big story was because they promised Christmas magic. A child's young belief in Father Christmas is the crown jewels of the family emotionally, and if you hand that over to a company, you've got to be pretty sure you know what they're doing and they understand, they get it, and sadly these other people didn't get it and the public quite rightly ran them out of town really, I suppose.'

That still left a lot of families feeling thoroughly let down. So the Battles teamed up with Heart Radio's Breakfast Show in Hampshire to this Christmas.

MIKE BATTLE: 'We ran some competitions and various things down in the New Forest to try to bring a

JULES, Breakfast Show Presenter, Heart FM Hampshire: 'We've got 200 listeners here today who've won the competition, and they've all come up today with their families and they are having an absolutely incredible time.'

BUNKER, Breakfast Show Presenter, Heart FM Hampshire: 'A lot of the people who've come to Lapland UK sadly have been on the flip side of the other cheaper versions that ran last year closer to us down on the south coast, and you can imagine that a lot of them have been burnt by that experience, they paid out a lot of money but within a couple of minutes of being here one of the mums said "This place is unbelievable, you know, after last year, our disappointment, all the money that we wasted, I didn't know what to expect today", and she was there, and her child was running around and smiling, which was great to start reinforcing the magic again for them.'

ANON, Female: 'Oh, it's fantastic, it's really, really nice, magical for the children, definitely.'

ALISON BATTLE: 'We don't consider ourselves to be a theme park at all. We are a Christmas event that is all year in the creating, and it saddened us to be perfectly frank about what happened last year very much to think that people would try to stamp all over you know a family's precious belief and children were the victims really, so very sad.'

ANON, Female: 'Oh, it's fantastic, it's such a lovely experience, really, really nice, magical for the children, definitely.'

BUNKER: 'The proof is in the pudding really. These children have travelled three hours all the way to get here, and they're absolutely loving it.'

ANON, Female (two): 'Brilliant, brilliant, really enjoyed it, yer, what about you Blake?'

BOY FROM HAMPSHIRE: 'Very, very, fantastic.'

BUNKER: 'Something like this would be an absolute hit down on the south coast, it would you know for the people of Hampshire, you know, West Sussex, Dorset, if something like this was a lot closer to home, you know, half an hour, an hour's drive, you know, you'd be fighting people off. I'm sure, and when the word gets around just how good it is, and the quality and the detail, I'm sure people would love it, definitely.'

ANON, Female (two): 'Hallo from Lapland!'

JULES: 'It's just so amazing, I can imagine every child that comes here is going to believe and have such amazing memories to take away with them. And I want to be a kid again, I feel I should be a child again here.'

FATHER CHRISTMAS: 'Have a lovely time.'