A trip to Oakwood Theme Park is almost a compulsory part of growing up in Wales.
Whether you went by coach on a school trip or as part of a family caravan holiday on the coast, it was almost like an annual pilgrimage. There are few who managed to reach adulthood without a trip to Wales' largest theme park, in Pembrokeshire.
Walking around on a sunny day in April, a month when the Pembrokeshire tourism industry starts to ramp up for the "summer madness", everything is familiar.
The names of the ride - Megafobia, the pirate ship, the bobsleigh - feel like old friends. The crazy golf is still there, Waterfall - with it's famous tag line 'don't forget you may get wet' - hasn't changed one bit and deep in the woods in the darkest corner of the park, Treetops still snakes around the conifer trees.
But there is one unsettling difference. There are no people. No screaming children. No wafts of frying doughnuts or chips. The rides are silent, the slides are dry.
This is Oakwood in the grip of lockdown, and it is a sad sight for park director Phil Verbienne.
The park has been shut since November 2019 and he is not sure it will get a chance to open at all this summer.
It costs more than £1m to keep the park ticking over through the winter. The Easter holidays are the first "test" and essential to get the money flowing back through the tills. July and August are the key months as thousands of families flock to the park.
For Phil, it's the uncertainty which is the hardest thing to handle when it comes to running the business.
"I can't see us being allowed to open until the schools are back open," he shrugs. "If we don't get July and August, there won't be much point opening for September and October."
On a personal level, he says it's "heart breaking" to come in to work every day and see the park sitting there, ready to go but entirely empty.
"It would have been the first dry opening weekend since I have worked here too," he says resignedly.
Like many tourist attractions in Wales right now, he is ruing an opportunity lost. He was looking forward to telling his bosses at ASPRO, Oakwood's parent company, he had had a bumper Easter week thanks to glorious sunshine.
Lockdown was announced the day the rides were being inspected ahead of Oakwood's official opening on April 6. The Megafobia train is still ready on the tracks, the sleds are lined up on the bobsleigh and the freshly painted planes in Neverland gleam in the sun.
Waving to Dizzy Disk, the latest addition to the park, Phil points out it is an investment that "needs to be paid for".
It is a surprisingly tranquil and pretty place to be in the spring sunshine. "The park always looks good in the sun, but pretty miserable in the pouring rain," Phil admitted.
The 34-year-old always wanted to work in theme parks, ever since he was a boy. He joined Oakwood in 2016. He talks with pride as he describes how the park is readied for the new season all through the winter.
Phil is in charge of the core team of around 25, made up of engineers, maintenance workers and others. In peak season, the workforce mushrooms to over 200-strong.
"It's hard work through the winter, but the reason we do it is to be open for summer," he said. "That's what I do it for - to send children home with smiles on their faces. That's job done for me."
Phil is confident Oakwood will see through whatever comes its way during the coronavirus pandemic. It has an "enduring appeal" as people return as adults, perhaps with their own children in tow, determined to relive their childhood memories and create new ones.
Phil added: "People do come back and are disappointed when everything seems smaller than they remember.
"One guy was adamant that Treetops was much bigger when he was a kid and that we must have made it smaller.
"I asked him if perhaps he was the one who had grown instead - but he wouldn't accept that."
