Jonathan Ruff, the owner of the attraction, has moved to reassure Islanders that it will be reopening – hopefully in time for the school summer holidays.
The park closed for refurbishment last week – just ahead of the May half-term.
Tambaexperience.co.uk says the park will be ‘back open soon’ but their Facebook page said on Thursday that it was ‘closed permanently’. The removal of a large animatronic dinosaur in the arrivals hall at Jersey Airport further fuelled speculation about the attraction’s demise.
Mr Ruff told the JEP in May that the park was due to be closed for about ‘six weeks’ and changes to the play area and Dino Trail were being made.
Responding to the latest speculation, he said: ‘I think people have got over-excited. To be honest, I hit the wrong button on Facebook that said we were closed. I think I have changed that now, so there is nothing to worry about.
‘We had to take the dinosaur out of the Airport because people would land and come to the park and we don’t want to waste anyone’s time. This [the closure and refurbishment] is a lot of messing around but it is what it is. We want to be open for summer and there are always holidays happening. The half-term break doesn’t really make any odds for us.’
Asked about staff, he said: ‘We are running on a small full-time crew and most others are zero-hour contracts. We are looking at restructuring when we re-open and are due have a new park manager and a new assistant manager, which is all part of the plan.’
He added: ‘There’s going to be some big changes to the Dino Trail… we’ll leave it at that. We are keeping the [closure time] quite open – it could be six to eight weeks. It will open when it opens.’
