Visitors with online bookings left high and dry as Wonderla shuts over licence expiry

Hundreds of visitors having online tickets were barred from entering Wonderla on Sunday after authorities ordered the amusement park to shut down saying its licence has expired.

The amusement park, located at Bidadi, off Mysuru Road on the western outskirts of Bengaluru, is a popular weekend getaway. Its licence expired in September 2020, and the management said it had applied for renewal three months earlier, in June. The authorities have neither accepted nor rejected the application.

The park, however, accepted online bookings for Sunday, arguing that current laws stipulate that if the licensing authority doesn’t dispose of the application within a month, the licence is deemed to have been granted to the applicant.

As a result, people from different parts of Bengaluru and other places booked the tickets online and arrived at the amusement park.

But the Ramanagara district administration directed the amusement park to not resume operations until its licence is renewed.

When visitors arrived, they found the park closed. Shocked and appalled, they sought an explanation from the management for keeping them in the dark about the closure and demanded an immediate refund.

Things became tense when the management sought a week’s time to refund the booking money. Police soon rushed to Wonderla and dispersed the crowd.

S Girish, Superintendent of Police, Ramanagara, said police security had been provided at Wonderla to maintain law and order but the situation was under control. “We have instructed the management not to take any fresh bookings until the renewal of the licence,” he added.

A senior representative from Wonderla said they applied for renewal of the licence a full three months before the expiry.

“Since then, we have been following up with the authorities for the licence renewal. As per current rules, if the licensing authority does not dispose of the application within the time specified (one month), the licence shall be deemed to
have been granted to the applicant.”

The representative further said that considering this rule and the fact that competent authorities did not raise any objection to the licence renewal application, Wonderla reopened its Bengaluru branch on November 13, 2020. In the previous month, Wonderla allowed free entry to 12,000 Covid warriors for four days, he added.

The Bengaluru branch would, however, remain closed as the local authorities had made it clear that they cannot resume operations until he licence is formally renewed, the representative stated.