‘Rip-off’ Christmas markets have left British families furious after a single festive day out cost more than a summer holiday abroad.
The eye-watering prices at some of the nation’s most popular winter events have reportedly left some people shelling out almost £800 on food, tickets and activities.
At Nottingham’s festive market, one family was left blown away after being charged a staggering £618 for just two hotdogs.
Laura Brumpton, 34, and her husband Alan, 37, were left with the eye-watering sum following an error by a stallholder when they bought two treats for their children.
Ms Brumpton – who claims she is still waiting for a refund on the hotdogs, which were meant to cost £18 – said: ‘It was just a very expensive family day out.’
In Scotland, families shelled out £50 for a 150-second ‘interactive’ train ride, while visitors to Winchester’s winter wonderland could splash out £2,750 on a lavish wood carving of a stag.
In London, comedian Daniel O’Reilly, 39, was horrified by the cost of the capital’s famed Winter Wonderland event after reportedly spending £775 on day out.
The influencer went to the Christmas fair in Hyde Park with his wife Shelley and his three daughters and revealed the ‘gobsmacking’ cash he splurged there, which he said could have paid for an all-inclusive trip to Benidorm.
In London, comedian Daniel O’Reilly (pictured), 39, was horrified by the cost of the capital’s famed Winter Wonderland event after reportedly spending £775 on day out
Mr O’Reilly told his army of 1 million followers: ‘Here’s how much it really costs for a family day out in London at Winter Wonderland!’
While in Nottingham, Laura Brumpton from Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, was left stunned after mistakenly being charged £618 for two hotdogs – and claims she has yet to receive a refund
In series of video clips to his one million-strong army of followers, the comedian gives viewers a breakdown of his spending where he splashed out on over-priced funfair rides, festive food and costly drinks.
‘Today we’re off for a day out in London at Winter Wonderland. Now I heard it was expensive, so I decided to document every single pound we spend,’ he said.
‘So if you want to know how much it really costs these days to take your family out in London, watch to the end. You’re gonna be absolutely gobsmacked.’
In one part of the video Mr O’Reilly’s children visit the funhouse as he jokes: ‘£15 quid to go on that one. Funhouse? you could have bought a house.’
He also appeared visibly shocked at the price of four crepes which set him back a staggering £32.
Concluding the video, he said at the end: ‘Right, time to tally it up.
‘We’ve got about £425, but then when you add parking at £25, the train tickets for a family, which comes to £125 and the £200 Shelley managed to spend, we get to a grand total of £775.
‘That’s nearly £800, which is more than enough to get an all inclusive holiday for your family in Benidorm…Was it worth the money? Was It b*******? This country is f*****.’
Big Brother star Daniel O’Reilly – who goes by Dapper Laughs – took to TikTok to document his experience at London’s Winter Wonderland
Mr O’Reilly spent £775 at Winter Wonderland. He said: ‘That’s nearly £800, which is more than enough to get an all exclusive holiday for your family in Benidorm. Was it a good day out? Of course, it was.’ But he added: ‘Was it worth the money? Was It b*******? This country is f*****’
Pictured is London’s Winter Wonderland where pints were flogged for as much as £12 each
Hot dogs at London’s Winter Wonderland cost as much as £16, as they were served by venders with fancy toppings
Pictured are some of the rides at London’s Winter Wonderland’s in the centre of the capital
And it’s a similar story in Scotland’s capital city of Edinburgh, were punters have branded the Christmas market as a festive ‘rip-off’.
The wintry attraction at Princes’ Street Gardens pulls in thousands of people each year and has previously been named one of the best markets in Europe.
Organisers bring in a massive Ferris wheel and chair swings for thrill-seeking revellers to soar above the city, while dozens of stalls sell food, drinks and gifts.
But punters this year savaged the annual spectacular, branding it overpriced, overcrowded and ‘void of any Christmas atmosphere’.
In a series of brutal one-star reviews, fuming visitors blasted the attraction with some saying they felt ‘herded like cattle’, with 216 people giving it one-star reviews on Tripadvisor, compared to 153 two and three-star ones and 89 of four or fives stars.
Edinburgh’s Christmas Market was this year blasted by punters in a series of scathing reviews
Pictured is a police car by part of the Christmas market in Edinburgh
One savage review read: ‘Overpriced tat. This market somehow manages to get worse each year.
‘Everything costs a fortune and the place is void of any sort of Christmas spirit.
‘If you want to feel like a herd of Cattle and be fleeced of all your money then this is the place to go. Nothing like an actual German market.’
Another TripAdvisor post read: ‘Everything is overpriced, and everything that doesn’t cost has been removed. Compared to the time I went five years ago, it was just awful.’
It was a similar story this year for Britain’s biggest German Christmas market, which was branded a ‘rip-off’ for charging £21 for a beer and a hotdog.
Revellers attending Birmingham’s Frankfurt Christmas Market lashed out after prices went up to an all-time high when it opened on Friday, November 1.
Those attending the market found themselves paying London-esque prices for steins of beer – £12.50 for a large, two-pint Hofbrau – and authentic continent-style bratwurst, which cost £9 at a time.
The Frankfurt Christmas Market in Birmingham was blasted when it opened – with people saying they will boycott the attraction due to high prices
Two-pint steins of German wheat beer Hofbrau cost £12.50 in Birmingham while a half-metre-long Bratwurst is priced at £9
Stan Felton (pictured) poses next to a board at Birmingham’s Christmas market showing the pricing rules
But the event was also fiercely criticised for not allowing visitors to buy more than one drink per transaction – stopping them from getting a round in.
Organisers said this was to combat underage drinking, but visitors fumed that it meant they would have to spend their time ‘standing about in the cold’.
Regular visitor John Beard, 35, said: ‘People are watching the pennies more than ever and don’t want to spend nearly a tenner on a sausage. You can blow about £50 in 10 minutes.’
Others were less fussed, including Stan Felton, who said: ‘I think the one drink rule is ok. It’s like one wife, one car, one home – you don’t need more than one thing at a time sometimes.’
The market was crowned best in the UK in 2023, before the one-drink rule was introduced.
Elsewhere, a Grinch-themed ride at Glasgow’s WinterFest was slammed as a ‘rip-off’ by angry parents, which lasted just one minute despite costing £5 a head.
The Grinch Christmas Adventure ride-on appears to have been adapted from a fairground ghost train ride.
The Grinch Christmas Adventure ride in Glasgow has been hit by angry parents calling it a rip-off
The ride takes children down dark corridors sparsely furnished with a few Christmas decorations
The Grinch wears an ill-fitting Santa suit, has washing up gloves for arms and appears to be sporting a Bag For Life
But the spooky spectres inside have instead been replaced with an assortment of Christmas decorations – and tawdry looking Grinch merchandise.
The end of the ride features the Grinch himself – or rather, a mannequin with a wispy beard, a Grinch mask in an unflinching stare, an ill-fitting Santa suit and off-colour gloves.
The haunted-looking life-size doll is also carrying, for some reason, a bag for life featuring its a pattern of Grinch faces and logos.
Writing on TikTok, mother Katy O’Brien said the ride should be ‘shut down’, while another user said: ‘I’m obsessed with the fact that they’re just took a ghost train and stuck a load of Grinch Home Bargains gear in it.’
Much of the merchandise appears to have been hung tactically to disguise the glow in the dark skulls that adorned the walls of the ghost train ride this has been adapted from.
The organisers of Glasgow’s WinterFest event said they had been sent images of how the ride would look from the ‘outside’ – and have asked the operators to give the inside a sprucing up.
The end of November also saw Bury St Edmunds launch a ‘Christmas Spectacular’ – which locals said failed to live up to the name – with organisers pulling the plug on it after just two days.
A ‘Christmas Spectacular’ in Bury St Edmunds was anything but as residents said it did not live up to organisers’ promises
It was due to run for three weekends with fairground rides, a Santa’s grotto, ice-skating, reindeer, face painting and food.
But visitors said it was decidedly unfestive and that the only ride ‘didn’t look safe’.
The reindeer, meanwhile, looked ‘extremely sad’, while the converted train carriage that was used as Santa’s grotto and the bare pine trees only added to the miserable atmosphere.
The less said about the tent which gave visitors bales of hay to sit on the better.
In all, it prompted comparisons with the Willy’s Chocolate Experience in Glasgow earlier this year for failing to deliver on its promises.
Organisers initially said the event had been cancelled due to the weather, but later admitted they shut the gates due to ‘negative feedback’.
‘Unfortunately, we’ve been really up against it with the numerous storms, wind and extremely wet weather conditions during the site build,’ they said.
‘Our fairground supplier has been stuck in the Wales floods and a number of our Christmas market traders pulled out off the back of this.’
A converted train carriage served as Santa’s grotto, lined with decidedly unfestive Christmas trees
One tent was set up with a projector and hay bales for seating. Organisers pulled the plug after just two days
Fuming parents who forked out £50 for Crieff Hydro’s Christmas event in Scotland were left bitterly disappointed after an ‘interactive train ride’ turned out to be a projection of animals onto a screen.
Single mother Danica Archibald took her one-year-old daughter Florence to see the event near Perth, Scotland at the end of November, but found the event lacking.
In all, she paid £50 for tickets for herself, her sister, mother and daughter – and found the food was just as pricey
The ‘winter wonderland’ consisted of four stalls, an ice rink and a snowflake projector – as well as the train ride featuring a video of winter animals.
She said: ‘We get on the train and you went into a tent where they played a video for two minutes and 30 seconds. It was a projection onto the wall.
Danica Archibald and her daughter Florence at the Crieff Hydro Christmas event, which she described as a disappointment
The ‘interactive’ train ride turned out to be a projected video of winter animals on a wall
She also criticised the lighting, which had been strung along the hotel grounds’ existing shrubs
‘It was like a YouTube video – it was a slideshow of polar bears and reindeer. Then the train went out of the tent onto the light path.
‘At this point we were really annoyed that we’d spent £50 to watch a video on a wall.’
More than a third of visitors gave the experience a rating of one out of five on Scottish voucher website Itison.
The Crieff Hydro said in response: ‘We are aware of a small number of visitors who felt disappointed by the train experience, and we aim to learn from that feedback for future events.’
Elsewhere, locals in Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester have all reported seeing the cost of their annual trip to their local market soar this year in an un-festive continuation of the cost-of-living crisis.
And in smaller rural areas like Canterbury, Winchester and Exeter, locals have said that their Christmas markets are a pain they can do without.
Due to the increased footfall of shoppers in their town centres, some locals have said the markets make their areas unnavigable during the festive season.
Sadly, in Exeter this increase in crowds has led to more anti-social behaviour and petty crime blighting the festive vibes.
Locals living in the shadow of Britain’s biggest Christmas markets claim the annual Bavarian tradition is being tainted. Pictured is Liverpool’s fair this year
Residents in Manchester have reported seeing the cost of their annual trip to their local market soar this
In Exeter, locals say the market has led to more anti-social behaviour and petty crime blighting the festive vibes
MailOnline spoke to customers at events across the UK to get a flavour of how expensive the average annual trip has become and whether Britain’s love affair with Bavarian style markets had come to an end.
Historic Winchester’s twee Christmas market was branded an ‘over-priced, over-rated’ tourist trap as it rolled out this year’s holly, tinsel and lights.
Locals said the collection of wooden chalets around the city’s historic cathedral was an emporium of ‘expensive tat’ rammed with coach loads of day-trippers.
Organisers say Winchester has one of the best Christmas markets in Europe and attracts thousands of visitors with its festive ambience, carol singing and aroma of mulled wine.
But MailOnline found there were distinctly mixed views about the German-inspired trading centre which has been a fixture for nearly 20 years.
Even fans of the event said they never bought anything because its stalls charge too much for food, drink and luxury items which few people have a use for.
LONDON: Huge queues reached up Hyde Park’s paths outside the event as hundreds of punters waited for it to open
LONDON: Festive fanatics formed stretching lines as they scrambled to make the most of the first event’s first day
Among the premium-rated goodies on sale were mulled wine for £9.50 a glass, mead for £8.50 and cider at £8.50.
Alcohol-free mulled wine could be snapped up for £5 a glass and a pint of Camden Hells lager or Pale Ale was on sale for £7 a pint.
Cups of hot chocolate with marshmallow and cream were on sale for £4.50, a flat white coffee cost £4, soft drinks £2 and mince pies £2.50.
Really peckish visitors could take advantage of German bratwurst for £8, or non-festive fast food including BBQ chicken for £12 a portion and margerita pizza for £11.
Among the lavish fancy goods on sale was a carved wooden stag for £2,750, a male figure for £600 and a donkey for £575.
Peter Lovesey, who runs Winchester’s all-year market in the High Street, said: ‘It’s the same stuff every year, over-priced, over-rated – seriously, 100 per cent.
‘I’ve been round it with friends but I’ve never bought anything because it’s too expensive. A mulled wine and a mince pie for two is like £18.’
Local resident Pauline Chapman, 73, added: ‘We’ve just walked around it now. It is much of a muchness.
‘We had a look round, it’s very nice but we looked at the prices and they’re a bit high. I understand why it’s a bit more expensive but no we wouldn’t buy anything.
In Newcastle, a city famous for its cheap food and drink, customers have been left reeling by the rip off prices at the Christmas market including £19 for a Greek platter and £12.50 for a burger.
In Newcastle, a city famous for its cheap food and drink, customers have been left reeling by the rip off prices at the Christmas market
Newcastle’s Grainger Street and Grey Street is home to more than 35 festive stalls
Families trawling the stalls in the city centre say they would rather purchase a supermarket meal deal than fork out nearly £10 for an expensive duck wrap.
The city’s Grainger Street and Grey Street is home to more than 35 festive stalls but locals have dubbed it as ‘too small’ and that it leaves Christmas shoppers paying hand over fist for overpriced grub.
Geordies are being forced to fork out a massive £7 to sip on a pint of Camden Stout at the enclosed tipi-style Moosenwirt bar.
A chicken shish platter would set you back a massive £15 and a large Greek platter consisting of chicken, chips, pita, salad and sauces, is an eye-watering £19.
At one hut, foodies can get their hands on a Yorkshire pudding wrap which includes roast meat, vegetables, stuffing and gravy – and it comes with a price-tag of £12.
Families looking to chow down on a burger and chips will have to shell out £12.50.
One stall is flogging loaded duck fries which is covered in meat, hoisin, sesame seeds, spring onion and garlic mayo for £9.50.
Visitors to Manchester’s Christmas Market have also complained that it’s ‘too expensive’ as they raged about the high prices for food and drink – with burgers selling for £13.
The market is one of the largest in the UK and featured 200 stalls spread across nine locations selling the usual seasonal treats such as mulled wine and bratwurst as well as clothes, craft items and handmade gifts.
But the cost of some items, including £10 for a Yorkshire pudding wrap and £5 for a ‘cold’ pie has led to accusations that stall-holders are overcharging and taking advantage of visitors’ Christmas spirit.
While some visitors said they ‘expected to pay more’ for food and drink others bemoaned the high prices and ‘small portions’.
Dave Smith, 38, and his friend Harriet, 37, were visiting he market from Chorley, in Lancashire, and had eaten corn dogs costing £5 and apple crumble for £7.
MANCHESTER: Mia and Debbie Shoesmith were shocked by the high prices of the seasonal event
MANCHESTER: Prices in the Manchester market have been branded ‘ridiculous’
‘I think some stall-holders can put up their prices and get away with it here,’ Dave said. ‘It does seem a bit expensive.
‘And some of the stuff comes in tiny portions.’
Chinese students Zhiyan Zou, 27, and Wenxuan Wong, 22, who are studying at the University of Manchester, admitted they were being careful not to spend too much and were ‘only eating, not drinking’.
Zhiyan had paid £10 for beef and Yorkshire pudding in a tray while Wenxuan had bought a Pistachio Croissant which cost £7.50.
Wenxuan admitted many items seemed ‘really expensive’ while Zhiyan – who had visited the week before – had thought twice about coming back for the same reason.
‘We are just buying what we really want and nothing else,’ she said.
‘I think the market is bit expensive.’
