Until about 1992 the park was still very much as you remembered it. A lovely place to stroll around with the kiddies on a warm summers evening with the illuminations and a lovely atmosphere. And best of all, free.
The a handful of IDIOT councillors from Lancaster dedcided to let Noel Edmonds' Crinkley bottom company get their hands on it and subsequently destroy it. They turned it into one of several so called Crinkley Bottom theme parks dotted up and down the country. It was an unmitigated disaster and lasted all of six weeks with people demanding their money back every night. My husband and I went with two under five's one evening and were charged �15 admiitance, the highlight of the whole experience was this blobby character coming out of his 'house' every so often and going 'Blobby blobby blobby'. They ripped everything out 9of that park that was nice and turned it into this CB nightmare. We demanded and got our money back, and it closed a week or so later.
However such was the negligence of the council in putting the deal together, Noel Edmonds had to be paid �1.5million in contractual penalties, which took the poor morecambe council tax payers over 10 years to clear, and of course in that time there was never any money to put the park back to the way it had been before, and to this day it is still a sorry story, compared to it's glory days when you remember it.
Try Morecambe library, they might have a photo archive.