LONDON: Angry parents have beaten up Santa and three of his elves after taking their children to visit a "rip-off" Christmas grotto in England.

Visitors who forked out £30 ($69) a ticket to enter the grotto were promised a Christmas wonderland where "dreams really do come true".

However disappointed families have spoken of a "glorified car boot sale" with a Nativity scene painted on a billboard, a broken ice-skating rink and huskies tied up outside their kennels in a muddy field.

Former gate worker Adrian Wood said parents became angry when Santa refused to allow children to sit on his knee and charged an extra £10 for a picture.

Emma Craven, who worked as an elf, was slapped in the face by one woman who was fed up with the long wait for her children to see Santa. "The woman was screaming, 'Look what you've done to my kids'," she told the newspaper. "Then she slapped me around the face. It stung like hell as it was freezing."