Once we’d gotten back from our European road trip, I had the travel bug so almost immediately we started talking about our next visit. We eyed up Legoland Billund, Tivoli Gardens and Liseberg but settled on Portaventura World.
This is the first time we’ve flown to a park and my first experience with Ryanair. I wasn’t expecting a very good experience with Ryanair as I’ve heard of lot of negative things about budget airlines but we found it to be quite straightforward. We paid for additional bags (and priority boarding which comes with those) as I was worried we’d struggle to get everything in both our allowed carry on bags.
Not once were our bags physically checked for size or weight which wouldn’t have mattered as all our baggage was within all the limits. I was told it was very strict but found it to be overstated. Maybe it was just this flight, I’m sure we’ll see in future!
We flew from Leeds Bradford and short of going to a check-in desk unnecessarily, we were straight through security and into duty free. A bit of waiting around later and we’re walking across the tarmac to board the plane and set of for Spain!
Onboard the flight, I found the seats to be quite comfy and had room enough for my legs. It was quite a warm flight as the overhead blowers are fairly asthmatic on any flight I’ve been on but other than that, it was uneventful.
Landing at Reus airport was pleasant and we even got a sneak peak of Portaventura from the runway too. We had a small wait at passport control before following the crowd and finding a lovely gentleman with a board with our name on it! This was about the only thing I even remotely worried about as I wasn’t sure how we’d find our transport to the hotel. He directed us to a travel agency’s booth and they told us the bus number and in so we headed off to board the bus to the hotel!
At the hotel we checked in easily as I’d already done online check-in (which was available up to 5 days before arrival). We got our room keys and a card with a QR code on it and headed to the room to see what it was like.
We were probably the furthest away from reception but fairly close to the pool. The rooms do indeed have air-conditioning, though it isn’t quite as powerful as it is in say Mexico or America but it was serviceable and kept us from melting too much!
While exploring the room, we found a little mould in the bathroom and when we tried the shower it blew the head right off the wall but literally as we’d finished cleaning up the water, the room’s phone rang and it was reception doing a courtesy call to check if everything was ok. We explained about the shower and they couldn’t have been more happy to help!
As the maintenance man didn’t need us there, we had tea in the buffet restaurant before heading into the park for a few hours to see what it was like!
I’ll go through Portaventura as a whole in the next blog as there is so much to see and do. We ended up getting on a few rides on Stampida, Dragon Khan and El Diablo before heading back to the start of the park to watch the parade and end of day show.
We were not expecting quite as big a welcome as the parade and FiestAventura gave us. Standing by the lake, with a tasty cold beer watching the fireworks, the water displays and the floating puppets performing their routines was right up there with something I will never forget. It was magical, and felt special. Efteling levels of special. It set us up for a very special and amazing few days at a fantastic park!
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