For our holiday this year we once again looked at a UK road trip around a few parks and though we started at Tankfest at Bovington, our first park on the trip was Crealy. I don’t feel that there’s much to talk about here in regards to Tankfest but it was a great day!
Crealy Meadows
We decided on camping for the night and then visiting the park the following day with my sister and her family. The camp site is excellent, with plenty of toilet and shower blocks for everyone to use, the pitch we had had an electric hook-up and there was on site entertainment for the younger visitors to enjoy.
One thing to note here is that the electric hook-up is designed for caravan plugs and not your standard 3 pin, we bought an adaptor off Amazon for about £9 and it suited our needs perfectly!
I had fallen ill the first few days of the trip and as a result didn’t get to see much of the site besides the shower and toilet block, the clubhouse and the inside of our tent. I was very impressed with what was on offer though, especially when we only paid £30 for the night, I’ve stopped in worse hotels!
The have an onsite shop which stocks a small variety of essential goods, ranging from chilled meat, to milk, sanitary products and camping essentials. Very reasonably priced and well stocked considering the size of the place!
Onto Crealy itself
The park is a very clean and tidy, quite small in comparison to other parks we’ve been to, and targets a younger audience than I’d initially expected! That’s not to say there wasn’t anything for us to do, but quite the contrary!
The park offers 3 rollercoasters, a few decently themed areas and a good selection of flat rides and attractions.
The Rollercoasters
For me, one of the biggest standouts of any park are its coasters and Crealy offers 3: Maximus, Twister and Shark Bay Coaster. All 3 are junior coasters, that don’t push the boundaries too much in terms of stats, but they had enough to offer!
Unfortunately when we went Twister was closed due to adverse weather. There was a lot of rain as the park opened, but it soon cleared and was quite warm and dry, but despite this, Twister remained closed the rest of the day, which was a shame as this was the one I was most looking forward to!
As for Maximus, this is a Vekoma manufactured steel family coaster with a roman theme and a mine train themed train. The juxtaposition between the roman themed attraction and the mine train is certainly unique and a little uncanny.
The theme does feel like it was added to the attraction after it has already been established, and looking at its history on Coasterpedia, this looks to be the case as it was once called Pastil Loco (which might explain the runaway mine train parts!)
The ride itself was decent, but not much force at all, and it was quite shaky in places but not too unpleasant. The ride does have a camera though which I like to see, especially at smaller parks as I like having on ride photos as souvenirs.
Shark Bay is a completely enclosed indoor coaster manufactured by SBF/VISA and has a very simple figure 8 layout. The train is themed to a shark and the attractions sits in the parks Atlantis area and compliments the area perfectly.
Though pretty much forceless and lacking any real element, the ride was still a laugh and a great entry level coaster for any aspiring young thrillseeker!
The rest of Crealy
As mentioned earlier, the park has a few themed areas, including Sooty Land, a new for 2022 area themed around the children’s TV programme, The Sooty Show. There’s also the aforementioned Atlantis, a pirate themed area (which could easily be combined with Atlantis), a very small wild west themed area and a prehistoric themed section.
The rest of the park is very clean and tidy with more play areas than I’ve seen at any other park with a total of 6 (that I could count!). There are 2 indoor areas, one being a large softplay area for kids with an arcade and the other is Atlantis, which I’ll talk about later.
After Twister, the next biggest ride is Tidal Wave, an L&T Systems log flume with 2 drops and a camera. Pleasant ride this one, doesn’t get you too wet beyond a light spraying, has a loose tiki theme and good operations!
The other standout part of our day was actually not a ride at all but a walk through area called Wilderness. This part of the park is set right back away from any of the other attractions and features a set of different bridges over a small waterway.
Each of these bridges is different and range from basic flat across bridges, to rope and chain bridges, all the way down to a a few stepping logs that were actually quite challenging for us lot to navigate, let alone kids!
Though not what you’d call thrilling, and they barely standout unless you stumble upon them like we did, they were still a nice little distraction and fun to see what bridge type comes next!
Dotted along the walk are various structures for kids to play around, and an enclosure that featured deer as the parks does have a small zoo to accompany it.
Atlantis
Atlantis is a decently sized indoor area which includes 3 flat rides, another large softplay area and a rollercoaster which can be enjoyed in all weathers.
The park has done a great job theming this up with all the walls having mural type paintings on them and the rides being well themed to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis.
It’s certainly not Tornado Springs, but it’s is still worth seeing on a visit to Crealy. The only negative, and it’s a small one at that is that there isn’t anything too thrilling in the building. A faster spinning flat ride would go well I feel so Crealy can open themselves up to a bigger audience than they currently serve.
There is a large indoor play area in here too that features netting, pipes and a small softplay area, and in the corner is a small coffee shop, so it doubles as a great place to have a break and sit down while the kids roam about. You can see them at all times from the small seating area so it’s quite a good safe spot!
Conclusion
Overall, we enjoyed Crealy, but we did feel that it wasn’t really meant for us. Luckily we did have my niece with us to enjoy the day a little more, but if it were just us two, I think we might have struggled to stay a full day. This is by no means the fault of the park, but I feel more parks should look to add rides for everyone, such as how Paultons Park have been doing.
I think Paultons is still the superior park as it has better themed areas and a better selection of rides for all thrill levels, but where Crealy shines is with its indoor areas, play parks and its camp site. It is excellently suited for a younger audiences and their families, and you certainly feel looked after here!
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