As I stated in my previous blog, I’d like to summarise our trip away and add any advice to others planning on the same sort of trip.
The Parks
Over the course of the holiday we visited 8 very different parks around the country with our standout favorite of the trip being Paultons Park, with Oakwood and Adventure Island coming in close behind. That’s not to say that Pleasure Beach or Alton Towers were bad at all, more so that Paultons left an excellent impression on the both of us!
Alton Towers and Chessington were a bit of a letdown due to how busy they were, but it’s not entirely fair to blame the parks here, I’d booked for Towers on a bank holiday and I didn’t know Chessington would still be within the holidays. That being said, we did Thorpe Park just before Chessington and that went a lot smoother, comparatively.
Pleasure Beach was also excellent, probably the best of the parks from this trip that we’ve already previously visited. We did give it two days though which meant neither day was rushed and we managed to get on mostly everything we wanted to (except Avalanche, which kept running into issues).
The Hotels
For the trip we stopped in 10 different hotels and guesthouses, each different to the next. Highlights for anyone aspiring to visit UK parks would be the Ramada at Cobham services, because the location is excellent for Legoland, Thorpe Park and Chessington, and the service have excellent facilities.
All the places we stopped at were good, True Lovers Knot in Blandford Forum was the only one we had anything like a negative feeling towards, and that was purely for the way the staff interacted with us. The rooms themselves were probably the most premium feeling out of all the places we stayed, it’s just the staff and lack of a warm welcome that really put us off.
Advice from our experience is just to make sure you’re not driving too far from one stop to the next. If I were to do it again, I would probably add a stop a bit closer to Oakwood as Hereford was a bit of a trek that early on in the day! Other than that, everywhere we stopped at was mostly what we expected, just make sure to read reviews before booking the cheapest places as some accounts suggested some properties were down right dangerous!
The Car + Equipment
I own a Mazda 6 Estate which offered up plenty of room to carry all our belongings and didn’t cost an arm and leg to run. We filled up twice throughout the trip, once in Bristol and the second in Southend, and it cost around £165 for fuel for the whole trip.
Daft bit of advice to give, but spilt clothing into little bundles so you can take in only necessary things to each stop, saves you lugging about large suitcases!
It should probably go without saying that you’ll want something comfortable for the long miles, and something that has enough room for all the things you’ll need. We took enough clothes to get through the 2 weeks we were away but we did plan in stops to laundrettes if needed. We didn’t take any cooking provisions and ate on the road for this trip, but you could easily bring along a gas camping stove and cook to cut down on expensive meals out.
Another probably obvious thing to add would be to keep a bit of money spare for issues with the car as I somehow managed to pick up a puncture while we were in Southampton and ended up needing a new tyre. I’ll take that over a larger fault though! I do also have breakdown cover just incase.
The Cameras
I took with me my Nikon D5600 DSLR, 18-55mm Nikkor lense, 70-300mm Tamron Lense, DJI Mini 2 drone as well as a GoPro Hero 6 Black. I didn’t get a chance to use the GoPro as most parks don’t allow on ride recording, and I never thought to ask at Paultons, Oakwood or Adventure Island.
I have since bought a Nikon B700 superzoom camera as I lacked ability to take photos at larger ranges and long range DSLR lenses are extremely expensive!
The Rides
Standout attractions from our visit will certainly be Storm Chaser at Paultons Park, Red Arrows Skyforce and Nickelodeon Streak at Pleasure Beach, Gangsta Granny: The Ride at Alton Towers and Megaphobia and Speed: No Limits at Oakwood.
We both felt Croc Drop was a bit over hyped, it looks the part, but the ride sequence itself isn’t as good as Magmas. The Big One at Pleasure Beach really needs some work in regard to operations, they don’t seem to utilise multiple trains as well as other attractions do. The queue really kills it, as twice we’ve had really long wait times unfortunately.
Hopefully with this year’s additions, we’ll see more and more development into the UK Theme Park scene and get bigger and better, world beating attractions!
Closing Comments
We’d have liked to have done our intended trip to Europe, but I’m more than happy with how our holiday around the UK went, we’ve both ridden some great attractions, visited new parks for the first time, tried some new and tasty food and overall had a fantastic stay here in the UK!
loopsandlapbars.com 