Our first visit to Flamingo Land was an impromptu one. We had a gig on Friday and met up with friends for it and had an airport run on Saturday which left Sunday completely free, which for us is unusual. So we decided on visiting Flamingo Land much earlier than expected as we had planned in to visit later in the summer.
We paid the full gate price of £52.50. We did pre-book online but it was less than 48 hours before our visit as advertised so I have no issue there. I’ll get it out of the way now and say that £52.50 is a bit of a price hike and it does feel like Flamingo Land are going a bit too high with this but I also understand that they have a zoo to run, rides to maintain and we’re all in a cost of living crisis too. All other parks prices have gone up so it’s natural to expect Flamingo Lands to have done so too.
What I do think is a bit of a kicker is the way the park was being run on the day we visited. There were a lot of closed shutters around the park, meaning that a lot of grab n’ go food units were unavailable. It’s not like there wasn’t anywhere to eat or anything of the sort, but any time we thought we’d stop to refill drinks or get something to eat, we found ourselves going to the same 2 units throughout the day, one in The Hub and the other in The Zanzibar restaurant area.
Moving on from the food side of things we head into photography and merchandise. Our first ride was Sik, then Hero and both of these offer on ride photography and their shops were open all day so you could, if you wanted to, buy on ride photos from this two rides. Mumbo Jumbo and Kumali also have cameras but most of the times that I’ve been, they haven’t been functional but they were today. We had a ride on Kumali but didn’t like the photo it took but we noted that Mumbo Jumbos photo unit was open. We had a wander around the back of the park to see if we could see the tigers as that’s another thing we’d like to see (and have missed them every time we’ve been). Still no sign of the tigers today, so we headed back around to Mumbo Jumbo to find that the photo kiosk was closed, and it wouldn’t reopen all day.
This was such a shame as I was planning on buying a photo from there as I’ve only got one other Mumbo photo and that was from 2017! I believe we were at Mumbo Jumbo for around 1pm so the photo kiosk was closed for more than half the day, which was a shame but it didn’t ruin the day or anything of the sort!
As for the rides, Sik was riding vert well once it got going as there was a bit of a breakdown as we boarded but we did eventually get a ride and it was just as good as I remembered from last year! Kumali rode well too, giving one of its signature smoother rides for it’s ride type and Mumbo Jumbo and Hero were still great fun. Velocity was closed so we couldn’t have a go on the motorbike coaster, but we had our first go on Voodoo, a pirate ship ride that I often overlook, as Tracy had her first go on Cliffhanger too.
Once we’d done with the bigger stuff, we moved onto Muddy Duck Farm to slow down a bit and had our first rides on The Tractor Ride and Wacky Racers. Both of these could do with a little attention to make them a bit more fun, but they were decent nonetheless. To finish the day we had a go on Mischief Manor, the parks only dark ride and it was running ok. Most of the scenes were running as intended but it does look a little worse for wears and could possibly do with a refresh in the coming years!
Not only was this our first visit to the park this year, but it was also the park I’ve chosen to star having a go a vlogging. You can find a link to the video here. I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out, especially for our first time doing one of these. There are a few rough spots but I’ve learnt a lot from this one video alone! Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
We had a great day at the park, despite sounding mostly negative earlier. We rode some of our favourite rides and had a great time figuring out the whole Vlogging thing too. I hope to get back to Flamingo Land later ion the year if we can, but for now, this was our first visit and a great day was had by all!
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