Right, first attempt at a decent sized trip report, so bear with me.
Visited Paultons for the second time this season, and decided to create a trip report, along with including some construction photos for the new area, Lost Kingdom. For those not interested in reading excessively, here are the main points. General park upkeep has been fantastic, nothing left unloved. Staff are all excellent, operations just as good.
Starting off, as I always do with a few rides on Cobra, the park's Gerstlauer Bobsled coaster. Cobra, for a family coaster, is fairly intense and carries some good airtime moments, fantastic for the kind of market which Paultons caters to.
Moving on, the day continued with a couple of rides on the Zamperla Mega Disk'o, Edge. Edge offers a much longer ride cycle than it's clone over at Chessington, which was a great suprise. In terms of ride quality, it was running fairly slowly, but could probably be put down to the very cold weather. Being the most intense ride in a family park, queues stayed very low all day, another good point.
A slightly disappointing point, but the SBF Drop Tower, Magma, opened for the morning of opening day last weekend, but suffered a major breakdown and has been out of action since, thus rendering the ride SBNO for the duration of half term. I believe it is awaiting a specialist part. The ride was sat in this position, slightly above the station, all day.
At this point I wondered around the Lost Kingdom area, but the photos shall be kept in a seperate update at the end of this report. After this, we stopped for lunch in the main restaurant, WildWoods. Food was delicious and reasonably priced, and reached our table within minutes of ordering. No complaints at all in this department.
One of the things I have always loved Paultons for is the calm, family atmosphere that surrounds the entire park. This was most definitely present today. Having met with some of the management team, and through personally watching the park grow from a small family park with a few rides into the (arguably) best family park in the country, I can say that the determination that goes into keeping the place looking spotless every season is second to none. EVERYTHING in the park has had a fresh coat of paint over the winter, and despite the obvious presence of construction vehicles/personnel etc, the park is still kept in immaculate condition. Another thing that puts this park above its competition, is that everyone on park, from staff to guests, are very polite to one another, something which has unfortunately become somewhat rare in Merlin parks. This again adds to the great atmosphere.
The park is split into two main areas, the side which contains Lost Kingdom and Edge/Cobra, and the other, which has Critter Creek and Peppa Pig World. After lunch we made our way to the other areas of the park and began the afternoon with 8 consecutive rides on the water chute, Wave Runner. Anyone who regularly visits Thorpe Park will recognise this as a clone of Depth Charge. Whilst it may look the same, it certainly isn't. Wave Runner carries a significant amount more airtime on the first hill, and generally runs a lot quicker. This also lacks a staff member at the bottom, because the park have realised that guests are quite capable of putting the boats back onto the conveyor themselves. (take notes Merlin)
(shoutout to me in the third lane beating everyone)
Up until now we were considering ourselves lucky, as the park had been practically empty for the day so far. This soon changed once we entered the incredibly hectic Peppa Pig World. This area is extremely popular with small kids and adults alike, as visitors come from far and wide purely to experience this area. There are a good selection of unique attractions in the area, however we only rode two of them due to extremely lengthy queues, and the throughputs being less than par for the level of guests in the park. This is not the fault of the park by any means, I do stress.
Not really much to comment on the rest of the rides in this area of the park, all family flat rides which ran perfectly all day, and Cat-O-Pillar, a Zierer family coaster which carries a fair amount of force to it, for it's size. All ran nicely and without fault, and looked nice and fresh with new paint, and a few new benches etc where they were needed. Some photos of this area.
Mid-Afternoon saw a period of rain which made it very difficult to take photos, but during this time I rode Cobra a further 5 times, along with a few more rides on Edge and Wave Runner. A fantastic day all round. The effort put into this park is amazing, and they deserve so much more recognition than they get. I know that having visited this place all my life, and it being my local park will have made my opinion very biased. But, the park have had an incredible amount of success in recently years (largely thanks to the Peppa Pig development) and have become one of, if not the best park to visit in this country. I stress that if you get the opportunity, please pay them a visit and support this park.
Total Ridecount: 32
LOST KINGDOM
As you will probably all know, Paultons are attracting a LOT of attention for their new development, Lost Kingdom. The area includes 2 new coasters, manufactured by Vekoma. More can be found on this in the topic dedicated. Anyway, construction was ongoing throughout the day, mainly focusing on the rockwork surrounding the suspended coaster, Flight of the Pterosaur. The majority of the area is finished, with the signage for the rides currently being installed. When I previously visited earlier in the week, a lot of the dinosaurs were being stored just west of the Edge ride, however all of these had been moved onto the site this time. I must say, the pictures don't do it justice. The entire thing is huge, and Flight of the Pterosaur overshadows the entire area around it. This will be a money maker for them, for sure. Here are some pictures from the construction site.
For those who have made it this far, congratulations and any feedback is appreciated fully.
NemesisNosh
Paulton's Park is definitely on my list to get to this year, it looks such a nice family park and certainly very well kept!