I’m sorry, Paulton’s park is HOW much???

[soootiredddd]

I seem to have woken up in a parallel universe whereby it costs me and my DH £116 to take our 3 year old to Paulton’s park for the day. Surely this cannot be right?! This includes £26 saving for booking in advance, if I wanted to go today it would cost £143. This is insane, have I missed something or does everyone use 2for1 vouchers or some other trick to make it vaguely affordable?!

All these places cost a bomb as a family. The parking cost at Chessington nearly pushed me over the edge. Even the short breaks add up a hell of a lot - a Legoland two-dayer tended to rack up close to £500 even with the deals. And Kew bloody Gardens added up to close on £100 for entry plus cafe lunch. Crazy! But this is how it is. I guess compared to Disneyland it's all a bargain.

The only place where you really get this - I was hoping we’d be able to have a day out for maybe £40-60 - is a funfair, the old-fashioned travelling kind, which are still decent value and can be fun for all ages. It's not the full theme park experience obviously, but nor is it an eye-watering outlay. Shout out to Blackpool Pleasurebeach too, which has a lot for what it costs and is all close together so not a feet-aching schlep.

Theme parks have always been the big ticket days out. We’ve visited a couple over the years and usually use Tesco club card or 2 for 1 vouchers.
Best value days out is to pay for National Trust membership, lots of properties have amazing playgrounds and they always have events at Christmas/Easter school holidays.

It’s because the UK is overpopulated.

There are 67 million of us. France also has 67 million people. But France is more than twice the size of the UK.

There are still thousands of people who can afford this theme park. There are big queues. So the prices are fine from the perspective of the business.

Nobody accepts that there are too many people here. I’ll probably get called racist. But in fact, I think 20-30 million of us should live elsewhere in the world. Look at the scrap over school places
with all the distance rules and the massive class sizes. It’s because there are just too many people. Look at the difficulty getting a GP appointment. The traffic jams.

If your looking for a family day out in this part of the South have you looked at 4 Kingdoms near Newbury? It’s £15 per person, adventure park and farm.

Adventure Wonderland near Bournemouth is a smaller and cheaper theme park.

Yes - theme parks are REALLY expensive. They’re a “save up like for a holiday” expensive unless you can get vouchers eg for legoland, but even then when they’re past the “during the week, preschooler” phase it’s always going to be more or less £100 plus.

and Paultons peppa pig bit is 100% aimed at the preschooler market, so you won’t be likely to get many discounts there.

Asking for Xmas present money towards this sort of thing from family is a good one - as they need less stuff, days out is a great present.

I would say that I’d hugely recommend Paultons overall for older kids too - there are so few queues compared to other places (though plenty of queues in the peppa pig bit - def worth going slightly out of season if possible).

We've got three annual passes as a family of five to various local types of these attractions. It's a bit of an outlay obviously but generally if you go three times in the year the membership pays for itself and we go way more than that. Having a membership also carries some perks depending on the place and means we can just decide to go anytime and not worry about paying for it. If you take a picnic then you don't have to spend a penny on the day.

It's the only way to make these things affordable at all, plus it's less pressure to 'do everything' in one day because we can go back again and again.

I am northern, our local theme park is flamingo land and we have stopped going due to the expense, family of 3 is also £112 booking in advance.

I refuse to pay out of principle, it’s shockingly expensive

Which 20-30 million of us should move elsewhere? I don’t fancy it myself. Where should I go? 🤔

Prices of things are really high. I went to book soft play for my 3 year old and it was £9 for an hour. I have 3 kids and I can foresee a very expensive future 😣

We went to a museum last week which was free and was brilliant, but we did go to the cafe which was extortionate. Hot drinks were £3.50 and cakes £4.50.

They don’t do discounts like other parks, at least that’s what my research showed me.

PP is in my opinion better than others though. It’s wonderfully clean with lots of space and nice grassy areas, good spots to have a picnic. The queues are generally very short outside peppa pig world and it’s a nice day out. We went recently and I kept a tally and my 6 year old managed 33 rides and my 9 year old 32 rides! That’s just in one day. We’d been to Disney a few weeks beforehand and they actually preferred Paultons (although personally I prefer Disney for the atmosphere, you do spend a lot of time queuing).

I hate theme parks myself and avoid the rides but Paultons was DCs choice instead of a birthday party. Yes it’s expensive but it’s a full day out and price per ride / per hour was reasonable compared to everything else. My local farm charges £10 entry per person for a playground and barn filled with straw. It’s always heaving, the kids (used to) love it, but we’re bored within an hour!

We did Paulton's and Legoland one day after the other last year with children the same age as yours.
Paulton's is worth every penny, its really really nice.

At Paultons there's places you can get away from the noise, there's shaded seating areas to get away from the sun, there's places you can fill up water bottles. If you go into a cafe and buy 2 coffees and 2 fruits shoots it will cost about £10, its also immaculately clean, like spotless.
Compare that to lego land where there is hardly any seating, absolutely no where you can get away from the horrid piped I'm noise, barely any shelter. A 500ml bottle of coke cost us £5 or we could've bought the refillable ones for £15 per person, the place is also filthy and looks like it needs refurbishing.

There's also loads of rides your baby can go on at Paultons, which although doesn't sound that bigger deal its nice to stay as a family most of the day rather than one of you just standing around.
At 1m tall our 3yr old managed to get on nearly everything at Paultons.

If you do end up going, head round the normal bit of the park first and do peppa pig world in the afternoon as it will be loads quieter as most people make a beeline for peppa pig world.

£9 for soft play expensive? Unless a hall with some toys scattered YABU

@soootiredddd Kelloggs cereal packets have offers on atm.
Mainly Merlin places I think eg Legoland.

£9 for soft play expensive? Unless a hall with some toys scattered YABU

Ok well that's me told... 🙄before the pandemic I used to take my son and it was £5 with no time restrictions, so it feels expensive for an hour for a 3 year old.

Nobody accepts that there are too many people here. I’ll probably get called racist. But in fact, I think 20-30 million of us should live elsewhere in the world

Off you go then.

It used to be if they were under 1 metre tall it was free, not sure if it's done by age now though? But we went before DS reached the height, couldn't face it after that as yes super expensive. It is a lovely theme park to be fair, he loved the peppa pig bit but cripes. Cbeebies world is astronomical as well, it's unfortunate I suppose that they are trying to recuperate costs from covid as everyone is more strapped for cash. I do feel sad for families priced out of all of them, it's not like it's an essential experience of course but DS has really enjoyed the times we have been and money stopping others is a shame. Capitalism I suppose.

Well if you think that’s expensive, I wanted to take my children to an indoor water park whilst we were in the US over the Easter holidays. The cost for the tickets alone for one day for the four of us would have been $400…and the website said that not all the rides were open!

It is an absolute rip off (we’ve been twice).

We usually go to Legoland (you can get tickets on eBay really cheap for there, Chessington and Thorpe Park). Just search for the name of the theme park and the date you want to go.

I've just checked and Paultons has doubled its prices since we used to go in 2012-2016!

But...it is a lovely park with fantastic rides. Because so many people flock there with toddlers for PP World, we always used to find the rest of the park fairly quiet. Never used to queue more than 10-15 mins for anything. So much better than the other nearby theme parks for children under 10s.

A shame when prices go up so much, but Paultons was probably under charging for a long time compared to other parks. When my DD went to Thorpe Park last year she had to queue for over an hour to get on any ride and managed about 4 all day. She's keen to go back, but I'd rather have a day at Paultons and actually go on a decent amount of rides.

‘Cos a session in a soft play place isn’t quite miserable enough 😂 that’s unreal!

My kids are adults and I can still remember soft play misery with great clarity.

We went last year when my two dc were both under 1m. Won’t be going this year though, much too expensive (can get 4 nights at butlins for that!!). May go to Legoland with the adult and pre schooler £25 deal

It is expensive but it's a massive theme park that also includes gardens, animals, playgrounds and two splash parks. These things aren't going to come cheap. There are a lot of staff needed to run those rides plus just the upkeep of them. It's just not going to be a cheap day out. Given how expensive I've seen some soft plays and trampolining parks can be it doesn't feel that bad to me.

It is also a great day out. Peppa Pig World is the least interesting bit of the park to be honest. The rest of it is much more fun. It probably is a bit wasted on preschoolers so you can always wait until they are a bit older and get the full benefit of the money. The lack of queues in the rest of the park is amazing! My kids and I have gone straight back on to our favourite rides multiple times because there is no or minimal queue. Sometimes they don't even make you get off if nobody else is waiting. You can get your money's worth there which I just don't think you can do at the big theme parks.

yes it does sound like it would be really good and I think my older DD would love it. She quite likes peppa pig but I think she would also be really into the rides and park areas too so maybe I just have to suck it up and pay. I know it’s maybe illogical but I think I would actually rather pay the £220 and get two days there and an overnight hotel stay as it just feels like you’re getting more for your money. Also means that if the weather is bad or the kids are grumpy for part of it, you can go again the next day.

thanks for the tips @Boatingforthestars really helpful!

This.

They do season tickets which actually work out cheap if you use them a few times. I think they encourage this.

You can also get merlin passes for chessington etc.

It's also the one theme park that doesn't do free carer tickets for disabled guests which means when families have to bring an extra person to
Support them it makes it even more unaffordable. Merlin are brilliant with their systems for disabled visitors.

The only difference is as a park Paultons day tickets are generally cheaper - even the advance ones (or they were last time I checked)

It's just what these big days out cost. There are many, many people who can easily afford these things so the prices will always be high.

For people like my family, a day out is a walk in the local woods and a picnic. We've been to Legoland once (kids are now teens) but other than that we don't do days out like theme parks, zoo trips, theatre, those things aren't for people like us (or at least, aren't for people with an income like us) I've long accepted that a huge proportion of experiences are closed to me and my kids. The world is built for the rich!