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?!

Too far away from you for a day trip by the sound of things but Sundown Adventureland near Retford is a theme park aimed at very young children and a family ticket would be in the £40-60 range even in high season. It's all a bit scruffy and tired-looking in parts but my children absolutely loved it as they could go on every ride (they were 2 and 4 at the time). We don't live near it either but planned a short break in the area so that we could go to Sundown.
The other one that has quite a bit for small children and is not unreasonably priced (although again sounds like the wrong part of the country for you) is Gulliver's World (Warrington) but it's definitely on the scruffy side, the food is basic and for quite a lot of the low-ish season it's weekend opening only. Gulliver's do have a few other sites which may be closer for you.

Yes Paultons is based on height not age. Anyone under 1m is free. My daughter was almost 5 before we had to pay for her. I’m guessing the OP has a tall 3 year old.

Unfortunately that is what Paultons costs these days. They have really been ramping up the cost in recent years, especially since Covid. No 2 for 1 tickets available either. Whilst people keep paying it, they will keep getting away with it.

Alton Towers and Chessington etc are actually much cheaper. Whilst they have a high headline ticket price, they don’t expect anyone to pay it, because they flood the market with 2 for 1 vouchers.

soft play around here is pretty reasonable actually, one is fairly new and aimed more towards preschoolers and costs £6.95 per child and adults are free. Babies are £1 which mine still counts as given that she’s not walking yet.

Having said that there’s another one not far away where it costs me £13 to take my two for 1.5 hours and everything in there is so disgustingly dirty, it’s quite rank.

@Doris86 shes 1.02m 😭 and the website also says they measure them with shoes on!

The annual passes are £250

I paid £87 each for ds and I when he was younger. Think it went up to £90 ish.

We live 25 minutes drive away and because of all the activities such as splash park as well as rides we'd often go for just 4 hours on a Sunday and probably went 15-20 times a year including trips with families during holidays etc.

@soootiredddd I do think the overnight stays are a good way to do it. I've done day trips and overnights before and the 2 days did feel a lot better. We did a hotel with a swimming pool too so you get that excitement. And it took a lot of pressure off thinking "we must cram everything in to one day!" so we could just enjoy it.

Everything has got ridiculously expensive, my local soft play is £8.70 per child for two hours, add on return bus fares, drinks and a snack each and a go on the go-carts at £1.00 at shot then I'm looking at £40.00 for two hours in the soft play. It's always packed out though....

We looked at this a few weeks ago and it was up past £400.

@arapunzel thanks I will definitely have a look at 4 kingdoms that’s only about half an hour away

@Littlepond this is my thinking too. I risk sounding all “back in my day we just played with sticks” but I know as kids my parents just didn’t spend this sort of money. Parks, walks, picnics, one beach trip a year. We went to Alton towers twice in my whole childhood and it was the most exciting thing ever. This feels like lifestyle inflation!

Lord that is crazy.

We used to have a petting farm / barn play near us that charged per person, not per child. Taking 2 dcs plus 1 set of GPs to it cost us just shy of £100 ten years ago. That was a serious one off only and unsurprisingly they folded soon after as it was simply too expensive to take the kids out for a fun family day. (Plus they charged extar for parking which seriously got on my tits).

If she is not bothered about Peppa pig have you considered Chessington (given they often do have deals) ...we took our eldest for her 3rd birthday and she loved it ...there was plenty she could do at that age

My teen DCs are adults now but when younger we used Tesco vouchers or the cereal box 2for1 for Chessington.
im not familiar w Paultons, but theme parks are usually around that price with no discount.
Never paid full price for a uk theme park & even did Lego yearly pass on Tesco, but you can’t do that anymore and need the full Merlin.

The prices are insane. Season tickets were something like £130 pre pandemic and now they’re £240 odd. It’s the first year I won’t be renewing (because I can’t afford to!)

The park is great but they try and squeeze you for every penny at every opportunity. Certainly don’t make you feel like a valued customer.

I think they’ll start seeing a drop in demand very soon.

This is bringing back memories. My DC are all early thirties now. When they were early teens we went to Flamingo land and it was £60, which obviously I knew but dh's face was an absolute picture. I paid and organized it and for the first hour he kept on about how expensive it was. But we got there when it opened and came out when it closed and everyone always says it was the best day out we ever had. I feel so sorry for families now.

I will second Chessington- you can get brilliant deals to get in there and my two younger children preferred it to Paultons.

One good thing I’ll say about Paultons though is that unlike Merlin, they don’t charge you for car parking.

Why not just charge the full ticket price you want Merlin, instead of trying to hide some of it with a separate parking charge that everyone has to pay anyway. Really annoys me.

I haven’t been to Paultons for a while, but agree that it’s lovely and apart from Peppa Pig World, you don’t have to queue much for anything else. Even with Peppa Pig World, all the adults and teens downloaded the app and got into the virtual queues in the afternoon. We then went from one ride to another in PPW. It’s a family run park, so no discounts or vouchers,

I second Four Kingdoms, but also Hollycombe in Liphook should be opening in May. They’ve not published their ticket prices yet, but it’s a steam attraction with among other things a steam fairground (some smaller electric rides for the little ones). Everything is free and there’s little or no queueing especially in the fairground.

Oh don't do Chessington instead there is no comparison.
We went to PP with the overnight deal and loved it.

A local farm park near us used to be pricey, but reasonable value for a whole day out. Over covid they split the day in 2 to allow for an hour cleaning in between sessions. They have kept this, but not reduced pricing. So now we could go for £80 for a 3 hour session 😂

I object so don't go 🤷 no locals discount either (very touristy area that gets quiet over winter) and think it is a joke that adults pay as much as kids when all we will do is sit and drink overpriced coffee.

@Ionacat Paultons have got rid of the virtual queueing system now.

But yes everyone does seem to gravitate towards Peppa World, and to an extent the new Tornado Springs area. Queues in the rest of the part are normally pretty minimal.

Yes it’s prohibitively expensive for many families.
We’ve never paid out to go to one of the ‘big’ theme parks…we could just about afford it by sacrificing something else…but we don’t want to spend that amount of money to stand in queues and negotiate crowds while the stench of extortionate junk food wafts over us all.

Ds1 and I did do Alton Towers as part of a school trip during term time. I think most of the kids managed about 4 rides each the entire day owing to the queues.
What a waste of time. Really.

These places do not appeal to me.

Four Kingdoms isn’t a patch on Paultons. It’s a farm park, very tired looking last time I went. I’d rather pay £35 a head for Paultons and have a proper full day out than £15 a head for Four Kingdoms.

I really like Paultons, as others have said it’s lovely and clean and has nice short queues compared to other theme parks. You do just have to suck up the price. We’re only 20 mins from Legoland so usually get annual passes for there which are really good value compared to just going for the day.

We prefer Drayton Manor - less expensive and you don't have to queue much except first thing in the morning in Thomas Land. Yes it is rough around the edges, but I really don't mind that in a theme park.

The food is terrible, so we bring our own.

I'm amazed at the prices being quoted. We are local and used to have season tickets but haven't been for a number of years.
Season tickets worked out well as we didn't get them every year. We would buy on say Aug 1st and go 3 or 4 times before they shut for the winter, then have a break and go again next year until end July, but not renew. So it seemed like 2 years for the price of one.

It's not only for toddlers, there's a whole area for teenagers/adults. It's about choices. No one is forcing anyone to go to PP, it's something that either you do or you don't. I agree with other posters, it's clean, beautifully kept, queues are normally not crazy like Legoland, and it's a great day out.

Also, no one says that it's 'affordable'. If you want 'affordable' go for a day at the beach/park. PP is allowed to charge what they want, the choice is still yours - whether to go or not.