chessington, thorpe park or butlins bognor for a day trip?

[noonar]

i have a 4 and 6yo and have promised them a day at a theme park.

butlins would be the easiest journey for us. and i dont want to spend hours queing and think it may be less busy there(they wont notice the how tacky it is, lol!)

advice?

tia xx

Chessington for that age - more variety .

but will i spend hours queuing, liz?

Depends if you want spectacular rides. Butlins has what I call old fashioned fairground rides, like you might find at a travelling fair, but doesn't have the really big roller-coasters etc.

Personally I can't think of anything worse than Thorpe Park or Chessington in school hols, because of the queueing.

Butlins swimming pool is fab, with lots of slides children your DC's ages can use, so it you can make use of that too, definitely Butlins for me.

no idea atm as we went before the summer holidays started last year. Found that it did n't start to get busy until late morning and even then it was ok apart from teens on the younger kdis rides.

I went to Chessinton Weds & queues were BAD!

ok. thaks all. were queues bad at chessinton even for rides for v young children? we cant do the whole roller coaster thing anyway due to height/ being too young and scared restrictions.

www.adventurewonderland.co.uk in bournemouth if you can get there is brill you can see near enough whole park wherever you stand but lot's to do with large indoor play area too all rides have seatbelts so can go on unattended if you want them too and are given a wristband for you to write your mobile number on if they get lost

I went to Chessington too for the first time last week with my 5yr old DD and 3 yr old DS. We got on the Carousel without queueing and didn't have to wait to go in Hocuspocus Hall (which they found too scarey btw), but the queues were all about 30 mins for the other rides suitable for young children. We ended up going round the zoo and Sealife. It wasn't too busy at Sealife in the morning when we went round, but looked much busier pm. TBH, I think we would all have had a better time going to somewhere less busy and closer to where we live.

What about Drusillas for that age group?

busy- too far for us i'm afraid.

port and lemon, we'ver been to drusillas many timesas we live nearby.

corrie- thats v useful.

am erring (sp) towards butlins, now. its an hours drive for us and will prob be less busy than chessington..

butlins is good for that age but inside rides probably better also shows etc throughout day

Is there Paultons in Hants ?

is the four year old 1.1 metres tall? if not, they may not be able to go on many rides..
chessington is very local to us, so we got here llloads. but i think that legoland in windsor is better for the younger ones.

I think chessington would be the best for children of that age.

thanks all. the dds are set on butlins (we drove past it once and we wanted to go in but it was closed).so, butlins it is....but do we picnic or eat in restaurants? is it that exp? not sure i want to lug a picnic around...

hi noonar

we were at butlins bognor last week. the kids will love it. theres not that many rides for them and there none outside for 4yo. i had 2 kids with me and had to stand in the queue go on with one and then swap with other. we had a small 6 year old with us and she couldnt go on anything. except trampolines. theres a carasol and they can sit with you in one of the sit down carriages.

its not big 5 rides theres not much - umbrella thingy, small dodgems, a rocking boat and a fast spinning thing. also go karts but you pay extra. inside there are 4 smaller rides the 4yo will be able to go on.

they do have loads of other stuff to fill your day - try and use the pool there really is nothing like it. a massive indoor play, puppet show, bowling.

as for food theres a chip shop, burger king, pizza place that sort of thing.

if you have any questions just ask.

best day to go would be a monday or friday as this is changeover day and everywhere is less busy.

we go chess/legoland and all we do in spend the day queuing.

now we go to southend buy a wristband for £15 and ds 6 plays all day - great !