Lollibop - great fun or hell on earth?

[Londonista]

Despite still recovering from a particularly queue-tastic trip to Peppa Pig world in 2012, I'm now considering taking my sons (5 & 2) to Lollibop. Anyone been? Worth it? Queues manageable? Kids like it? How long did you stay? Any advice before I shell out 75 quid greatly received!

We went last year and really really enjoyed it. However we won tickets and I don't think I would pay full price for them. DS has ASD so we were able to jump queues and managed to fit nearly everything in that we wanted to do. I told my friends with NT children whilst we had a fabulous time, with all the queues taking about an hour you'd hardly get anything done. There were queues for face painting, moshi monsters bus, laser tent, trampolines, John Lewis Lane just off the top of my head. Apparently though this year they've tried to get rid of all the smaller capacity events so there's less queuing. This is the reason why I'd never go to Alton Towers or anywhere similar in the holidays. You pay all that money and you only get to go on about 4 or 5 rides!!

We have also won tickets for this year, but aren't using them. DP didn't want to come again as it's not really his thing and I'm not insured on his car. By car the journey takes 2 hrs 45 mins. The earliest train we could get from Birmingham was 8:55 (meaning we would have to leave home at around 8:05) arriving at London Marylebone at 10:46 and then a tube journey at 10:50 with 1 change which would get us into Stratford at 11:19. So only an extra 30 mins travelling but a lot more hassle. It's outside of the congestion charge zone and parking is only £5 all day at Westfield so if you can drive I would do that. Train and tube tickets were £32.50 each for an adult and £13.75 for a child on the train (under 11s are free on the tube) so even though the tickets were free, it still makes it an expensive day out and we wouldn't even get to do everything arriving at that time.

I am still a bit gutted we didn't go. I was told it was meant to rain most of today so wasn't that bothered about going but we woke up at 8:15 today to the most glorious sunshine. If we'd woken up a bit earlier I might have changed my mind and gone.