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Paultons Park: General Discussion

The area does look great ... but they're really starting to muscle in on Adventure Island's collection of small coasters.
 
A few days later than planned but I went yesterday. Was an interesting day.

Not sure what's going on with opening hours. There's plenty to do with a family in toe to not have to close a minute before 5pm any day. They used road works in the area as a reason, but I didn't see any and I took a different route out to the way I came in (Salisbury A36 in, right out of the park and M27 out because I couldn't bear to drive across the mendips tired in the dark, so took a 50 mile diversion up to Newbury and M4/M5 it home to avoid low quality roads). The park was still letting us on many rides past 18:30 with the rest shutting at 18:00. An 18:00 close seemed about right yesterday so not sure where the idea for the original 17:30 close came from?

The park felt as busy as I expected it to be, not unbearable, just lively. There was still car parking space left and no ride had a queue over 45 mins. It just felt like before we even got into the park, the design of the place is completely outdated and not fit for the crowd levels it now gets or is likely to get in the future.

Before we even got in, there was a queue for the park blocking the roundabout outside the park, completely unrelated to road works. Bearing in mind the park was busy, not rammed. 2 lanes from the roundabout up to the entrance with a right turn filter lane and 2 inbound lanes like at Towers in to the car park would've completely remedied this.

I also wondered why the queue lines outside of PPW were built so short? Only Storm Chasers and Cobras could cope, Pterosaur, Cyclonator, Edge (when it was open) and the boomerang couldn't cope with more than 30 mins worth of queues without backing out of the queue entrances. All acceptable waits for how busy the park was but couldn't fit inside their queue areas.

There was no social distancing, and all were fast moving other than the woefully under capacity Cobra, and Edge and Cyclonator which seemed to both be suffering from technical issues as well as not having enough operators. So it's not capacity or SD that seems to be the issue, just queue design. From the the queue entrance of Pterosaur it was only 30 mins and Storm Chaser was devouring queues.
 
Those queue times sound like an exceptionally busy day by Paultons standards. I've not seen anything like it, certainly since covid. I've been on capacity days when outside of peppa pig nothing has got beyond 15/20 minutes and no issues with traffic.

I can only presume they've upped the overall park capacity somewhat. Maybe Tornado Springs has had the desired effect drawing a less peppa pig orientated crowd?

If they are going to be able to sustain those sorts of gate figures I suppose it's a good problem to have to fix!
 
pluk said:
Those queue times sound like an exceptionally busy day by Paultons standards. I've not seen anything like it, certainly since covid. I've been on capacity days when outside of peppa pig nothing has got beyond 15/20 minutes and no issues with traffic.

I can only presume they've upped the overall park capacity somewhat. Maybe Tornado Springs has had the desired effect drawing a less peppa pig orientated crowd?

If they are going to be able to sustain those sorts of gate figures I suppose it's a good problem to have to fix!
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Very true, and I hope this is the case. It was nothing like you'd expect from the unbearable LLW, Chessington or even Towers this time of year. It felt busy for sure with large queues for lunch (every outlet had large queues for most of the day) and all the walkways felt busy. But not day ruiningly so. We waited no longer than 45 mins for anything and most rides we were on within less than 30 mins which I found perfectly tolerable.

There's some good family attractions there and I don't mind waiting 30 mins + for something like Pterosaur (RMT, Vampire and The Dragon likely all probably topped 60-90 mins on the same day and are inferior coasters. In fact at one point I think Vampire actually did top that). It all seemed to move quick other than Edge and Cyclonator which were both painfully slow due to breakdowns and, seemingly, lack of ops staff.

But some of the queue designs did confuse me. Not far off 30 mins from the queue entrance of Pterosaur and velociraptor yet both had queues stacking out of the entrance to the lines for much of the day. Cyclonator was queued outside the entrance for most of the day. Storm Chaser was destroying queues with fast despatches and you never stood still for more than a minute even though it has the longest physical queue line of all the others I've mentioned.

The traffic outside the park seemed like the park was busier than it is built for. The entrance road to the park is little more than you'd expect from any small attraction (like Puxton park, a mile up the road from me). But the crowds drawn in seemed to overwhelm the entrance. People like us doing a right turn in had to rely on the charity of left turner's on the opposite side of the road to let us in (3 consecutive tossers also going in to the park couldn't be bothered to let us in). This resulted in queues right round the the A36 roundabout with locals not being able to pass park bound traffic and an angry lorry driver and VW Touran driver exchanging horn beeps, swearing out of windows and hand gestures normally reserved for people like me. The ongoing traffic on the A36 was queueing in every direction as a result.
 
I think Paultons make there queue times longer than they really are. For example in Peppa pig world there’s markers with queue times and at the entrance to daddy pigs car ride it said 45 mins from here. I timed it and was only queued 18 mins. I think they got a good target audience age as been to both Alton Towers and Drayton Manor I noticed no litter on floors and no graffiti on any of the queue lines. The river rapids at Drayton Manor not been even open a month yet and it’s already covered in graffiti.
I can’t believe how much has changed at Paultons in 7 years from my last visit. So much love and details have gone into the lost kingdom and Tornado springs.
The traffic was bad and on the 1st day we came from the roundabout side and people blocked the roundabout so was very difficult for traffic in all directions to move. Took us 25 mins to get from that roundabout to the park entrance. The 2nd day as we stayed at the holiday in Southampton West I came the operate way and started to queue about 800 yards from the main entrance and took roughly 10 minutes.
I should have taken a picture of the new ride for next season and the ride and station building look complete with the train. They currently painting the roofs of the queue lines and installing cable. With the diggers digging the foundations for whatever will go in the centre of the ride.
 
In what seems to have been a slightly overlooked achievement from the GTA results, this year’s Golden Ticket Awards saw Paultons Park ranked as the 2nd best family theme park in the world, behind only Dutch Wonderland in Pennsylvania! Peppa Pig World was also ranked as the 5th best kids area in the world, too!

Here’s a link, if you’d like to take a look at what they were up against: https://amusementtoday.com/issues/2021/2021GTA/

An absolutely tremendous achievement, in my opinion, and very well deserved too!
 
Matt N said:
In what seems to have been a slightly overlooked achievement from the GTA results, this year’s Golden Ticket Awards saw Paultons Park ranked as the 2nd best family theme park in the world, behind only Dutch Wonderland in Pennsylvania! Peppa Pig World was also ranked as the 5th best kids area in the world, too!

Here’s a link, if you’d like to take a look at what they were up against: https://amusementtoday.com/issues/2021/2021GTA/

An absolutely tremendous achievement, in my opinion, and very well deserved too!
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Best water ride 2021 = Valhalla.

Hahahahahaha
 
Benjsh said:
Best water ride 2021 = Valhalla.

Hahahahahaha
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In fairness, that’s open to opinion! A lot of people do/did absolutely love Valhalla, and it is pretty impressive in many ways, so for my money, it’s far from the most outlandish candidate, if perhaps not the one I would personally have chosen.

Personally, I haven’t even done that many water rides (some in the UK & most of the major Florida ones), and it definitely isn’t among my personal top 5 water rides. To be honest, I’m unsure if Valhalla would even make the top 10 for me based on my 2019 ride, but I know I am in a substantial minority in terms of not being a massive fan of Valhalla. Valhalla is perhaps up there with Nemesis as one of the UK’s most revered attractions ever, on the whole!
 
Matt N said:
In fairness, that’s open to opinion! A lot of people do/did absolutely love Valhalla, and it is pretty impressive in many ways, so for my money, it’s far from the most outlandish candidate, if perhaps not the one I would personally have chosen.

Personally, I haven’t even done that many water rides (some in the UK & most of the major Florida ones), and it definitely isn’t among my personal top 5 water rides. To be honest, I’m unsure if Valhalla would even make the top 10 for me based on my 2019 ride, but I know I am in a substantial minority in terms of not being a massive fan of Valhalla. Valhalla is perhaps up there with Nemesis as one of the UK’s most revered attractions ever, on the whole!
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I think you missed the funny part there. It wasn't even open in 2020 never mind in 2021.

And most of the effects are knackered. It's nowhere near the best water ride anymore although it once was right up there in fairness.
 
Matt N said:
In fairness, that’s open to opinion! A lot of people do/did absolutely love Valhalla, and it is pretty impressive in many ways, so for my money, it’s far from the most outlandish candidate, if perhaps not the one I would personally have chosen.
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Its been closed all of 2021. Therefore if it cannot be ridden, it should not have even been shortlisted.

(but this discussion is already taking place in the BPB thread so I probably should stop there to stay on topic!)
 
Ah sorry, I must have missed that!

Back onto Paultons, though; what an achievement! Being recognised by such a major industry body must surely be a huge ego boost for the park’s management, and a means of telling them that what they’re doing is working!

Yes, I know they didn’t win either award (Best Family Park was narrowly conceded to Dutch Wonderland, with Paultons coming 2nd, while Best Kids Area saw Paultons ranking 5th), but the fact that they even made the top 5 in either category, as a non-American park and not a particularly huge one at that, is an absolutely tremendous accolade, in my opinion!
 
Went Friday for an unplanned post Butlins day as the weather forecast took an unexpected turn for the better.

The park was at that perfect point of being busy enough to have some life and atmosphere but quiet enough that there were pretty no queues over 10 mins. The park was looking glorious and ride availability was 100%. It was an utterly joyful day with my nearly three year old in her absolute element. Worth every penny of the non-discounted price.

Storm Chaser is running very well. Dispatch announcement now includes "currently rated the number one coaster in the UK. Yeeee Haw." It's a bit of fun but might be a bit of a stretch of a claim! Anyone seen any sort of awards or rankings that'd back this up at all?
 
I had my first visit there yesterday and was very impressed with it. I like the direction they seem to be going with the place, Lost Kingdom and Tornado Springs are very nicely themed areas, and the whole park in general is very picturesque. Everything was walk on all day, plenty of re-rides, able to stay on the same seat unless someone else was queueing for that same row, but even then could just get back on a different row which was great. Operations was also very good.

I really liked all of the coasters, especially Storm Chaser and Flight Of The Pterosaur, but all of the others were also great fun. I Loved Cyclonator too. Magma was closed all day which was a shame, would have liked to get on that but other than that it was very enjoyable. I would say it certainly gives Chessington a run for it's money when it comes to best UK family parks.
 
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Matt.GC said:
I gave my kids the choice between Chessington and Paultons a few weeks ago. Guess which they chose.
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I do think Chessington is only as popular as it is because of the Merlin annual pass and Kellogg’s vouchers. Without the annual pass bringing the price down I doubt Chessington would be as busy. Will be interesting to see what happens as the prices rise on the MAP.
A Paulton season pass renewal (new passes aren’t available) is £185, compared to £99 for a Chessington renewal, shows how the two parks value what they are offering.
 
Went for the first time yesterday in the pouring rain. Very quiet day as you can expect.

First impressions of the park was I can see why it so highly rated in the way it is looked after and set out. Tornado Springs is a another level to anything else in this country and in Storm Chaser have a fantastic family coaster. As for Cyclonator, I tried my best to get out of it but as my youngest required an adult to go on with him and the wife's face said it all, on I went. As I have got older (38) I really struggle with motion sickness on certain rides and this was no different but not at the Forbidden Journey level. Probably took me a good 45 mins to feel back to normal before smashing a plate of pancakes in the Diner.

We moved across to Lost Kingdom which by now the rain was getting worse and a ride on Flight of Pterosaur was hilarious as rain was smashing us in the face. Again another good family coaster. My lads thought it would be hilarious to get five back to back rides on Dino chase without getting out as me and their mother stood there in the rain.

Cobra was a fun ride and they went off and did Edge which they all enjoyed. I felt Magma was a bit of letdown and very tame compared to other drop towers.

All in all, although we were drenched through and left the park just after 2pm we had a great time and just for Tornado Springs alone it was well worth the 5 hour round trip.

If they can add another themed area with maybe a GCI or Gravity woodie and a proper water ride, I think this Park will be even harder to compete with for ticking the boxes for a family day out.
 
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