Visited for the first time in many years earlier this week. We used to be regular visitors, but as we’ve stopped going to the hotels after their fall from grace, so too have our waterpark visits declined. It cost us £22 per adult to get in. I thought it would be worth making a few observations: -
- Despite it being so long since we’ve visited I could only see one positive change, which is the addition of calming music being played in the outdoor jacuzzi.
- The old food outlet was closed, with the Adventurers Cave outlet being new to us. It’s depressing to see you funnelled into a dull cafe with an even worse menu. The food was horrendous and there is no beer available.
- The playlist is annoyingly repetitive.
- The repaints are truly terrible. The rockwork is perhaps the worse offender, which has been painted a solid brown in most places. It now looks like a giant turd floating atop the water. The remainder of the treehouse structure remains in its downgraded solid colours, without any of the textures it had previously. The outdoor pools have also been covered in an off-white paint which is showing through. It looks dirty.
- I know the wheels in the treehouse have always been temperamental, but they now seem worse than ever. More than half now seen to do nothing.
- Woodwork around the place is rotting. The paintwork forming the walls that face onto the hotel are dirty, faded and have random elements of half removed equipment.
- There are bare patches in the planting. It looks like there’s been nothing added for years and the original plants have just been left to grow, rather than any sort of renewal for the now dead lower growth.
- There is actually rust showing through on some of the steelwork, for example one of the buckets in the kids area is leaking from the bottom as it’s started to rust through.
- The place was pretty quiet but our group commented that they wouldn’t have enjoyed it any busier.
All in all, it was a pretty poor experience and a real shame to see the place looking much shabbier than it used to be, with terrible food and lots of stuff broken. It needs a total renewal to align with prices being charged.
