Nicco Park - It's Park Full of Amusements (Kolkata (Calcutta))

Member Name: anonymili

Product:	Kolkata (Calcutta)
Date:	03/06/08 (443 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun day out for all of the family

Disadvantages: Really poor toilet facilities

Nicco Park is in Salt Lake which is on the north-eastern side of Calcutta, India. It's basically an amusement park - Calcutta's Disneyland if you will. It was opened in 1991 and has amused locals and tourists ever since with it's 40 acres of park and rides for all age groups. Nicco Park was the first amusement park in India to receive ISO 9002 accreditation.

I have visited Nicco Park twice in the last five years when visiting Calcutta, the first time I went was back in 2004 and most recently I went in December 2007, having thoroughly enjoyed myself on both occasions. It's best to allow yourself the best part of the day to explore Nicco Park and it's much more fun in you are in a group of people with varied tastes so you can all go on different rides with each other and people don't feel deprived if you are too scared too go on a particular ride or vice versa. Personally I am not at all into fast rides such as roller coasters so avoid these types of rides wherever I go, whether it is at Alton Towers or Nicco Park!

When I visited in December 2007 we had free tickets as I'd been to a department store which gave a free ticket for every 500 Rupees you spent and I had spent about 12000 Rupees in one visit so received lots of tickets. As we arrived earlier than the rest of our group we hovered near the entrance and watched a show that was going on as it was Aids Awareness Day and they had a puppet show on which was quite amusing for me but seemed to make some of the kids watching cry! Probably not the desired effect but hey ho...

The regular entry price is approximately 50 Rupees (about £0.65) which includes 8 of the rides or you can pay an extra 150 Rupees (about £1.88) to get access to all of the rides in the Park. Personally on both occasions when I've been I've stuck with the cheaper entry ticket as I am not a fan of most rides in amusement parks and it would have been a waste of money (even though it's so cheap) for me.

The rides include:
* Toy Train - one of the most popular rides - this train meanders through most of the park so you get to see the rides before you try them out - always a long queue for this ride
* Cyclone - a 750m long roller coaster
* Cable Car - this 5 minute ride takes you over the top of some of the rides in a 4 seater gondola
* Family Carousel
* Tilt-a-Whirl - 75 seconds of gyrating like a washing machine!
* Flying Saucer
* Moon Raker - a mini roller coaster
* River Cave Ride
* Water Coaster - go down 75m in 7 seconds
* Water Chute
* Paddle Boat - paddle around gently in a small boat - good exercise with the cycle like pedals inside the boat!
* Pirate Ship - rocks like a pendulum - giving your stomach a rather queasy feeling
* Striking Car - bumper cars - strap in and bump each other around

They've even got an Eiffel Tower copy there which looks quite realistic but is obviously much smaller than the original. There's also the Nicco Superbowl - a bowling alley in a far corner of the Park and next door to it is Bowler's Den where you can get food and dart boards and chess for a more relaxed time.

To find out more about the rides you can have a look at the website here:
http://www.niccoparks.com/amusement-park/rides-at tractions.asp

There are mini outdoor restaurants aplenty in the park with Indian or Chinese food at extremely cheap prices. The last time I went I had a chicken dish with 3 chapattis, freshly cooked which came to the equivalent of £0.60 or less and freshly squeezed fruit juices from about £0.15. There are absolutely no restrictions about taking in your own food or drinks and having a picnic on the grounds but personally I felt the food available at the Park itself was so reasonable and tasty that I wouldn't want to bring my own food.


Wondering around Nicco Park is truly a fun day out; people of all ages go there to enjoy a day out and there is honestly something for everyone. I personally am quite a timid person when it comes to amusement park rides so I only ventured onto 3 or 4 rides during my visits but my companions ventured onto pretty much all of the rides and the screams I heard from them from the roller coaster rides were genuine screams of fear and delight (if that's possibly at the same time, not for me thanks)! I enjoyed the paddle boats and the cable car rides and would have liked to have had a go on the Toy Train - although it looked rather boring - I couldn't understand why there seemed to be several hundred people queuing up for that particular ride.

If you are visiting as a tourist, I would personally recommend going on a week day if possible, or on a Saturday rather than a Sunday; as Sunday is the busiest day there and the day when the queues are the worst.


As well as being an amusement park Nicco Park offers itself out as a venue for private hire in the evenings, weddings, receptions, fashion shows, product launches, etc, and can host about 5,000 people. They also have conference facilities for hire which hosts up to 60 people. Some businesses which have hosted corporate events at Nicco Park include: Tata Steel, Bharat Petroleum, Amway, British Airways, IBM, Airtel and Tata Indicom.


I have two complaints to make about Nicco Park, one of them rather minor but still important - firstly I noticed when people were querying costs of rides at the ticket boxes by the rides (if you don't buy an all inclusive ticket, you can pay for individual rides as and when you go to them) that the staff were extremely rude. I am not totally fluent in Bengali (the native language of Calcutta) but I did understand several conversations that various customers had with staff, all at different ticket boxes, mind you and the staff couldn't have been ruder if they tried. I was quite horrified. They really didn't seem to have a clue about customer service!

My second complaint and this is the biggie - the public toilets were absolutely disgusting. I obviously only went to the ladies and men's toilets in India are usually far worse than the ladies but I was horrified by the stench when I walked into the ladies. The queues were horrendous - they honestly do not have enough toilets to cater for the size of the Park and there was no soap or hand towels or toilet roll (luckily I always carry dry soap and lots of tissues with me when in India) so I was just about ok apart from wanting to throw up my lunch from the awful smell.


In summary I would say that if you want a fun day out in Calcutta in the open air, this is a recommended place to go BUT if you need to use a toilet - well you would really have to have a strong constitution to put up with the poor facilities. As an amusement park and picnic site I would give Nicco Park a strong 9 out of 10 but due to the lack of decent toilet this score drops down drastically to a 6 out of 10. Maybe there were some other toilets hidden away somewhere which were cleaner but I couldn't find them when I visited several years ago or more recently in late 2007.



For more details about Nicco Park you can visit the website: http://www.niccoparks.com/index.asp

Address:
Nicco Park, Jheel Meel, Sector IV, Salt Lake City, Calcutta 700106, India

Telephone:
0091 33 2357 6052 or 0091 332357 8101 from outside of India or drop the 0091 33 if calling from within Calcutta.

Email:
niccopark@niccoparks.com

Summary: Has lots of good points but a couple of bad one too!