Brilliant family park that is unique (Blackgang Chine)

Member Name: GizmoPig

Product:	Blackgang Chine
Date:	10/06/09 (56 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: SO much to do you might need to come back

Disadvantages: very small or sensitive children could be scared by some of the attractions - use your judgement

I have visited Blackgang Chine many times over the years from when I was tiny as I grew up on the Isle Of Wight. It was my regular summer holiday treat.

Blackgang Chine was started in the 1800's as a Victorian Garden that was created along the Gorge. Later, a giant whale was washed ashore close by, and the owners had the skeleton displayed in the park. This then built and built until Blackgang became a theme park that stretched from the top of the gorge and down the cliff face towards the beach at the bottom.

Over the years, the park has changed the locations of the different 'lands' that it is made up of, as the cliff is eroding and has the habit of falling into the sea. I was always fun to come back and see what was missing or had moved from the previous year!

Blackgang is the strangest and most amazing place for the imagination that I have ever come across. It has a fairy castle, a mansion inhabited by goblins, smuggling, pirates, a huge snakes and ladders game built into the cliff, dinosaurs and a wild west high street! It takes at least a day to get around and there is a LOT of walking up and down the hilly paths involved so take plenty of water and wear good walking shoes. We always used to take a picnic as the food is the usual chips and other rubbish, and it always added to the fun to sit down with a picnic on one of the grass areas while the sun was shining.

As a child, I loved that you could climb on and interact with almost everything! My favourite areas of the park were Frontierland - the wild west street with full sized jail that kids loved being 'locked' in and real sized model horses and wagons, the Crooked House, which was a small house with an uneven floor that you walked through and could look through glass into the rooms. It was dark inside which added to the crookedness, the Weather Wizard - a display explaining the seasons with animatronic models and the Weather Wizard talking you through them and the Rumpus Mansion - a full sized mansion house inhabited by goblins - also with brilliant animatronic displays.

Some of the park scared me in that great way when you're a kid that you feel a little uneasy that the models etc might be real but you're really enjoying it. There's some great imagination gone into the park and there is a real sense of atmosphere about the place. It HAS to be visited on a visit the the Isle Of Wight.

Summary: Best family outing you could have on the Isle Of Wight