Overpriced for what's on offer (New Pleasurewood Hills)

Member Name: cjc3001

Product:	New Pleasurewood Hills
Date:	29/09/08 (72 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good for children under 10 if you're in the area

Disadvantages: Food & drink is dismal, service appalling

I went to Pleasurewood Hills this weekend as part of a birthday celebration weekend in Norfolk. Luckily this weekend, as part of their 25th anniversary, the park were only charging the same as they did when the park first opened, i.e. £25 per car no matter how many passengers, but usual admission prices are as follows (and are very expensive for what you get if you ask me!):

Ticket Price Online Price
Adults and Children
over 1.4m £15.75
Children between
1m and 1.4m £13.50
Children under 1m FREE
Special Needs/Senior Citizen
£10.00 £9.50
Family Ticket for 4 people
£52.00 £48.00

You can save a couple of pounds of each of the above prices if you book online.

The main rides in the park for thrill seekers is Wipeout (the best ride in the park), Enigma (both rollercoaster-type affairs), and Wizzy Dizzy; for children there is much more choice in the form of traditional carousels, a pirate ship, and a very tame log flume. There are also entertainment shows in the form of circus acts, sealion & parrot shows.

As far as food & drink is concerned, this was all pretty low quality; I chewed my way through a cold rubbery burger which took an age to purchase due to poorly trained staff who couldn't really be bothered to do their job. On a day when they were offering cheap entry prices I was expecting most of the food stalls to be operational but the 'fast food' outlet we had to purchase our food from was the only one open that we could find after 30 minutes of searching. On a warm day (which had been forecast for a good week), I was expecting more than one brand of ice cream to be left at 1pm, especially as I bought the last two in stock. All in all, the provision of refreshments seemed very poorly organised, and well overpriced.

If you have a family with young children, this is probably a great park to take them to if you are in the area; it would probably work well as a good introduction to theme parks before you make the journey to one of the larger parks such as Alton Towers & Chessington. However, if you are older than 10 to 12, I'd advise making the trip to one of the more well-known parks as the difference in cost isn't too great. The children in our large group had a great time, which of course is money well spent for their parents, but those of us who are a few years older were pretty much bored after the first hour; if I'd paid full price to get in this would have really disappointed me. And one tip to offer would be not to try & find your way to the site using sat nav & the postcode from the website; this only directs you to a dead-end about two miles from the site on a residential housing estate; once you arrive there with the other 10 cars also trying to find the theme park, there's a lamp-post with a sign giving you the correct postcode to use. I'm sure the locals love this.

Summary: Save up a few more pounds & head north to Alton Towers!