Pleasure for everyone - except older kids perhaps! (New Pleasurewood Hills)

Member Name: i_am_joy

Product:	New Pleasurewood Hills
Date:	15/05/09 (81 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A nice selection of rides for youngsters, excellent sea lion and parrot shows

Disadvantages: A useless postcode for the sat nav, older children/teens might become bored quickly

At the beginning of April I decided to take my granddaughters' to Pleasurewood Hills in Lowestoft, despite living less than an hours journey from the park I had never been and we were having a warm spell so it seemed the perfect place to take advantage of the weather.

The girls' are twelve, ten and 23 months so I was hoping there was going to be something to entertain them all, myself I was just looking forward to taking them out for the day so I wasn't really concerned about what was on offer.

Be careful if you're using a sat nav as the postcode Pleasurewood Hills provides on the website doesn't bring you to the entrance of the park and it took a little common sense (and lucky turns!) to get us to where we needed to be. I'd recommend following the sat nav until you begin to see the brown signs which provide adequate directions and are far more reliable than using the postcode!

Once there we set about having a look at what was available, I was pleased to find areas filled with rides which would be suitable for all three of my granddaughters' including a small section to accommodate the 22 month old whose sisters were more than happy to ride the baby rides with her.

Disappointingly Wipeout was closed at the time of our visit, I say disappointingly but you would never have got me on the thing but my older granddaughters' were looking forward to losing their lunch on this particular ride. Although most of the rides in Pleasurewood Hills are for children aged up to around 12 there are half a dozen bigger and faster rides which I knew would keep the girls' amused for an hour while I went to sit down for an hour with the baby. Eventually they went on Thunderstruck and my heart was in my mouth just watching them as the ride threw them up, down and around all over the place!

At 3pm we went to watch the sea lion show which was absolutely fantastic, I adore sea lions and these here looked so happy and well cared for that it was an absolute joy to watch them performing their comical and very clever tricks. There are two shows a day at the moment although I believe there are more when the peak season starts but this is well worth seeing if only to see the children's faces as they watch the three gorgeous sea lions spin discs and jump through hoops before being fed a fish or two as a reward.

Nearby is a parrot show which we caught quite by accident when we were passing just as the hordes of people were descending on the forum, I am so glad we managed to see it as although I have no great love for parrots they were hysterically funny as they shrieked and squawked their way through the performance. I took some fantastic photos as we had a very good view and my older granddaughters' even got to go and 'meet' the parrots afterwards which they enjoyed.

There are plenty of places to eat at Pleasurewood Hills, we had taken a picnic so only visited one of the establishments which was a traditional fish & chip shop. We all had the obvious (fish & chips!) and it was absolutely delicious and although expensive seemed to be reasonable value for money for this kind of attraction. I poked my head into Porky's Pantry which specialises in all things pork, funnily enough, and it looked to be spotlessly clean and very popular judging by the queues and amount of people sitting down with bacon butties and sausage rolls!

The Emporium gift shop is nice enough, if a little basic compared to gift shops in other attractions I have visited. The prices are generally scandalous, although this is to be expected, but there are a few little items that wouldn't break the bank such as fridge magnets and kiddies stationery. I didn't buy much because there wasn't really anything I fancied but I treated the girls' to a couple of small items each and bought myself a magnet as I collect them from places I have visited.

The entrance prices are a little steep considering what's on offer in my opinion. I booked our tickets online as there is a small discount for doing it this way and the total came to £34.75, which is fine with me because my granddaughters' are of an age that they all enjoyed all aspects of the park although I believe if your children are significantly older or younger than my three then the prices might not be worth paying as obviously they won't get their moneys worth in my opinion. Also do check out the different pricing combinations as although there is a family ticket available it might work out cheaper to buy the tickets individually; in my case I booked a child over 12, a child aged between 3 and 11 years, an under three (who went for free) and myself as an OAP - which is something my vanity hates but us oldies can make some decent savings at places like this just for admitting our age!

I recommend Pleasurewood Hills, I think. We had a fantastic day out in the sun but I honestly think you are going to have to weigh up the ages and interests of your own children before deciding to lay out such a large sum of money. While we were eating our fish & chips I heard a family behind us arguing about what a waste of money the attraction was, glancing around I saw they were two rather miserable adults with their three sullen looking mid teenage sons. To visit with teens of that age is probably a waste of time and money as they'll soon be bored of the few big rides and once those have been exhausted there really is little else for older children to do, my younger grandchildren absolutely loved the day though and we are planning a return trip when the summer arrives properly.

Summary: A lovely day out for me and my granddaughters',