Featured: Paultons Park – Full Park Review 03/10/10

Paultons Park was a new venture for UK Park News, with it being our first ever trip to the Hampshire park. The park is located deep within a country-style setting, certainly a very beautiful part of the county, with its back perimeter nestling up to Paultons Golf Centre.

Upon turning into the signed entrance, it isn’t immediately obvious that there’s a theme park hidden amongst the trees at all, but sure enough, as you proceed down the picturesque driveway, the main entrance comes into view along with a glimpse of Cobra and Edge on the left.

Paultons Park attracts over half a million visitors per year making it one of Hampshire’s largest visitor attractions. The park employs 70 full-time permanent staff and up to approximately 250 seasonal staff during peak season. Paultons offers a great day out or short break for the whole family with a wide range of attractions for people of all ages to enjoy.

Website & Pricing

We started to look at the Paultons Park website as soon as we’d agreed the review for the park – this enabled us to get a feel for the site,

Park Website

its design, ease of use and quality of content. Upon landing on the site for the first time, its immediately easy to see links to each of the relevant sections that we all expect to see on a theme park website, without having to hunt around for the link you need.

While there’s a good use of colour and rather impressive graphic design for the landing page image, the site itself looks quite “busy”, especially with the multiple blinking banners and scrolling text across the site. Clicking on the “Rides and Attractions” link displays a page that allows visitors to sub-search rides by category, making it easy for parents to find out what’s at the park for their toddlers, or teenagers. This area included dedicated sections to the park’s animal attractions and its gardens, which is useful to know about for those not wanting to spend all day on the rides.

Within this section, there’s also variety of ride videos which the park have made that allow visitors to preview what the park has to offer – the signature coaster “Cobra” has a link to its own minisite (www.cobraride.co.uk), but unfortunately this simply links back to the main Paultons Page without any additional information on the attraction. Paultons organises Birthday Parties for children, and this information is available via a dedicated link on the website with pricing listed clearly for a “Percy Birthday Party”. We’re unsure if the park has its own park character called Percy – there are references throughout the site and there’s also a “Percy’s Fun” section but when followed there’s no information about who Percy is. Paultons have since advised us that this character will take more of a back-seat role from 2011, presumably due to the introduction of Peppa Pig; children will naturally want to visit the park to meet their oinky character!

Overall, the website seems weighted more towards functionality over trying to create an online experience for its guests. While the design is good with some excellent graphical artwork, the design just doesn’t quite seem up to the standard of other UK Theme Park websites, even when compared to some parks that have lower gate figures than Paultons.

The ticket prices as of 2010 are as follows:

2010 Single Admission Rates (Entrance/Online)
Per Person: £18.50/£18.00
Children Under 1 metre: free/free
Senior Citizens: £16.00/£15.50
2010 Family Tickets (Entrance/Online)
Family of 3: £53.00/£51.50
Family of 4: £70.00/£66.00
Family of 5: £87.50/£85.00

The Pricing for the park seems fairly balanced. There’s a good mix of rides and attractions on offer here – with loads for the kids to enjoy, beautiful gardens to explore and animal attractions for those people not wanting to jump on the rides. The only gripe here is that the online savings are minimal, and when considering the park charges a 50p transaction fee for using a card, its possible to make no savings at all if choosing to pre-book a single ticket.

Note: Paultons park have advised UK Park News that the Paultons website is currently undergoing full re-development ready for the 2011 season, with full Peppa Pig World integration. Paultons also informed us that the pricing structure is “under review for the 2011 season with the inclusion of Peppa Pig World in the ticket price and an online booking incentive is also being considered”.

Rides & Attractions

Paultons is a family orientated park, and its attraction line-up reflects this. There’s an excellent mix of attractions for the whole family, and there’s probably more rides at the park for little ones than you could successfully pack in to one day – this is a real hit with youngsters.

Cobra

With the addition of Peppa Pig World arriving in 2011, its conceivable to need to spend 2 days

on the park, if wanting to get all the rides and attractions in for all members of the family. Afterall the park does have the mantra “Way Too Much Fun for ONE Day” printed across its maps. It’s worth noting that this park is aimed at families and if you’re only interested in thrills from big rides, Paultons is not for you.
Ride Photos are available on the following attractions, priced at £6 for a photo (Picsolve):

The Cobra, The Stinger, The Wave Runner, The Raging River Ride, The Flying Frog, Trekking Tractors

Cobra
Cobra is a fantastic little coaster delivering an excellent mix of thrills including a wild-mouse style hairpin section, airtime lift hills and helixes all combined to make a unique ride experience. The ride is quite long considering its height making it even more fun. Cobra has been in the park since 2006 and still looks to be in excellent condition, giving a smooth ride experience. With its 1.1m height restriction (when accompanied by a responsible adult) its makes a great mid-level coaster for those budding coaster enthusiasts!

Edge

When it was installed in 2009 Edge was the first Disko Coaster of its kind in the UK, with a unique camel-back hump in the middle of the track. There are currently only 3 Disko Coasters in the UK, two with the added hump, and of the two, Edge seemed to offer a more exciting ride, although it did seem a little bumpy after the camelback on the way out from the station. It certainly looks impressive to the eye with its striking orange paint job:

FREE – Just Hit the Button!
Finally, it is definitely worth mentioning that the park has a number of little “kiddie” pay-as-you-go rides dotted around the park, the sort of rides you’d normally find outside Tescos or Asda. It was nice to discover though that these rides are provided completely free of charge when normally parks would be capitalizing on these opportunities by charging either 50p or £1. We really hope these remain in the park as a free addition as its something that the kids love to play on and when at Paultons, this can be done without nagging the parents for loose change.

Peppa Pig World

2011 sees the introduction of Peppa Pig World – a UK exclusive and World First opening Saturday 9th April 2011, in time for Easter Construction is continuing with rides now on-site and being installed – click here for construction gallery. Peppa Pig World has its own

Peppa Pig World Map

website (www.peppapigworld.co.uk) which looks fantastic, however it is currently only linked from Paultons’ main site from one location – the banner at the top of their page, and this banner is on a 1/4 rotation so it can be quite easy to miss it.

Hopefully the two sites will be integrated with each other for 2011, making it easy to see that Peppa Pig World is part of Paultons Park as currently, they could quite easily be interpreted as two completely different theme parks. UK Park News hopes to attend the Media Day for the opening of Peppa Pig World. With Peppa Pig being such a successful brand amongst children, we can envisage this having a huge positive impact on the park, in the same way that Thomas Land did for Drayton Manor. With such a major investment, UK Park News will be interested to see what impact this has on the park’s 2011 entrance fee.

Food & Beverage/Retail Sales

Most of the parks’ food outlets were closed when we visited the park. This is understandable however. It would hardly be viable to open the stores with so little guests on park (the weather really was rather awful). We didn’t actually try any of the parks food for ourselves, as we decided to bring packed lunches, however all of it seemed priced around what you would expect to pay at a Theme park. An average meal would set you back roughly £6, which includes a Burger/Hot dog; Fries; and a Standard Fizzy Drink.

Gift Shop

At the entrance to the park is The Wagoners Restaurant, a large dining hall that serves a variety of foods ranging from bacon rolls (£2.95), to curry’s (£6.45). They also serve cold Sandwiches; Baguettes and Salads, starting at £2.95 and £4.50 respectively. Also on offer, is a Children’s Lunchbox, priced at a reasonable £3.95. This includes Sausages; Chicken or Vegetable Nuggets; Chips; a Carton of Drink; and a Toy. Across the park, close to the Peppa Pig World Construction site is the very pleasant-looking ‘Station Restaurant’, aptly named due to its close proximity to the Rio Grande Train. All of the food outlets we encountered looked to be maintained to a high standard of cleanliness, as with the other facilities on park.
Paultons – Gift Shop
At the entrance to the park is a substantially sized gift store. Like most other Family Parks, items with the Paultons Park logo/brand were slightly limited; though they do have more than many of the other parks we have visited, which makes a nice change. Paultons also seem to be making the most of the Peppa Pig brand already, with a portion of the store dedicated to Peppa merchandise, and a huge array of items on display through the shop window.
The only quibble we had with the stores and outlets on park, was the 50p charge that Paultons Park add for using Debit/Credit card cashback transactions, however the park have since advised UK Park News that “There is a 50p charge for Cashback transactions only, and if this purchase is completed at the same time as cashback (if purchase is over £5.00) we also waive the 50p fee”.

It was a pleasant surprise to see that Paultons had incorporated Ride Photos into all 3 of their Roller-coasters. Many small family parks tend to avoid these, especially on their smaller rides; however Paultons even offered them on the small Zierer coaster – The Flying Frog. They are priced at £6 each, which is once again average compared with other Theme Parks. We feel that the addition of On-Ride Photos is brilliant, especially at a family theme park, as these are where most children will experience their first coaster – Quite a memorable moment!

Guest Experience/Staff Interaction
Every staff member we encountered during our day seemed very friendly and enthusiastic. This tends to be a common trend at small family parks, something which really makes for a better day, and provides a more personal experience, something which is lacking at large corporate parks. A few ride members seemed a bit bored; however, we really can’t fault them, as many of them were sitting around all day with absolutely nothing to do. Many of the staff were making the most of the day, trying their hardest, in a light-hearted way, to convince us to come to their ride/stall. It is worth pointing out that ride staff made the effort to talk to Lucy – our 3-year-old resident theme park enthusiast! Very often ride ops can acknowledge parents, but not give that special “hello” to the youngsters of the group.

Family Focus

There’s no doubt that Paultons Park is a brilliant day out for the whole family. There’s a fantastic mix of rides and attractions for people of all ages, not forgetting the lovely scenery in the gardens and animal attractions.

Free Kiddie Rides

Even though the park isn’t situated centrally in the country, we’d recommend it as a place any family should visit if looking for a great day out together in beautiful clean surroundings and friendly staff.

Water Kingdom
With Peppa Pig World opening in 2011, it makes Paultons the ideal weekend getaway for the family either for camping, or when taking advantage of one of the many package deals that the park offers via its website.
Toilets – Well Designed & Immaculate
We’d also like to comment on the park’s toilet facilities – it was nice to see that the park had taken children into consideration when building their toilets. We noticed that there was a special sink at a lower level allowing kids to easily reach the taps, in addition to having clever two-level toilet seats, making it easy for little ones to site on the loo comfortably. In addition to this – the toilets seemed to be in immaculate condition and cleanliness was perfect – a far cry from most WC facilities in parks!

Conclusion

This Paultons Park visit was our first – both as UK Park News reviewers and as general visitors. Despite the terrible weather, it was still an excellent day out, and we were pleasantly surprised at how beautiful the park was, and how it felt that every time we turned a corner there was something we hadn’t spotted before.

Paultons Gardens

There seems to be an endless number of things to do and places to explore at Paultons, whether it be the fast paced ride on Cobra, or the enchanting walk through the Snakes & Ladders Garden. The park has an excellent atmosphere with all staff encountered displaying an excellent friendly and welcoming attitude. There’s definitely something to be awarded to the smaller family run parks; the atmosphere always seems much more personal, and friendly – something the corporate parks definitely lack.

UK Park News would like to thank Paultons Park including all its senior staff, ride operators and assistants for making this review possible. We hope to work with you again soon.