As a family, we love theme parks. When our kids where small we took the requisite trip to Paultons Park to visit Peppa Pig World. The kids loved it and, when we managed to convince them to venture in to the rest of the park, we thought that some of the bigger rides looked pretty good too. This year, we decided it was time to revisit Paultons Park with our now 6 and 8 year olds and found that Paultons Park with older kids is great fun. Here are the reasons why.
You don’t have to go in the splash park
On our previous visit both of us ended up rather wet from supervising the children in the splash park. Now that they are older, we were able to leave them to it. We watched from a sunny bench way outside of the splash zone.
The big rides have short queues!
Normally when you go to a theme park, the better the ride, the longer the queue. At Paultons Park, this is simply not true. We visited on a sunny Sunday at the end of half term and the most we queued was 10 minutes. We visited Chessington World of Adventures on the same weekend last year and spent 4 hours in queues. While there, we decided to wander through Peppa Pig world for old times sake (believe or not, you may one day miss her). The queues were huge! It seems that because it attracts so many small children, the rides for older kids are empty.
You might actually get to enjoy the gardens
Paultons Park has some beautiful garden areas. If you’re lucky, older kids might tolerate you having a look around them. If you choose to take a picnic then the garden’s are a great place to eat it. The whole place is also spotlessly clean and well maintained which is lovely.
Older kids will appreciate the 4D cinema
To be honest, we had no plans to go in the 4D cinema. It happened to start to rain as we were passing, so we popped in. My previous experience of 4D with younger kids was that they found the whole thing a bit scary. A singing turtle in a feather boa popping out of the screen and singing at you is not for the feint hearted but my bigger kids loved it. They are old enough to not be scared of it but young enough to enjoy the magic.
You can enjoy the rides too, or not
At 1.2 and 1.4 metres, both children were able to go on every ride in the park. There were a few that girl Child needed an adult to go on with her but plenty where she didn’t. As it happens, we love rides so went on everything, our favourites were The Edge and The Cobra. As an adult, I was pleased that the thrill rides weren’t all based on spinning, I’m just too old for that now! If rides aren’t your thing then older kids can still have plenty of fun while you watch from a safe distance.
All in all we had a great time. We stayed in a hotel and did two days in the park. The lack of queues meant we were able to go on our favourite rides multiple times. We could have done it in a day but we enjoyed not having to rush. While the rides might not be thrilling enough for teens, I would say Paultons Park is great for primary school age children. They get to spend their time on rides rather than queueing.
If you’re looking for other ways to spend time with older children have a look our post on crabbing with kids.
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