As non-season-passholders currently, we haven’t had the opportunity to visit so far this year until our recent trip. So, I thought I’d share a little trip report but share some more in-depth blog posts regarding the rollercoasters & my opinions on them as I have far too much to say to fit it all in these singular posts.
Pricing & Opening Hours:
As I referred to above we aren’t season passholders anymore due to missing out on the sale last year. Therefore, we had to pay for our entry tickets. Thankfully we had Tesco club card points which paid for one of our tickets. But we then paid £34 for an adult. I don’t find the pricing all that bad, especially on a day as we had. The opening hours weren’t the best but given the volume of people in the park, it was entirely logical to open at 11 am & close at 5 pm. It would have cost the park more to run the rides with half-empty trains than they would have probably made it from customers during our visit. It was a rare sight to see a train full all day.
Queues & Ride Availability/Throughputs:
There were hardly any queues across the entire park. Rides such as The Big One were on one train with a small queue of 10 minutes but even that wasn’t too bad. Especially considering it was running one train and just over half of that too. The ride availability was outstanding all the major rides were open & the throughputs were fantastic for the capacity of people knocking about the park. All in all, for an off-peak day it was flawlessly done.
The Rides:
Honestly, I have far too much to say on this front I’m going to do each rollercoaster individually or grouping them together. But strictly speaking the number of rides we managed to get done was fab. There were some which I avoided aka Icon due to being poorly before heading into the park & I know full well that Icon would make me even worst. However, we did all we wanted to get done & if we wanted to complete every single ride in the park we 100% could be off.
ENSO:
It seemed that ENSO was operating for the first couple of hours of the day before getting switched for a normal train. Whilst ENSO was on the track we didn’t catch anyone riding but strictly speaking there wasn’t a large number of guests about anyway. But I’m not here to comment on anything regarding this but if you’re visiting off-peak & want to experience ENSO we’d say to do it early as possible.
Food & Drink Options:
We don’t generally eat in the park and usually head down the road to The Velvet Coaster (Wetherspoons). But during our visit, we headed into the Ice Lounge under the Flying Machines. We both had a panini and it was delicious. Pricing was reasonable also for a meal it was £6.80 which is not all that bad at all. As someone who’s allergic to potatoes, it would have been great to have the choice of something other than crisps as your snack as part of your meal. But I do appreciate that’s coming from a very narrow standpoint & quite a self-centred ask.
Valhalla Update:
The station from the Flying Machines looks fab. Those tinier features that have been added to the outer facade look great. It seems the inner part of the station has also received a large facelift and again looks stunning from what I could make out. From our viewpoint, it appears a lot of work is still undergoing and the outdoor section scaffold persists. We are VERY excited about this opening and honestly can’t quite judge the method to the completion from the small amount you can see. However, I doubt it’ll be too long perhaps August at the latest.
Overall:
We had a brilliant day. Every staff member we met was fab and cheerful which is always welcoming. The rides were running faultlessly with no downtime. All in all, it was brilliant & so quiet which was down to the fact it was an off-peak Monday. If you’re looking to up your ride count at the park you must pay for a weekday visit.
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Do you love to visit on an off-peak day? What’s the highest ride count you have managed to get?
Thanks for reading & if you are visiting soon have the best time!
