There really is quite a lot packed into this park, they seem to have made most of their seaside cliff perch location with nicely landscaped gardens and lots of amusements dotted throughout. One of the first things we did was walk through a maze, a proper "English" hedgerow maze - Alison, myself and the boys did this together, and it started to rain so we got faster and faster to try to get out before it might really pour on us!
One big drawback is that the site is anything but flat, and I was thankful that we did not enter the park with anything that had wheels (like the cart, for example)! We initially explored an area that had some of the older attractions, such as a Fin Whale skeleton you could walk through, and also various steam engines, such as this one:
We thought that we might be disappointed, but then we realized that we'd only seen a tiny portion of the park and all that it offered - we found a restaurant where we had a cup of tea and stayed out of the rain for a short while before going on to explore the rest of the park.
We had our hands stamped on entry (like at Legoland) so that we could leave and return as needed during the day, and this was great news since we had brought along a picnic. We initially left the picnic in the car, and then later we found a large play area with a Pirate ship and lots of picnic tables and benches, so we left grandma with the boys while Alison and I collected the picnic.
Being such a full day, and as I was running around with the boys, I did not take many photos, so we only have a few to share, like this one of the boys sat on a bench with talking dwarfs either end:
I found it slightly ironic that they had re-created the American Wild West here, there was even a Davy Crockett figure - I thought we'd left that behind in Texas. Here are myself and the boys driving a stage coach:
We went on to the "Snakes and Ladders" area that had just re-opened (it had been closed due to weather in the morning, but deemed dry enough to re-open). Some rather steep ladders to climb and steep slides to come down again! Then we walked through a fairy-tale area with fairies, mushrooms and even a castle.
After Sleeping Beauty's Castle we went to "Rumpus Mansion" - a real house that had been converted into an "attraction" - something of a haunted house with animatronics, but rather tired and a bit too scary for the boys. I took Ethan and Owen into the Smugglers' Cave while Alison and her mum started to head back to the exit/shop. I found the rest of the smugglers at Smugglers' Rest:
That was pretty much the last area apart from the gift shop that we spent time at. The boys selected one gift for themselves each that they spent their own money on (with Mummy & Daddy's approval), and then bundled back into the car for another head-shakingly bumpy ride across the island (we are staying pretty much diametrically across the island from Blackgang Chine).
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