Paultons Park and Peppa Pig World

For Lara's third birthday we took her for a very special day out at Peppa Pig World in the New Forest near Southampton, part of Paultons Park.

Before we went, we downloaded the Paultons Park iphone app to help plan our visit - it has a park map and a list of all the places to eat and drink (something we had struggled with on a previous visit to the park). I think the park map is invaluable and I wish more theme parks would do this as it means you can take the map with you and not have to worry about a flappy bit of paper on the day.

When we arrived at Paultons Park we had a brief look at the rides for big girls and boys - Lara was totally fascinated by the new Magma ride because she could see it from a distance. Thankfully, Lara was too small to ride the Magma! Mind you, at just under one metre she can still go on a lot of the attractions at Paultons Park, and not just within the Peppa Pig World area.

As you can imagine, Lara really wanted to spend the day in Peppa Pig World which is a dedicated area at one side of the park. I was really impressed that over a year after opening it was clean and pristine as the day it was opened. We really noticed this in the indoor soft play area which opened at midday after a thorough clean and was totally and utterly spotless.

After an apprehensive start (softened by a coffee and cake stop) Lara went on every one of the rides in Peppa Pig world. Her favourite by far was the George's Dinosaur ride which features a rocking bouncy ride-on dinosaur... grrrrr.

For lunch we took a picnic as we were worried that the food would be expensive and hard to find but in fact the situation had improved since our last visit and I think we could probably have found something suitable to eat. There is a bit of work currently going on in Paultons Park to introduce some new eating establishments and toilet blocks and I think they are investing well. The picnic area had been transformed into a very tidy and smart area with covered seating for all-weather picnics as well as a nice grassy area where we sat in the sun with our sarnies.

After lunch Lara headed back to the soft play area (she hadn't really spent long on soft play before and was really enjoying herself). She took a helicopter ride in Miss Rabbit's Helicopters and then joined me for a trip to the top of Windy castle in what was actually quite a high, fast-spinning ride! From the top we could see the rest of the park including the tractor ride which took Lara's eye.

Lara had an awesome birthday and we will definitely be going back to Paultons Park later in the summer.

 

Disclosure: We were sent the tickets for Paultons Park for the purposes of our review.