Ollie
CF Legend
Had the 3 creds at Gulliver's taunting me for years on coaster-count as nearby creds I hadn't ridden. For those that don't know, the Gulliver's parks around the UK have a strict rule where you can't get into the park if you don't have children with you.
Now that I have my own kids I've been suggesting it as a day out idea for a few years but it's always been turned down in favour for other places. Imagine my annoyance when at the start of the summer holidays this year my wife plans a day out with the kids with their nan on a day when I'm working, and out of all the places they could have chosen they went to Gulliver's without me.
Needless to say I threw all my coaster enthusiast toys out the pram and all the counter-arguments of "it's just a kids park," and "It's not even that good" fell on deaf ears to my tunnel vision of missing out on the nearby credits that have been taunting me for years.
Anyway, a week later I'd had my annual leave approved at work and we'd booked tickets to return. This time including me.
I only got a handful of pictures from my visit but may post some others (with credit) to give a better look at some of the rides for those that haven't been.
We arrived on a very wet morning and the weather forecast wasn't looking great which I thought was great news as it usually means a quieter day at the park. When the rest of my family last visited it wasn't too busy and that was a hot summers day so was hoping to nab the creds nice and quickly and relieve my anxiety that you get every time you visit a new park.
Entry to the park was nice and quick. It's got quite a late opening compared to other parks with a 10:30am park open. Once in the park you're all locked into a holding area with two closed gates leading off to each side of the park. You're forced to endure a welcome show from the entertainments team where the music was louder than the mics so most people couldn't hear what was being said. Amusingly the first costume character was late to the stage by a couple of minutes which caused the lady hosting the show to panic as the pre-recorded lines from the mouse character was playing, yet there was no mouse on stage. After a countdown the gates were open and a stampede of people flooded through to both sides of the park as kids barged past other kids knocking people out the way. Probably not the safest way to manage the crowds, especially with recent injuries from people getting trampled at park/ride openings this year.
Walking around the park, you could tell it's dated. The park was nicely landscaped and nestled in with lots of trees and open water. It gave off "park from the 80s/90s nostalgia" vibes. Just without any of the charm. It's in desperate need or a cleanup and a fresh coat of paint as it looks like it's falling apart.
After a long walk around the lake, through the knockoff Frontierland cowboy area with a few inappropriate American Indian statues we reached the first cred...
The Wriggler is a standard big apple coaster without the apple. Apparently they removed the ride and brought it back in a new colour without the apple and advertised it as a new ride. By the time we got here the queue was already out the entrance. Not a good sign for how busy the day was going to be. Ended up queuing for about 20 minutes in the end and by the time we got on the ride the queue was out the entrance and circled all the way round the area and down the path leading out. Disgusting. Not much to report here. Standard plus 1 with 2 laps of the circuit. We awkwardly pushed our way out the area through the queue that was now blocking the queue in. Easily now a 90 minute wait for a big apple coaster.
We walked past the parks largest coaster, the Antelope. But with staggered opening on some rides (even though the park opens at 10:30) it wasn't open yet. There was already a queue forming so we decided to head over to the other side of the park for cred number 2. Walking round the Antelope I noticed that the "don't die" fencing only consisted of a waist high wire fence or a waist height brick wall. Meaning that anyone could easily get into the ride area if they wanted to ride the ride was operating. Not good.
On the way to our next coaster we hopped into The Haunted Mansion. This small walkthrough over two floors takes you through dark corridors and past random little perspex windows with puppets in various scenes. The upstairs part looked like they forgot to decorate it so let a school group go crazy with a bunch of UV paint. From a health and safety aspect as an attraction designer it felt unsafe, with hidden stairs in dark areas without enough lighting and a scary lack of fire exits. It was naff, the kids were bored and the whole thing made no sense.
We got to other side of the park for the next cred. Grand Prix Racers. Only to be met with every cred counters worst nightmare... A staff member stood outside the entrance with a "RIDE CLOSED" board!
This whole area of the park had a weird 'gears' theme and had an inverting flat ride that definitely didn't fit in with the family/child theme of the park.
Watching this ride during the day further cemented that the safety standards in this park need looking at. Every ride was operated by just one member of staff (even the coasters) which meant they were managing the queue, ride, restraints and onloading/offloading of each ride. This made for some painfully slow queues. Watching the lad on Overdrive (who only seemed to be about 16) stood outside the hut while the ride was in motion was scarier than the ride itself. If anyone had stuck their leg out he would have been taken out and slammed into the metal cage around the ride. The lack of safety measures for the team working there (and the lack of common sense from themselves) was something we noticed a lot during this visit.
After finding cred number 2 closed we headed over to the parks Log Flume. The park has no queue time boards or app so a lot of it is join a queue and hope it's not too bad. A select few rides do have physical signs at set points in the queue with estimated wait times from that point. Joining the queue for the log flume the sign said 30 minutes so we decided to wait it out. We queued in a tiny room with a cattle pen queue. With how narrow the queue path was it felt really cramped in there with the amount of people. But to be fair to the staff member on the ride he was getting through as quick as he could. There were only 5 boats on circuit with 1 being used only for the access queue. But the queue felt like it kept progressing and he was getting people on and off as quick as he could. Felt sorry for him having to shout safety instructions down the station at every boat and the building could do with a bit more signage and maybe audio announcements to help if that's the policy of the park. The log flume itself was a small figure 8 layout past some overgrown bushes and a moss covered pond. It had a chain lift rather than a belt which was a bit weird to see. Even with 5 boats we were stacking at the bottom of the hill and floating around waiting to be taken up. Whilst waiting we got a lovely view of buckets of oil and grease placed within arms reach of the car with no attempt of hiding them. The drop was quite small and I got approx. 6-7 drops of water on my leg before we floated back found to the station where we stacked again to get offloaded.
After the log flume we went to go check the queue for the Antelope. The queue was spilling out the rides entrance (which had a 45 minute wait sign at the point) and trailed all the way down to the back end of the park. Easily a 2 hour queue, if not more. As we were near the rapids ride we thought we'd check the queue. The queue was all the way back to the entrance which had a sign saying it was a 75 minute wait from that point. We left the choice up to the kids if they wanted to go on it. By this point they were both fed up with the long slow queues that they didn't want to wait in so we decided to go have some lunch.
It was raining quite a bit now so we ended up doing an entire lap of the park trying to find some undercover seating. We wandered through the dinosaur area which looked quite nicely put together, although dated. There was weird pathing to get to the safari area where you had to walk up ramps that winded round the outside of a building until you were on the roof, before walking across a bridge from the roof over to the next area. Very strange. We eventually found some covered seating and had our lunch. I went to the counter of the nearby food area that served pizzas and hotdogs to grab a couple of coffees. Whilst waiting I saw that there was an entrance to a ride further down the narrow path which I thought was weird as the queue for the food would be blocking the way in. Found out shortly after this was the entrance to their mini golf when two kids came up to the counter and asked where the golf was. To which the food server handed them some dirty clubs and balls to them over the counter before going back to serving food without washing their hands.
After lunch we realised that we needed to try and boost our ride count as we still hadn't been on much. So we jumped in the queue for the Temple Raiders ride across the path as the queue wasn't too long. No signs outside saying what it was or what it entailed. Just join a queue and find out once you were on the ride. Not long into the queue the ride host was saying it was shut as his CCTV had stopped working and he cant send the ride without it and it could be up to two hours before it reopens as he didn't know where the maintenance team were on site. A few people left the queue and by the time we were deciding if it was worth going elsewhere the cameras came back on and we were on the next ride. The guy running the ride seemed to be in a bit of a mood and no patience left. Got a bit snappy with kids asking him questions about the ride and people going through the gate he opened to get on an empty row before he gave permission. We were soon on our way for a shot 60 second ride round a dark tomb. Past some static models of mummies and masks and lit up scenes before returning to the station.
We checked the queue for the Antelope again which had somehow got even longer than before. Being hopeful that the queue would die down later we headed back over to Grand Prix Racers to see if it was open and IT WAS!
Another long queue for this one. Like with all the queues at Gulliver's, they look short but they're not. Every coaster on the park only operates on one train with the changeover between riders being long and drawn out. There was no queue line path for this one, you were just waiting on a pathway that went round the ride area. Got some lovely views into some of the other nearby rides such as the tractor ride that takes you past weathered animal models where body parts have literally fallen off. The queue for this took about an hour in the end but so was every other ride in the park so we endured it and bagged another +1. Again, nothing to write about. The seats we uncomfortable as they were solid plastic and had two 3d racing lines going straight down your spine that you could feel on every corner. Extra points for the staff stood on the station having a chat whilst the train whilst the train shot past inches away for its second lap.
With just one coaster left go go we just decided to put up with the queue and get the Antelope out the way. It was getting late in the day and we had no idea if it was the queues that shut at the advertised time or the park so to avoid being spited we stuck out the queue. It was quite slow moving as they only run one train. So with 1 train of 16 seats, with 4 of those going to the access queue, meant that only 12 riders from the main queue were getting on every few minutes. Despite this we only ended up waiting around 70 minutes before we got on.
No idea why the 'Antelope' coaster has an Ocotopus on its logo. Maybe there's some story that we weren't told in the queue. There's also some cowboys riding horses and a giant dragon that used to be a bin in the ride area for extra theming.
All I heard about this coaster was how rough it was so I was preparing for the worst. The seats were well padded but the grab bar being in an awkward position made it hard to brace. Overall it wasn't too bad. Yes, it was rough and jolty but not the worst I've been on. It was more jolty going forwards with the seat giving you back slaps at the bottom of each drop. Saying that there was some good little pops of airtime in the short circuit.
After finally ticking off credit number 3 I could relax. So much for a quick cred run before lunch time.
We got the kid an ice cream each for being patient in the queues all day (even though they ended up misbehaving out of boredom).
We had time for one final ride so made our way over to the nearby pirate ship.
It's a smaller tamer model and looked like it had a new queue as the wood was still unpainted with the stamps over the wood you get when you buy it from a shop.
The guy running it was the best team member we had seen all day. Really friendly and chatty even though it was the end of a busy day. Actually calling down the queue to fill empty seats to keep the queue as short as possible and saying bye and wishing everyone a good day as they got off. Shows how something simple as positive staff interaction can have.
After that we wandered back to the car park.
Decided to treat ourselves to a trip to IKEA after which was as fun as always. But the queue for food after was 45 minutes so ended up going home.
Overall TLDR:
Dated park that's in need of a lot of TLC and better crowd management.
Think the parks H&S needs looking into and better staff training
Final ride count: 7 (Wriggler, Haunted Mansion, Log Flume, Temple Raider, Grand Prix Racers, Antelope, Pirate Ship).
Coaster-Count is looking a lot happier with the 3 creds finally ticket off so in no rush to go back.
Now that I have my own kids I've been suggesting it as a day out idea for a few years but it's always been turned down in favour for other places. Imagine my annoyance when at the start of the summer holidays this year my wife plans a day out with the kids with their nan on a day when I'm working, and out of all the places they could have chosen they went to Gulliver's without me.
Needless to say I threw all my coaster enthusiast toys out the pram and all the counter-arguments of "it's just a kids park," and "It's not even that good" fell on deaf ears to my tunnel vision of missing out on the nearby credits that have been taunting me for years.Anyway, a week later I'd had my annual leave approved at work and we'd booked tickets to return. This time including me.
I only got a handful of pictures from my visit but may post some others (with credit) to give a better look at some of the rides for those that haven't been.
We arrived on a very wet morning and the weather forecast wasn't looking great which I thought was great news as it usually means a quieter day at the park. When the rest of my family last visited it wasn't too busy and that was a hot summers day so was hoping to nab the creds nice and quickly and relieve my anxiety that you get every time you visit a new park.
Entry to the park was nice and quick. It's got quite a late opening compared to other parks with a 10:30am park open. Once in the park you're all locked into a holding area with two closed gates leading off to each side of the park. You're forced to endure a welcome show from the entertainments team where the music was louder than the mics so most people couldn't hear what was being said. Amusingly the first costume character was late to the stage by a couple of minutes which caused the lady hosting the show to panic as the pre-recorded lines from the mouse character was playing, yet there was no mouse on stage. After a countdown the gates were open and a stampede of people flooded through to both sides of the park as kids barged past other kids knocking people out the way. Probably not the safest way to manage the crowds, especially with recent injuries from people getting trampled at park/ride openings this year.
Walking around the park, you could tell it's dated. The park was nicely landscaped and nestled in with lots of trees and open water. It gave off "park from the 80s/90s nostalgia" vibes. Just without any of the charm. It's in desperate need or a cleanup and a fresh coat of paint as it looks like it's falling apart.
After a long walk around the lake, through the knockoff Frontierland cowboy area with a few inappropriate American Indian statues we reached the first cred...
The Wriggler is a standard big apple coaster without the apple. Apparently they removed the ride and brought it back in a new colour without the apple and advertised it as a new ride. By the time we got here the queue was already out the entrance. Not a good sign for how busy the day was going to be. Ended up queuing for about 20 minutes in the end and by the time we got on the ride the queue was out the entrance and circled all the way round the area and down the path leading out. Disgusting. Not much to report here. Standard plus 1 with 2 laps of the circuit. We awkwardly pushed our way out the area through the queue that was now blocking the queue in. Easily now a 90 minute wait for a big apple coaster.
We walked past the parks largest coaster, the Antelope. But with staggered opening on some rides (even though the park opens at 10:30) it wasn't open yet. There was already a queue forming so we decided to head over to the other side of the park for cred number 2. Walking round the Antelope I noticed that the "don't die" fencing only consisted of a waist high wire fence or a waist height brick wall. Meaning that anyone could easily get into the ride area if they wanted to ride the ride was operating. Not good.
On the way to our next coaster we hopped into The Haunted Mansion. This small walkthrough over two floors takes you through dark corridors and past random little perspex windows with puppets in various scenes. The upstairs part looked like they forgot to decorate it so let a school group go crazy with a bunch of UV paint. From a health and safety aspect as an attraction designer it felt unsafe, with hidden stairs in dark areas without enough lighting and a scary lack of fire exits. It was naff, the kids were bored and the whole thing made no sense.
We got to other side of the park for the next cred. Grand Prix Racers. Only to be met with every cred counters worst nightmare... A staff member stood outside the entrance with a "RIDE CLOSED" board!
This whole area of the park had a weird 'gears' theme and had an inverting flat ride that definitely didn't fit in with the family/child theme of the park.
Watching this ride during the day further cemented that the safety standards in this park need looking at. Every ride was operated by just one member of staff (even the coasters) which meant they were managing the queue, ride, restraints and onloading/offloading of each ride. This made for some painfully slow queues. Watching the lad on Overdrive (who only seemed to be about 16) stood outside the hut while the ride was in motion was scarier than the ride itself. If anyone had stuck their leg out he would have been taken out and slammed into the metal cage around the ride. The lack of safety measures for the team working there (and the lack of common sense from themselves) was something we noticed a lot during this visit.
After finding cred number 2 closed we headed over to the parks Log Flume. The park has no queue time boards or app so a lot of it is join a queue and hope it's not too bad. A select few rides do have physical signs at set points in the queue with estimated wait times from that point. Joining the queue for the log flume the sign said 30 minutes so we decided to wait it out. We queued in a tiny room with a cattle pen queue. With how narrow the queue path was it felt really cramped in there with the amount of people. But to be fair to the staff member on the ride he was getting through as quick as he could. There were only 5 boats on circuit with 1 being used only for the access queue. But the queue felt like it kept progressing and he was getting people on and off as quick as he could. Felt sorry for him having to shout safety instructions down the station at every boat and the building could do with a bit more signage and maybe audio announcements to help if that's the policy of the park. The log flume itself was a small figure 8 layout past some overgrown bushes and a moss covered pond. It had a chain lift rather than a belt which was a bit weird to see. Even with 5 boats we were stacking at the bottom of the hill and floating around waiting to be taken up. Whilst waiting we got a lovely view of buckets of oil and grease placed within arms reach of the car with no attempt of hiding them. The drop was quite small and I got approx. 6-7 drops of water on my leg before we floated back found to the station where we stacked again to get offloaded.
After the log flume we went to go check the queue for the Antelope. The queue was spilling out the rides entrance (which had a 45 minute wait sign at the point) and trailed all the way down to the back end of the park. Easily a 2 hour queue, if not more. As we were near the rapids ride we thought we'd check the queue. The queue was all the way back to the entrance which had a sign saying it was a 75 minute wait from that point. We left the choice up to the kids if they wanted to go on it. By this point they were both fed up with the long slow queues that they didn't want to wait in so we decided to go have some lunch.
It was raining quite a bit now so we ended up doing an entire lap of the park trying to find some undercover seating. We wandered through the dinosaur area which looked quite nicely put together, although dated. There was weird pathing to get to the safari area where you had to walk up ramps that winded round the outside of a building until you were on the roof, before walking across a bridge from the roof over to the next area. Very strange. We eventually found some covered seating and had our lunch. I went to the counter of the nearby food area that served pizzas and hotdogs to grab a couple of coffees. Whilst waiting I saw that there was an entrance to a ride further down the narrow path which I thought was weird as the queue for the food would be blocking the way in. Found out shortly after this was the entrance to their mini golf when two kids came up to the counter and asked where the golf was. To which the food server handed them some dirty clubs and balls to them over the counter before going back to serving food without washing their hands.
After lunch we realised that we needed to try and boost our ride count as we still hadn't been on much. So we jumped in the queue for the Temple Raiders ride across the path as the queue wasn't too long. No signs outside saying what it was or what it entailed. Just join a queue and find out once you were on the ride. Not long into the queue the ride host was saying it was shut as his CCTV had stopped working and he cant send the ride without it and it could be up to two hours before it reopens as he didn't know where the maintenance team were on site. A few people left the queue and by the time we were deciding if it was worth going elsewhere the cameras came back on and we were on the next ride. The guy running the ride seemed to be in a bit of a mood and no patience left. Got a bit snappy with kids asking him questions about the ride and people going through the gate he opened to get on an empty row before he gave permission. We were soon on our way for a shot 60 second ride round a dark tomb. Past some static models of mummies and masks and lit up scenes before returning to the station.
We checked the queue for the Antelope again which had somehow got even longer than before. Being hopeful that the queue would die down later we headed back over to Grand Prix Racers to see if it was open and IT WAS!
Another long queue for this one. Like with all the queues at Gulliver's, they look short but they're not. Every coaster on the park only operates on one train with the changeover between riders being long and drawn out. There was no queue line path for this one, you were just waiting on a pathway that went round the ride area. Got some lovely views into some of the other nearby rides such as the tractor ride that takes you past weathered animal models where body parts have literally fallen off. The queue for this took about an hour in the end but so was every other ride in the park so we endured it and bagged another +1. Again, nothing to write about. The seats we uncomfortable as they were solid plastic and had two 3d racing lines going straight down your spine that you could feel on every corner.
Extra points for the staff stood on the station having a chat whilst the train whilst the train shot past inches away for its second lap.With just one coaster left go go we just decided to put up with the queue and get the Antelope out the way. It was getting late in the day and we had no idea if it was the queues that shut at the advertised time or the park so to avoid being spited we stuck out the queue. It was quite slow moving as they only run one train. So with 1 train of 16 seats, with 4 of those going to the access queue, meant that only 12 riders from the main queue were getting on every few minutes. Despite this we only ended up waiting around 70 minutes before we got on.
No idea why the 'Antelope' coaster has an Ocotopus on its logo. Maybe there's some story that we weren't told in the queue. There's also some cowboys riding horses and a giant dragon that used to be a bin in the ride area for extra theming.
All I heard about this coaster was how rough it was so I was preparing for the worst. The seats were well padded but the grab bar being in an awkward position made it hard to brace. Overall it wasn't too bad. Yes, it was rough and jolty but not the worst I've been on. It was more jolty going forwards with the seat giving you back slaps at the bottom of each drop. Saying that there was some good little pops of airtime in the short circuit.
After finally ticking off credit number 3 I could relax. So much for a quick cred run before lunch time.
We got the kid an ice cream each for being patient in the queues all day (even though they ended up misbehaving out of boredom).We had time for one final ride so made our way over to the nearby pirate ship.
It's a smaller tamer model and looked like it had a new queue as the wood was still unpainted with the stamps over the wood you get when you buy it from a shop.
The guy running it was the best team member we had seen all day. Really friendly and chatty even though it was the end of a busy day. Actually calling down the queue to fill empty seats to keep the queue as short as possible and saying bye and wishing everyone a good day as they got off. Shows how something simple as positive staff interaction can have.
After that we wandered back to the car park.
Decided to treat ourselves to a trip to IKEA after which was as fun as always. But the queue for food after was 45 minutes so ended up going home.
Overall TLDR:
Dated park that's in need of a lot of TLC and better crowd management.
Think the parks H&S needs looking into and better staff training
Final ride count: 7 (Wriggler, Haunted Mansion, Log Flume, Temple Raider, Grand Prix Racers, Antelope, Pirate Ship).
Coaster-Count is looking a lot happier with the 3 creds finally ticket off so in no rush to go back.
