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Lost Kingdom at Paultons Park!

Jordanovichy

Credit Whore 2016
Today Paultons Park showed off their new area, Lost Kingdom in a media day event. I hadn't visited Paultons since 2007 (pre my enthuuuuuuusiast days) so I was excited to revisit the park! On arriving it felt quite busy, I was glad we would have exclusive access to the area! We collected our name badges and headed over to the Lost Kingdom!

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We headed straight over to Velociraptor first, a Vekoma family boomerang coaster!

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It's selling point is it apparently has a 'world first track design', ooooh I hear you cry, well ooooh is right! It was good fun, pop of airtime as the track passed over the ride station, I've never been a massive fan of going backwards on coasters, and this was the same, but it's a great first coaster for kids.

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We gave Dino Chase a ride next, a re-theme of Flying Frog, a simple Zierer Tivoli, loved the new trains!

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We then headed over to the second new coaster, and third in the area, Flight of the Pterosaur!

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A UK first, Flight of the Pterosaur is a Vekoma family suspended coaster, throughout the day, it was the more popular of the two coasters, forming a ten minute queue at times! For our first ride, Ben and I queued for front row which added on a few minutes.

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It's such a thrill! When queuing, I noticed how people coming off were all beaming, having had a great time, always great to see. Yeah, I really enjoyed it, flying above the Lost Kingdom, and the dinosaurs below, through a small tunnel, swooping up and down, great addition.

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It was the small attention to detail I loved in the Lost Kingdom, this was a service door for Flight of the Pterosaur, looks so realistic.

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And the station on Flight of the Pterosaur, intricately built 'into' the rocks

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Made the experience all that more immersive.

That was the two coasters ridden so we thought we should ride a couple more of the attractions in Lost Kingdom, first was Boulder Dash, no, not Lake Compounce's woodie, but...that's right! A Zamperla Demolition Derby!

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I don't think I've ever ridden one, but it was alright, we sat in a rock because I'm that way inclined.

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After that, we had a go on The Dinosaur Tour Co., they missed a trick in not calling it The DinoTour Co.!

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As expected, there were plenty of dinosaur animatronics, a nice relaxing drive around, I want to say Jurassic Park, but that's not what Paulton's are getting at here ;)

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There was a fab finale, but I'm not going to tell you about it ;) ... just make sure you sit on the right!

We decided it was then time to have a mince around the rest of the park, we already had the other creds but I was excited to reride Cobra and see Peppa Pig World. On the way to Cobra we rode Magma!

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It annoys me that the name of the ride is Magma, when molten rock is only magma below the surface, it becomes lava when it's extruded!

It is a spinning drop tower, one of only two in the UK (the other being at Flambards), I had never ridden one before and now I've ridden both in one week!

Then onto Cobra.

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I didn't remember the layout at all but I do really enjoy these Gerstlauer Bobsleds, such fun rides, loads of airtime over the bunny hops at the end as well. Forceful, speedy, great fun!

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Ben and I headed over to Edge because...well, they're definitely creds.

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I have never come off one of these feeling as nauseous as I did! It was also quite rough, not the best ride I've had on a Disk'O!

We passed the 4D cinema so we thought why not, it was turd though, the 3D didn't work and it really hurt my eyes, reasonable story, I used to find these fascinating as attractions, but I'm over them now. We popped into Critter Creek to look at the critters!

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The now-fifth coaster in the park is Cat-o-Pillar coaster, which is a little trippy!

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It had a squid's body with a wolf's head, and other weird **** like that...odd. But yeah, we then headed over to Peppa Pig World. I wouldn't call myself a fan of Peppa Pig (it always annoys me how they have both their eyes on one side of their head, surely their nose would obscure their other eye!?), but I had seen a couple of episodes, perks of having a younger sister!

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See what I mean about the eyes??

I liked how the houses were on hills just like the programme. We went into Peppa's house, and minced around.

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It was really well kept, considering it's now in it's 5th year, it gives me hope that Lost Kingdom and it's animatronics will be looked after and won't be broken in 12 months time like they would be at a Merlin park!

We headed back over to the Lost Kingdom and bought lunch (we each had a £5 off voucher too!). I also redeemed my Park Ranger Licence!

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Ben and I rode Temple Heights, a magic carpet thing which was ok, just a retheme I believe though. We had a reride of the coasters a couple times, and the Dinosaur Tour. We got ORPs!

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That was pretty much it after that. Mooched around the tat shop and headed back to Portsmouth!

So, my thoughts on the Lost Kingdom. I really liked it, it is really well thought out, well themed, great for kids and adults alike. It's the perfect investment I think, it is a more 'masculine' theme than Peppa Pig, and has more thrilling rides than Peppa Pig world, so families with kids who have now grown out of Peppa Pig will be enticed back to experience something more thrilling! 27 great animatronic dinosaurs scattered throughout the area, the Argentinosaurus is 12m tall and 23m long! The coasters are great fun for kids of all ages, they've really done well with this area, excited to see what Paulton's does over the coming years!

Thank you for reading!
 
Nice report Jordan! Thanks for writing it up.

Looks like a really good addition, I'm looking forward to seeing it in person.

I hope this pushes the other smaller parks around the UK to up their game!
 
I'm with Hixee on this, I think for a family park this is an excellent looking addition and hope it does well for the park and makes the other UK parks put some effort in.

Nice trip report!
 
Great report, it was a really fab day!

The new area looks amazing and Paultons put on a really great day!

So many animatronics!
 
I think there are 27 animatronic dinosaurs in all.

It's (nearly) like the Djur's Sommerland of the UK. I can't pay it a bigger compliment than that.

Nine million quid well spent.
 
When you see what Merlin buy with 9 million and see what Paultons buy it's a massive difference! It's incredible what they have done with that price! They really do deserve a massive pat on the back for raising UK standards!

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It does look so very nice! And it's so refreshing to see a small park take such a gamble, I hope it pays off for them and they continue to invest on this level.

Paultons could be one of the top parks in the UK in the future, Chessington had better start upping their game.
 
Amazing report :) The new area looks gorgeous and those two Vekomas are excellent additions to the park. Even more impressive with the £9m budget!
 
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