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Parks you've done that were difficult to get to

Hard:

Alton Towers:
As noted above, surprisingly difficult for such a big park. It's hard enough driving, but public transport is something else!


Europa Park:
For such a big park the transport links are quite poor really. Ringsheim is a pokey station to have to use. Getting there is an effort, and from there the courtesy bus isn't great.

Heide Park:
I once missed the prebooked coach and had to get the trains and then walk. I though the walk would never end!
 
The only thing that comes to mind immediately is Nasu Highland. I felt like it was in the middle of nowhere. Shoutout to @Ben who pretty much forced me to take out a second mortgage for a cab to the park even though it was raining and I knew we wouldn't be getting many creds!

Actually Parque Espana was a bit tragic trying to figure out the train system.
 
Lagunasia (quite a long walk to/from the bus)
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I got a train to Gamagori and then the park had its own shuttle which was pretty easy right to the outlet mall across the road, and then its over the footbridge to the front gate, and easy to get some impromptu photos.

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But honestly it wasn't worth the effort, Lagunasia was the most ovverated park I've ever been to.
The highlight was the pork katsu sandwich i got from the convenience store at Gamagori station.

Overall the most meh day of the trip, because I was done with Lagunasia so early, I pushed to Nagoya and slotted in an unplanned Legoland visit, and got STUNG the ridiculous adult walk up price.

Parque Espana (ended up taking a very expensive taxi from the nearest train station).
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The expensive part is the train from Kuwana down to Ugata (Kintetsu limited express), but again there was a shuttle bus to the park.

The highlight of the return trip was that car drivers obviously often wait in the loop at the front of the train station.
There was a car parked there, but when our bus arrived the driver pulled foward to get out of our way and subsequently gouged the side of their car on a bollard on the inside of the turn. One of those moments when you can see something is about to happen but powerless to stop it lol.
It appears they've since installed flexible ones instead:
www.google.com

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
www.google.com www.google.com

In both cases i had to go on the Japanese website and muck around with PDF translators to get the bus timetables.
 
For me, there'll be two parks I struggled to reach (or to left).

First one is Movieland Studios in Italy. Slept in Milan, had 80km to drive to make it to the park. Must have been a 1 hour drive. It took 3h thanks to traffic jam.
Ok, the park isn't really involved in this but yet. Luckily it's a small park.

The worst was maybe the trip from movieland to our hotel, which was very near Gardaland.
8km, sounds easy right ? Took us 2 hours and a half ... I guess it would be quicker by walking. It was a non-working day and Gardaland was just packed with people, so a massive trafic jam has created on the single lane road circa Lake Garda ... Been exhausting that day.

The 2nd one is rather obvious as it is Alton Towers. Everybody knows how tight are the roads.
But, the little bonus is that we went to UK with our car, a left-hand drive ... I can't say I was very confident then.

Oh, and speaking of this trip to UK. We went to Chessington. No problem to drive up the place. But we have to wait 45min before we could finally exit the parking ...
 
Seems strange to me seeing people describe Alton Towers as difficult to get to??? I drive there with my eyes closed in around 20 - 30 minutes depending on traffic!!! The roads are no different to many other parts of Derbyshire / Staffordshire. So those last 5-10 minutes of country lanes after I exit the A50 aren’t a problem at all. And BTW I’ve never ever seen a speed trap of any sort on the A50… I love that road!

TBH I haven’t found any park difficult to get to, but I have never visited a park via public transport. Usually drive my own car, if not then either car rentals or ubers are cheap enough.

On that basis the worst for me has actually been phantasialand!!! On the few occasions I have not driven, and have flown into Koln Bonn instead. Because taxis / ubers aren’t cheap at all in Germany!!! And it’s not worth a hire car if you’re just doing a couple of days at Wintertraum… I know there is public transport with a change in Cologne, but any bus or train just equates to faff imo 🙈😂 Think I’m just going to drive from now on…
 
Another one that comes to mind, albeit one I haven't visited, was Freizeitpark Geiselwind.

I was staying about 30km from the park for a conference, had a free day at the end before my flight. Hiring a car wasn't practical at the time (which was a shame as Google Maps said it was only a 30-40min drive) and an Uber/Taxi was more than I was willing to pay.
But getting there by public transport was a nightmare. Nothing listed on the park's website. I eventually tracked out a route which would have taken almost 3 hours each way from where I was staying, at which point I decided it wasn't worth it for that park.

I don't use public transport much for European park trips (unless they're city parks close to an airport tbf), and this is one of the reasons why.
 
I haven’t actually been yet, but based purely on our current attempts at planning for a trip next April, I think I can deduce that for such a major park, Europa Park is a surprisingly difficult one to get to from the UK!

In terms of the nearby airports (Stuttgart, Strasbourg, Basel and Baden-Baden), options in terms of direct flights going to them from the UK are few and far between; I think only Ryanair does direct flights to Baden-Baden, and you can only get them from London Stansted (admittedly, this might be easy if you live in London or the South East, but I live in Gloucestershire, which is over 3 hours from Stansted; my nearest airports Bristol, Cardiff and Birmingham will only get you to an airport near Europa Park by changing at another airport, which my parents have said that they are not up for doing).

Also, the park is quite complex to reach if you don’t have a car; all of the train options I read about had umpteen changes between the airport and Ringsheim (the Europa Park station). My parents have said we’ll hire a car, as they didn’t like the sound of the train options (my mum’s response when I showed her the train options was “I’m not some [f-ing] backpacker!”…), but I thought it would be worth me pointing it out.

In terms of others; if we look at it through a public transport lens, Alton Towers is a tough one from my area, but Thorpe Park is also surprisingly hard, with me requiring about 3 different changes to get to Staines train station! Thorpe is easy in a car from where I live (about 2 hours away, and basically all motorway), but I’ll admit I was surprised at how difficult it is by train!

In terms of a more general lens; I’ll echo Oakwood Theme Park. It took ages to get to when I went there on a school trip, and even when me and my mum tried to get to it from within Pembrokeshire (we were staying in the Tenby area when I last visited Oakwood), the journey was quite the adventure, to say the least…
 
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Matt N said:
I haven’t actually been yet, but based purely on our current attempts at planning for a trip next April, I think I can deduce that for such a major park, Europa Park is a surprisingly difficult one to get to from the UK!

In terms of the nearby airports (Stuttgart, Strasbourg, Basel and Baden-Baden), options in terms of direct flights going to them from the UK are few and far between; I think only Ryanair does direct flights to Baden-Baden, and you can only get them from London Stansted (admittedly, this might be easy if you live in London or the South East, but I live in Gloucestershire, which is over 3 hours from Stansted; my nearest airports Bristol, Cardiff and Birmingham will only get you to an airport near Europa Park by changing at another airport, which my parents have said that they are not up for doing).

Also, the park is quite complex to reach if you don’t have a car; all of the train options I read about had umpteen changes between the airport and Ringsheim (the Europa Park station). My parents have said we’ll hire a car, as they didn’t like the sound of the train options (my mum’s response when I showed her the train options was “I’m not some [f-ing] backpacker!”…), but I thought it would be worth me pointing it out.
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I'm "one of those people" who just drives everywhere and doesn't **** around much with public transport, but something I will say about Europa is that the difference between public transport and private car is night and day. It's not like Alton where the drive is still a burden even though it's miles better than the bus - the drive to Europa from any of those airports is an absolute doddle.
 
Following my recent trip to Legoland Windsor I've had by far my faffiest ever trip from a park.

The way there was simple enough. Underground to Waterloo, Waterloo to Windsor & Eton Riverside, and then the 703 bus to Legoland. Simple enough, pretty chill.

And then there's the way back. This'll be copy-pasted into my Legoland Windsor trip report so have fun with this preview...

RobCoasters said:
703 bus back from Legoland to W&ER.

The bus ride was efficient and quick and I hadn't memorised the route well enough to know where we were going, so I had to resort to Maps which was successful enough, and ended up being the last bit of success I had in the trip.

My train from W&ER was in twenty minutes which, shortly after I arrived, was delayed. I can work with that, easy. However, almost immediately after, said delay became a cancel. It's never a good thing when it escalates that much that quickly, but I thought I could hold it out a little longer. I decided to wait 50 minutes for the next train and see where things go from there. I wouldn't stand there for 50 minutes so I decided to wander around the general area.

I decided to look at the other station which is nearby, which is Windsor & Eton Central. I have no idea how to get to this station but let's see how things go from here. Walking next to a river, I see lights. I originally brushed these lights off as the building for an arcade that you see on coastal towns (looking at you, Southend) but upon closer inspection these lights belonged to a Dodgems. Off to the right of the Dodgems were more lights. I think I've just stumbled across a funfair! I walk closer to it, find a roller coaster, and my life lights up again.

Windsor on Ice, they call it. I head in and inspect their Wacky Worm, turns out you need a wristband to get on. The only other rides here are a Sizzler and a Miami Trip and said Dodgems so I don't think I'll be getting much use out of a wristband doubled on the fact that I have a train soon. Turns out if you don't want a wristband, you have to buy a token. You hear the ticket worker say "every ride is one token" sounds like a barga-- "each token is a fiver". I pay my five pounds and get a token for Crazy Caterpillar. Notice how I didn't put a number in front of that. I head for the back seat and it's a gloriously untrimmed Wacky Worm. Love it love it love it. Glides straight through the station and pulls better laterals than Wicker Man's flat turn. Three circuits in the cycle, I get off and I'm gone.

Coming back to W&ER, I take a slightly alternate route to try and find W&EC which ended in failure and took me down some dodgy looking alleyways and tunnels, so now I'm back at Riverside. Not only has my original train been cancelled, but the one after has been cancelled as well, and shortly after I heard a conversation that EVERY train to and from W&ER has been cancelled. People seemed shockingly calm about it - no shouting and screaming, just either silent acceptance or normal-voiced concern making. This is what I like to see.

I eventually found W&EC which was in the middle of a shopping centre. Me not being able to find the thing was entirely justifiable as I never saw even a singular sign for this station. "Oh, there's the station." The train I need departs in three minutes and I don't have a ticket for it. Please, just give me a break. After some speedrun-level ticket booking (paying extra as I have no time to process my railcard) I jump on just in time, and I'm finally able to sit down as I head towards London Paddington with a change at Slough. Oh, you thought the faff ended here. At Slough, my change to Paddington was already at the station and was coincidentally at the furthest possible platform from where I was. I do my best to race up the stairs to try and get it, before being stuck by two people taking up the entire staircase in absolutely no rush to do anything. Accepting my fate, I've missed my train. This slow couple really annoyed me, but fate has made its decision.

No big loss though. Luckily for me another train to Paddington was arriving at a different platform in 15 minutes, and I got on there and finally realised I'm out of this mess. After doing some research with showmen I realised I'd ridden Crazy Caterpillar in the past, but oh well it was still a decently good worm and I now have photos of it for reference in the future.

From Paddington it was a cakewalk because for me the Underground is fun and easy to navigate, so I got where I needed to, headed home, and fell asleep two hours after stepping foot in there.
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