Review of Paultons Park

This weekend we took 4.5-year-old Uma to Paultons Park amusement park near Southhamption, UK. It was her first real amusement park experience, and she had a grand time.

The many positives:

• The park is really well maintained. Everything felt clean and proper, at the Disneyland level - if not better
• The rides for kids were fun and creative, with supportive and friendly staff
• The restrooms were clean.
• Peppa Pig World was really fun for our 4.5 year old. She also enjoyed the Dinosaur area called "Lost Kingdom"
• The animal enclosures were nice. Uma really liked the pink flamingo enclosure
• The water park was a good break from the rides, fenced in so we knew Uma couldn't run off
• The playgrounds were fun and accurately marked for different age groups
• This park is for kids, not teens. There are a few roller coasters, but really this is for 12 years or under
• The mobile app is well executed, we loved the estimated queue times and the map
• The food options were decent, expensive but on the reasonable side for an amusement park. We brought our own food but splurged on ice cream and coffee
• Getting there by public transit from London was straight-forward. We took the tube to the Waterloo Station, then a South West train to South Hamption Central. From there we jumped on the X7 bus right to the park entrance

The single negative item:

Leaving was unnecessarily unpleasant

• The last bus from the park entrance to the train station left an hour before the park closed. To be fair, this is a public bus, not part of the park
• There was another public bus stop a mile away from the park whose last bus left right at park closing
• Discovering these details was really hard, the timetable was hidden inside the covered bus stop listed in a hard-to-follow format

Summary:

• Excellent park, would visit again. Next time we'll take into account that the last available bus leaves an hour before the park closes
• The venue should provide a shuttle to-and-from the train station for people coming from London without cars