Gullivers World, Warrington Review

Overall Rating

Christmas show. Fairy lights. Santa's grotto

Food - yuck!
No toilet roll in the toilets and some of them were locked and inaccessible. Too much queuing. Information given at the time of online booking was scant and incomplete

We booked online for the Christmas winter wonderland 'smasher' package. This entitled us to go on any of the rides that were open (about half are open over the Christmas period), to see the 'Smasher' Christmas show and go on the train to Santa's grotto to meet Fr. Christmas. When we got there, we presented our booking reference and were given a piece of paper telling us the time of our show and our train time. We were amazed to find that our train was booked for 5 p.m. - we got there at 11 a.m. and it was the grotto that the children were most looking forward to. This time could not be changed, however - some staff did say that we could ask the train driver really nicely and he might let us on a different train but they explained that this was unlikely to happen.
Anyway, we went around exploring and the children enjoyed the rides. There was an 'elf post office' area which was particularly welcomed by our children - it had little treadmills and stepper machines for children and an arts and crafts area with stampers, markers and crayons. There was a good selection of rides available - but mostly would suit the younger children up to perhaps about 5 years of age.
My 5 year old daughter loved the smasher show. It was actually quite good, with songs and the dancers were quite good as well.
We did end up waiting for our train to the grotto, because you didn't have the option to walk there - you had to take the train. We queued from 4.30 but even then didn't board the train till 5.20 p.m. so it was quite a long wait in the cold. The trip on the train was less than inspiring. I thought it would be fantastic, but there wasn't that much to see en route. However, the grotto was fantastic - really nicely done. We got straight in to see Santa and he was lovely. You're then told to go through to get a present from the elves. The gifts are all out on display and children can choose their own present. While this is kind of a good idea, it did take away from the magic of the experience a bit ... it cheapened it a bit.
The park looked lovely in the evening with all the fairy lights and the lake was iced over so it was very Christmassy and magical.
At £12 per person for this package I would say it was well worth the money really. The day flew by and the children really enjoyed it.
The thing I liked the least about the experience was the food ... it was horrible and the cafe environment was terrible. As part of the Christmas package you can order lunch to eat while watching the show and I wish we had done this because it looked decent and the surroundings were better than the other cafes around the park.
I've read some comments here about staff being unfriendly and I found that with some of them, but I found others to be really friendly - especially in the evening when we were on our way out - there were staff dotted around and they all said nice things like 'hope you enjoyed the day' and 'have a nice evening'.