Paultons Park, Romsey, UK

Paultons Park is a small park in Romsey near Portsmouth. The park is aimed more at families than thrillseekers, why the park has three rollercoasters, only the Cobra would really interest theme park fans. The rest of the attractions are fairly tame as you would expect from a family park.

The park is not really a theme park as such, but more of an amusement park and as such it doesn't really have theming. The ride are more placed in an attractive gardens and zoo. The new adventure golf is an exception to this but otherwise the theming is pretty much non-existant. While this isn't always a bad thing, it really doesn't manage to pull off the lack of theming in the same way as a park like Oakwood.

What I would class as a bad thing is the food. While I can only comment on the burger and chips I had, the food did not impress at all, the fries served with the burger were not good and the meat quality in the burger was poor. Add slow service to this and lunch was not the highlight of my day. A better quality burger and a longer cook on the fries would help a lot.

As for pricing, it is debatable. At £15 for an individual and family tickets available, it is affordable for families. As mentioned earlier however, thrillseeker would more than likely feel that they hadn't got their moneys worth. While I'd recommend the park to familys, unless you want the credits thrillseekers may like to look at a trip to Thorpe Park instead.

Glance at the Park

Being as the park doesn't have any areas as such I'm going to split it up into two area, left of the etrance and right of the entrance. The likelyhood is you'll head left first, drawn towards the Cobra which is the biggest ride in the park. It is also the best ride here in my opinion, having some good forces and decent pops of air time, especially over the bunny hills at the end of the ride. This area is also home to other rides such as the Clock Maze, Digger Ride, Seal Falls, Rabbit Ride. These are aimed very much more at younger park goers and are probably not going to appeal to adults or even older children. They may well enjoy the Raging River flume ride however, a compact log flume with two drops. This is a standard travelling model and could have benefitted from some theming or attempt to integrate it into the surrounding area, it's colour scheme is currently a bit garish. There are several other attractions that would suit a more adult child such as the Astroslide, and the Go-karts, although the karts are extra and not especially fast. There is also the Flying Frog, a small Zierer Tivoli children's rollercoaster. This is a smooth little rollercoaster and fun for small children, although bigger kids (and adults) will prefer to ride the Cobra.

Speaking of the Cobra, you will find this right over to the far left of the park, although it it so much taller than the surrounding area it is hard not to miss it. It has been Paultons flagship attraction since it was installed in 2006. Despite it's 50ft height, this rollercoaster is aimed at families and should be fun for anyone over the height restriction to ride. I found Gerstlaurer had done a good job designing this rollercoaster, it had some nice positive forces, and lot of airtime over the bunny hills at the end. I found that the ride and airtime was better in the front of the ride oddly, so grab the front seats if you can. The ride is certainly more than a cut above your standard wild mouse.

Technically there are only two areas of the park with rides so I'm going to cover the right hand side next, right. Wrong, I'm going to confuse you and cover a different area instead. If instead of heading right at the entrance, you go straight, you will come to a wooded area with lots of aviaries. These allow you to see lots of different birds, however there's not really much else here. To be honest this is a rollercoaster review site, not 'Bird Fancier's Weekly' so I'm going to move on now.

Finally after a slight delay, we get to the right hand side of the park and it's rides. The right hand side of the park has several rides for all the family to enjoy. The formost of these is another Zierer rollercoaster, the Stinger. This medium sized coaster is another fun ride for all the family. This area also includes the Wave Runner water slide, Kontiki spinning boat, Pirate Ship and Gold Rush Falls crazy golf as well as several other attractions and several animals such as Meerkats, Penguins and Wallabies.

Leonardofury, Last modified 06/11/07