The festive season may be over, but London hasn’t got the message, which is lucky, as I’ve been working my arse off for the majority of December and haven’t had the chance to visit Winter Wonderland until this weekend. So I decided to basically make a weekend in London happen and it happened.
Winter Wonderland – Hyde Park
There are many positives and negatives about this place that until you experience it, you won’t truly understand the pain and joy this place brings. Let’s start with positives. It’s festive, like really festive. You can’t go anywhere here without having festiveness shoved in your eyeballs. It’s wonderful!! Then you have the rides. Munich Looping, Wilde Maus XXL, Alpen Hotel, Dr Archivalds, Air, they all bring something different and all pack a good punch and cure those theme park craves. Also the food is so delish. It’s a good thing I was restrictive as I would have gained at least 2 stone on just the food. Now the negatives. It gets so fucking busy the later it gets, which is so annoying as you want to see it lit up without random foreigners stood there like lost sheep. Next, it’s the price of food. £8 for a portion of chips with some cheese and bacon bites. I mean, it was nice, but not £8 nice. And a lot of other places are charging more than they should for food. It’s so frustrating. All I want is a good sausage without having to mortgage a property for it. One last thing, Dr Archibald’s is good, but it’s so not worth £9.
Southbank Merlin Attractions
Before I go into this, I just want to say that I am a VIP pass holder (I can hear the swears) and so my experience of these attractions might be slightly different to yours. First up was Dungeons and as usual it was a fun experience. The usual issues were in effect such as chatty guests during the scenes, too big of groups, but it all adds to the charm of the place. It’s got to the point where I’ve visited this place so many times that I know some of the words to some of the scenes. It’s a nice, family friendly, scary way to spend a couple of hours. It would have been nice if they kept their Christmas scenes going until after the New Year, but it didn’t distract from the show. It was also really nice to see they they kept the festive theming around despite no show. There was fake snow of the floor and Christmas decorations up in some rooms. Shrek’s Adventure. Now, if anyone says they don’t enjoy it, slap them because they are lying. How can you not fall in love with this attraction. It’s cute, funny, and just so camp and fun. The actors in here always have such high energy and great engagement with the guests, especially the kids. You have to go on with the expectation of embracing your inner child and acting a bit daft. The Coca Coca London Eye. This really was a highlight. We got a reduced capacity in our pod. Instead of the usual 28, we got 12. This really helped to be able to see everything, and it was my first time doing it in the dark too, so it felt pretty special. I did shit myself when it stopped at the top and swayed, but it was still enjoyable.
The London Bridge Experience and Tombs
Every time any of us visit London, we always end up popping into the UKs scariest year round attraction. It makes the London Dungeons look like a crèche. It’s more intimate, more scary, and quite frankly a fuck load better than its Merlin counterpart. It may be shorter than the Dungeons, but there is a reason it keeps wining the award. The actors in here are all incredible. They really deliver the dark and twisted and bring it to life in a fun, yet creepy way. There was one actor in my run on the London Bridge Experience that I would like to give a personal shout to and that’s the reverend. She was the perfect mix of humour, dark and factual. She was bloody brilliant. The script had also had many changes to it to make it more festive which just added even more to it. The Tombs remain unchanged but still manages to pack a hell of a scary punch. I do feel sorry for the kid who was put at the front of our group by his parents. He was screaming so much and looked so scared, but it was rather funny.
Touristy Things
I embraced my inner tourist this weekend as I wanted to try out my new camera and went plodding around London. It’s always fun to visit these well known places and see the tourist really get excited by things that we may take for granted. I actually had a lot of joy watching them take their photos and genuinely be really excited about seeing a bridge or a skyscraper. The Christmas decorations around London are pretty fabulous too.
So that’s a round up of a weekend in London. I hope I haven’t bored you. Don’t forget, Winter Wonderland closes on 6th January 2019, so you don’t have long to go!
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