Dreamland ~ Margate

I've really struggled to write this post and on numerous occasions have actually wondered whether to publish it or not.  I don't like writing negative reviews but feel that this one could potentially be justified in saying that perhaps I may have visited a little too early.

After seeing a fellow blogger's post about Dreamland last year it has been on my radar as somewhere to visit.  It's not all that far from home in Essex and on a good run can be reached within an hour and a half with no traffic.  I loved the colour and vibrant look of the place, and the fact it had a real retro appearance to it, I had to visit.  At the beginning of July, the time came for that visit.

On arriving at the entrance I was charged £16, this didn't include the roller-skating as stupidly I had forgotten to take socks with me and being a hot day I was wearing sandals (proper school girl error there).  This was the only option I was given and so I merrily paid the amount.  The park didn't appear to be overly busy which was really nice.  There was plenty of space walking around and this gave the opportunity to take in all the quirky little pieces dotted around the park which really did give it a retro feel it looked to have in the blog post I had read previous to visiting.  

The first ride we decided to go on was the Big Wheel as we thought this would give a feel for what was in the park and also an opportunity to check out the views.  Considering the park seemed pretty empty there was a fairly big queue but nothing too serious, I would say around 30 people were ahead of us, I assumed with it being a ride that's able to take a large capacity of people we wouldn't be waiting all that long.  Only we waited for around 45 minutes, for some reason they were only filling 10 of the pods.  It felt like we wasted so much time for a mediocre ride which was a real shame.

Determined not to let the long wait put a dampener on the day we then headed to the Chair 'O' Plane which thankfully we were able to get onto straight away.  This is one of my favourite rides, such simple technology and a lot of fun.  The old ones are always the best.

  

Already feeling much better about the day we made our way next to the scenic railway.  We were met with a much bigger queue this time and queued for just over an hour.  The ride itself was good and it made a change to see a ride of this type to be manually operated.  Of all the rides in the park this is the biggest so it seemed about right it would have the biggest queue.

The trouble is, this was literally about it, unless we wanted to ride on the small kiddie rides or queue up again for over an hour for the 3 rides we had already been on which personally would not have put me in a much better mood than I was already in.  I had paid £16 to go on 3 rides!  Not impressed, especially as I later learnt that you can in fact pay per ride rather than purchasing a wrist band, this would have been a lot cheaper.

As I have said at the beginning of my post today, I do feel that I have perhaps visited the park too soon as since my visit there have been a number of new (what I would call big) rides that have opened.  I'm just not sure I can bring myself just yet to return.  Maybe in a couple of years I'll visit again and hopefully by then there will be even more rides opened.

Have you visited Dreamland before?  What did you think of it?

~ Gem x