July 11th Trip Report

Figured I may as well do this as a report as there is so much to talk about!

Social Distancing on the rides - overall no issues, except for one ride (Eggspress). Cannonball and Wipeout were both loading 1 group per car, so on Cannonball a group of 4 and 3 could all ride in the same train. The queues honestly felt no different to normal. Obviously this would be different if the Cannonball queue was full of just couples, coz then it would be only 4 people per train.

Eggspress was a little different. For some reason, after the train had been emptied, the ride op would then go down the train and close every other lap bar. Not only was it wasting time, when a group of 6 wanted to sit together, they had to wait for the ride op to then manually open a lap bar. It just made no sense at all, especially with them closing the lap bar on the very front and back rows....

On to the park in general then:

Cannonball has had some work done to it. You can see new motors under the track in places, new seat covers and hand rails on the train, as well a little bit of a covered queue area now. Weirdly the entrance sign hasn't yet made a return. The ride's area has had a bit of a tidy up, it was all overgrown last year but they got rid of the weeds etc, and also the train now has one hell of a nice roar to it that I don't remember it having before!

Jolly Roger was closed, it's my favourite ride in the park so I was gutted, but I understand that staff shortages is a thing at the moment. The ground in front of the ride is in a worrying condition. Chunks of tarmac every where, as well little pot holes, plus the abandoned play area bit which is all over grown and looks a mess.

Marble Madness was on 4 cars which was nice to see, all running well with nothing to report really. It had an evac in the afternoon but it all looked under control and soon opened back up afterwards.

Rootin Tootin has swapped it's queue line and exit, I presume it's so there is less people queuing indoors. The ride badly needs some brighter lights in places, it was just so dark you couldn't even see the paint work on the walls!

Go Karts as we know are off the map and have now been fenced off with a rather large looking permanent fence.

Eggspress looks to have had all of its lift hill motors replaced, so I can gladly report that there is no more struggling to get over the lift hill! However the three back cars are still missing, but it was running really well. They've also added more little bits of theming around the station. There's more chickens than I remember and there's no some giant eggs tumbling out of the front of the station - it looks really neat. The ride was popular all day, way more popular than I remember it as Rattlesnake, so they've done really well there.

Anyone else remember that random little hut near the dodgems queue? That has now been given the farm yard theme and looks much better and less random.

Nothing to report on Wipeout really, same as always. Although the second lift has been fixed so there's no more jolting as it releases.

Outside the castle, for some reason they've removed all the gardens and added a little pond. Seems unnecessary to me as I thought it looked good before.

The large train still has it's big wheels bolted down, this really bugs me as it looks silly. And it is also running SO slow. It's just so sad to see the state that the two trains are in. The Miniature railway might as well just have a tractor on the front of it, whatever it is meant to be, it looks awful. Both were open though, which was good to see, I'd just really like to see some money poured into them. (the mini train at Pettitts on the other hand looks amazing, so PWH has no excuse if a tiny independent kids park can do it!)

Peddle boats are non-existent, The lake looks full of mess, there's no boats and there's no longer any signage for the attraction either. I'm surprised they haven't been removed from the map as well.

We ate at Hungry Joes again, I had the Mac and Cheese burger. It was nice enough, could have done with a slice of cheese as well as the pasta had dried up a bit. But it was still good. £9.50 for a meal could be considered a bit expensive, but I don't mind helping them out. The service was better this time as well, a lot more staff behind the counter so food came out quick!

The biggest issue I had with my visit this year, was the condition the park was in. It wasn't just me that picked up on this either, others in my group mentioned it as well.

PWH did post on facebook that the park was being cleaned up during lock down, but I don't know if that really was the case. Remember that post about the guy pressure washing the train station roof? They only cleaned half of it, so the other half still looked filthy.

The hedge along the train track by Wipeout has over grown massively and when on the train, you get attacked all the way along from Wave Breaker to past the Castle.

There's lots of fencing that's had half hearted attempts of being painted where it's only been done on one side.....

Whilst the improvements to the sea lion show are nice, I just couldn't help but think that surely other areas are more of a priority. For example, when queuing for the chairlift by the Kite Flyer, you could be mistaken for being in an abandoned theme park. That whole corner looks such a mess, over grown with weeds, uneven ground, rabbit poo everywhere and rotten/broken fences by the chairlift (that badly need painting or replacing).

That plus the mess outside Jolly Roger just makes me worry, I've never seen areas of the parking looking like that. I really hope their going to give it a good tidy up before opening 7 days a week next week. It just seems odd that gardening work has been done outside the castle, yet very old fencing is left up....

It's also really hard to not notice all the empty areas in the park and/or concrete pads from where rides used to be.

• The old Waveswinger pad is empty

• Go Karts now boarded up

• Tide Traveller

• Area beside Wipeout

• Area infront of Jolly Roger

• Back corner by the chair lift

I stand by what I said though, that the park still looks really good in certain areas, but it's also looking worryingly run down in others.

I'll upload some photos in a bit