Halloween At Oakwood Theme Park 2019

Disclosure - we were given tickets and provided with travel expenses for the purpose of this review. All opinions are honest and my own.

Did you know that Wales has it's very own theme park? Oakwood Theme Park is in Pembrokeshire, right near Bluestone and Folly Farm and it is a great place to visit with your children this half term for some Halloween fun! There is free parking on site and prices start from £20 per person entry. If you think you will visit more often their season or annual passes are great value too.

We were invited down at the weekend to take a look. We've been to Oakwood before and always had a great time, you can read our previous reviews here and here. This time though the park was really quiet, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, we hardly had to queue for anything, a big contrast to some of the bigger theme parks. But it did mean that some rides weren't open all the time and in some areas there was one member of staff running several rides. It wasn't a huge problem for us as we went on everything that we wanted to though and the staff were brilliant and opened up rides when we asked to go on them. It would have been nicer to see the place busier just for the atmosphere though. I also felt that some areas of the park were looking a bit tired but then they have updated some areas and there is a new ride for 2019 - Dizzy Disk.

Food at Oakwood

We started off in the Neverland area of the park. There is a small cafe here and some benches were we sat to have a picnic. I would definitely recommend taking your own food, the main restaurant was closed when we visited and there is a fast food kiosk in a different area of the park selling burgers and chips and the little cafe but they were both quite pricey. They have an indoor picnic area if the weather isn't brilliant when you visit. We did stop for chips and also they sell hot doughnuts with chocolate sauce in the food stall by Megaphobia - they went down well with the children!

Neverland has a lovely little walk through of the Darling's house from Peter Pan and some rides that are great for smaller children. We spent a while in this area, and there is also a soft play which we usually visit but we didn't this time. You will also find in this area that there is a baby centre which is great. It has two chairs for feeding your baby, a bottle warmer, microwave, children's toilet and nappy changing area. I really appreciated the feeding area as it is nice to sit indoors in a comfy chair to breastfeed the baby when it is colder weather.

We then headed over to Spooky Street to check out the activities they have on for Halloween. It is decorated with pumpkins and there are two themed rides - Witches Brew which is a teacups ride and a scary rollercoaster. In this area you will also find Witch Hunt - a live horror act / maze which was brilliant! I took Little Boy (5) and E (12) through and we spoke to them before we went in to make sure it was suitable for smaller children and they turn down the sound and make it slightly less scary which is great. I did find it quite scary but Little Boy handled it well, I think he actually enjoyed it!

There are other Halloween themed activities - check out Our Transitional Life's blog as they were there on the same day as us and they managed to see them all I think! They run at different times so you can plan your day around them and squeeze in as much as possible!

What I like about Oakwood is that there is something to do for all age groups. The Halloween themed activities and bigger rides such as Megaphoobia and Speed are great for older children and there is still plenty for smaller children such as a Pumpkin Trail and the Neverland rides and Treetops. One of the children's favourite rides is the Bob Sleigh. This visit Miss J decided that she wanted to go on it by herself as she was now old enough, but she got scared halfway through poor thing. The staff were absolutely brilliant and took her off and escorted her back safely. I was really impressed and grateful that they had paid so much attention to her. Similarly on the Tinkerbell ride the staff member putting us on the ride assured her that if she didn't like it that she should wave at him and he would stop the ride. It was lovely to have that personal touch, especially when taking a nervous child on rides.

We had a lovely day at Oakwood and it is definitely somewhere we would visit again, the children were really sad to leave when the day was over! Oakwood is open for their half term Spooktacular week from the 26th October to the 2nd November 2019. On the 24th and 31st of October it is open late night until 8.30pm - perfect for Halloween lovers, it must be something else to experience some of these rides in the dark!

We made a little video of our day out, do check it out!