We’ve been back to London so here’s our review of Hyde Park Winter Wonderland 2017!
Have you been to Hyde Park Winter Wonderland in London? We were recently invited to visit and I have to say we were not disappointed.
Normally we’d steer away from anything that requires any expense and save such visits for a treat. You guys know how frugal we are! And travelling to London during the festive period is also something that we would usually avoid. But our opinion has been changed and I can honestly say we can’t wait to return!
Winter Wonderland is neatly snuggled within Hyde Park and is seasonally home to an array of amazing things to do: ice skating, an enormous fun fair, a huge Bavarian Village, plenty of food markets and the fabulous Zippos Circus! What more could you want?
It really is like stepping into another world right in the heart of London.
I must admit I was a bit dubious about visiting due to the thought of the expense for a large family but we couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s all well worth it.
In short, Winter Wonderland was amazing and an absolute must if you’re looking to treat the kids to a Christmassy adventure. Really, a must.
Having travelled to London we wanted to make a full day of it so planned our day as being a long one. On our agenda was:
- The Sooty Christmas Show
- Zippos Christmas Circus
- Winter Wonderland rides
We all wrapped up warm and took buckets of excitement with us.
Winter Wonderland itself is a free attraction to enter so if you are frugally minded it’s absolutely possible to go just to enjoy the atmosphere and the festive feast for your eyes. But if you set yourself a budget and plan your day it’s quite possible to have the most spectacular fun.
We arrived by tube (Hyde Park Corner station) at around 10am by tube. It’s best to take a pram if you have small children as the place is vast with oodles to explore.
Immediately the kids were blown away. It really was like stepping into a well maintained, festively-themed wonderland!
Having had a long journey we took the option to have a brief look around before heading to the Zippos Circus megadome (big top) to watch The Sooty Christmas Show. It’s an ideal place to warm up (yes, it’s heated!), settle down and scoff candy floss and popcorn and let Sooty entertain you. It was a wonderful way to begin our day at Winter Wonderland and with shows running daily at 11am it really is a perfect time to take smaller children to avoid the crowds as it can get very busy towards the latter part of the day.
But Sooty!
It was stepping back into my childhood! A real classic that never goes out of fashion and is loved by all generations. The teenagers were starstruck and the smaller children were fully engaged in the show.
The performance was just under an hour long so just right as the kids didn’t have the time to get bored.
Did I mention it’s the real Sooty!
We planned to watch two shows in the big top and spaced them out throughout the day. With the tent being heated we thought it would be ideal to spend time exploring Winter Wonderland and then to pop back to see a show to warm ourselves up before exploring more. You can’t beat a cup of tea in hand inside the big top while it’s cold outside.
Our afternoon show was a stupendous array of circus acts: modern-day non-scary clowns, acrobats, jugglers, fire artists, trapeze artists, illusionists and the most awesome and escape artists. It actually boggled my mind and wowed the children.
Would you be surprised to hear we hadn’t been to the circus before? The kids have been practising their circus skills and wouldn’t forgive me if they didn’t see Zippos Circus again.
We even watched a motorbike ride across a high wire. It was a fabulous finale.
After enjoying all the fun of the circus we were left to take in the rest of the day and watch Winter Wonderland come alive with bright lights as the daylight faded. We had a good few hours of light left to find somewhere to eat first. And there’s a HUGE choice of foods: sweet, savoury and festive.
Obviously we could resist some sweeties but we won’t go into the details of how much our bag cost.
It was so lovely to watch the kids having the time of their lives.
They thought they were in Wonderland. And, of course, they were. The most spectacular Winter Wonderland.
How beautiful is this?
Visiting an attraction like this is usually something we would consider carefully but I have to say that, as a family, our day out in London fully deserves a thumbs up and I can definitely see it becoming an annual treat to kick off our Christmas fun.
Yes it can be expensive as you could easily spend oodles of money but as a treat day out it was most definitely worth it.
There are other attractions at Winter Wonderland that we’d love to see next time. Nutcracker on Ice is new this year and there are slides made from ice in the Magical Ice Kingdom. The teenagers want to see the evening Cirque Berserk show and we all want to go ice skating at the largest open air ice rink in the UK.
Hyde Park Winter Wonderland is on until 2 January 2017. For more details, and to book attraction tickets in advance, see: hydeparkwinterwonderland.com
Disclosure: As a real treat, Winter Wonderland invited us as guests but this is an honest review and we’re planning to go back again before it ends. As a family, we couldn’t recommend somewhere we wouldn’t go ourselves and next time we’ll be paying as the kids want to go back soon! It’s highly recommended as a treat.
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