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You are here: Home / Seasonal / Christmas / All The Fun of The Fair at Winter Wonderland

December 4, 2016 · Leave a Comment

All The Fun of The Fair at Winter Wonderland

Winter Wonderland

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.

Winter Wonderland

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.

Winter Wonderland

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!

Winter 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!

Sooty Christmas Show - Winter Wonderland

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.

Zippos Christmas Circus - Winter Wonderland

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.

Zippos Christmas Circus - Winter Wonderland

Zippos Christmas Circus - Winter Wonderland

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.

Zippos Christmas Circus - Winter Wonderland

Zippos Christmas Circus - Winter Wonderland

We even watched a motorbike ride across a high wire. It was a fabulous finale.

Zippos Christmas Circus - Winter Wonderland
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.

Winter Wonderland

Obviously we could resist some sweeties but we won’t go into the details of how much our bag cost.

Sweets at Winter Wonderland

It was so lovely to watch the kids having the time of their lives.

Winter Wonderland

They thought they were in Wonderland. And, of course, they were. The most spectacular Winter Wonderland.

Winter Wonderland

Winter Wonderland

How beautiful is this?

Winter Wonderland

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.

Family at Winter Wonderland

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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Filed Under: Christmas Tagged With: christmas, Winter Wonderland

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Family Days Tried and Tested provides inspiration to make everyday family life fun. It includes simple craft activities to do at home plus lots of reasons to play outside. Family Days Tried and Tested is all about frugal fun, honesty and lots of laughs.

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🦇 The man did good!👏 Yesterday Andy finished 🦇 The man did good!👏
Yesterday Andy finished everything needed to make the bats comfortable. 
We have oodles of bats flying around the churchyard but after a few seasons of bat surveys it was established we don’t actually have bats with if the church 👌 this is pleasing for us as it means that we get the enjoyment of watch them on a summers evening with the knowledge that there are none in residence. 
Although it was established we don’t have resident bats, roosts or nurseries we still had to do what we could to accomplish them should they wish to take up residence in the church. 
As part of this process we have...
🦇Turned a dilapidated underground furnace room into a bat cave with entrance points, wall hangers and crevices.
🦇 Built a substantial ‘Battic’ in the ceiling in the vestry...a false ceiling was installed for this.
🦇 The children moulded and helped install bat tiles for the roof using a mallet and sheet lead method. 
🦇 Raised the ridge tiles on the vestry roof as entrance points to the ‘Battic’. 

For a building that doesn’t have any resident bats they sure will be comfy should they move in. 

🦇 Bats are a protected species and obtaining bat licenses to permit you to build without endangering them, destroying or disturbing existing or potential habitat in the U.K. is an extremely important (and lengthily) process.

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⛺️ Never underestimate the simple fun of a bla ⛺️ Never underestimate the simple fun of a blanket fort..two chairs, a blanket, some cushions and a couple of books...
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To a child it’s an adventure.... 💖
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Today is 3 years since my father passed. Dementia Today is 3 years since my father passed. Dementia truly is a horrid, vile and unforgiving disease.

Three years ago I wrote this for him and today I was sad, & angry, & moody, & reflective, and all sorts of other emotions. 
Grief sure is strange and ever changing emotion even though it remains an emotion only defined as grief...it’s an emotion in itself with a rollercoaster entwined.  It’s ups and downs, stops and starts, and directions that change as easy as the wind. 

I’m not sure I can describe my day filled with a pandemic, schools runs and homeschooling in one, home life dynamics that we all face..
life in general which is crazy at the moment (for us all) 
...and the underlying reminder that grief threw throughout the day reminding me that I’m still sad to say goodbye. 

Anyway, I wrote this three years ago. 

We won’t be sad dear papa,
We won’t be sad for you,
We’ll smile for all the love you gave 
And take joy in all we do..
We won’t be sad dear papa
We’ll replace the tears for happy thoughts
And take heed to all the laughs you gave
And the values that you taught.
We won’t be sad dear papa
Even whilst our hearts are blue 
We’ll be thankful that we shared a love 
And were graced with love from you. 

And we won’t be sad dear papa
Your spirit will not go 
It will stay with us in all we do
And we’ll never be alone. 

We won’t be sad dear papa, 
Even though we cry,
We’re thankful for the time we had,
We’re just sad to say goodbye. 

4.3.2017 💙

Miss you dad. 

**apologies for my ‘let’s take a selfie dad’ faces 🤦‍♀️😂🥰
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