West Midland Safari Park

[Mega-Lite]

I've had the intention of hitting up West Midland Safari Park, a zoo/drive through safari/amusement park hybrid, for quite a while now but due to both the cost and time required I've never gotten around to it, until now...

 

After doing a bit of planning, I discovered if you book a week in advance, visit on the Sunday and combine the amusement park wristbands with the entrance tickets you can get the price down to a rather reasonable £26, which really isn't that bad at all, as I shall explain.

 

With that I set off for the park on the Sunday just gone and other than the last 10 miles or so of the drive, things seemed to go quite well, I know right, I can't quite believe it either. For the last leg of the journey, from my direction at least, you have to drive through Kidderminster, which despite it being 10am on a Sunday morning, was absolutely heaving, couple that with many multilane roundabouts and it made for both an irritating and stressful end to the journey.

 

Much like Farup Sommerland, you buy/redeem your entry tickets from your car on the way in, which is fine in my eyes because I'm a lazy bastard. It turns out, everyone gets a FREE return ticket just for showing up at the moment, so my £26 from earlier is now granting me 2 entries, not bad! After paying/redeeming you get the option of either going straight into the 4 mile long safari or turning off into a car park to do the on foot zoo/amusement park bit. As I was in actual pain from needing the toilet and was there for the creds mostly, I knew where I was heading.

 

Toilet duties sorted and it was time to check out the amusement park. For some reason, I had it in my head that WMSP had just plonked 3 creds in a field, well I'm glad to admit I was wrong. Aswell as the amusement park area looking very well presented, the ride line up itself was quite impressive.

 

 

Now while those creds aren't going to do anything for people like us, they are no doubt great family creds and all presented in a much cleaner way than I was expecting.

Other than the credits, the amusement park is also home to a log flume, a ghost train, a fantastic drop tower, a Fabbri rapids ride, a swinging ship, a frisbee, a disko and various other famliy/childrens attractions. There's easily enough there to keep a family busy for a few hours, so it's probably worth the £14 on the day cost and of course you can get it cheaper online, so all round good value in my eyes. The staff were all super friendly as well which always helps.

 

This thing really kicks ass, I believe it's manufactured by Fabbri and as you can see it uses the same firing you down the tower technology as Det, it's intense!

 

After ticking off everything of interest to me in the amusement park, I headed out to check out the on foot zoo stuff. While there's nothing too exciting going on, there's easily enough there to kill or an hour or two. The highlights for me were the reptile house (snakes are awesome) and the lemur walkthrough (was convinced I was going to get mauled by them).

 

 

 

On route back to the car I had a browse at the food on offer and much like the park itself, it all appeared to be really good value for money.

 

I told myself when booking the tickets I wouldn't take my reasonably pricey, leased and sporty car (not showing off, setting you up for comedy) through the safari drive through but after being impressed by the rest of the park I convinced myself it was a good idea, it wasn't.

 

The safari experience started off terrifying but ended up being extremely boring.

 

Sitting in your own car with rhinos walking casually inches from you is both awesome and oh so scary. Talking of scary, driving a leased car past horny bastards is rather thrilling.

 

Sadly that's about as good as it gets and the rest of the experience is pretty crap.

 

All the animals that want to eat you are behind fences, so it feels like you're driving through a zoo at many points. Also on more than 1 occasion a section would be completely devoid of any animals.

 

The major problem with the drive through though is, all the electric gates you have to wait forever to get through and there's so many of them! Less than 2 minutes of driving past a fence or nothing at all, then waiting 10 minutes for an electric gate to let you through, this situation plays out so many times that by the end of the safari I was so damn bored.

 

 

Mercifully I made it out of the safari before I completely gave up on life.

 

If you've got the patience for waiting for millions of gates to open, then I'm sure you'll love the novelty of the safari but I could quite happily never do it again.

 

So in summary, the amusement park is rather good, the zoo is alright and the safari is a bit crap, either way I'm glad to say I have now been to West Midland Safari Park.

 

Thanks for reading.

[Matt 236]

I haven’t visited WMSP since I was really young so definitely need to get back there at somepoint. 

 

The ride selection sounds and looks pleasant enough for a park of that size. I think they have an interactive dinosaur walkthrough attraction there now. 

[Mega-Lite]

23 hours ago, Matt Creek said:

I think they have an interactive dinosaur walkthrough attraction there now. 

They do indeed, but let's be honest which park doesn't have a dinosaur attraction these days? Paultons struck gold and now there are animatronic dinosaurs everywhere!

[planenut]

On 4/24/2018 at 9:49 PM, Mega-Lite said:

 

So in summary, the amusement park is rather good, the zoo is alright and the safari is a bit crap, either way I'm glad to say I have now been to West Midland Safari Park.

 

Thanks for reading.

If you ever get the chance, their Twilight Bat Cave is well worth a visit. If you do the safari park drive, make sure your cooling system is on good form.