Exploring Pleasurewood Hills Family Theme Park

A few years back, when on holiday in Great Yarmouth, we went to Yarmouth Pleasure Beach. Since then, we’ve wanted to check out their sort of sister park; Pleasurewood Hills. Pleasurewood Hills Family Theme Park is meant to be a long-standing, classic amusement park perfect for the whole family. The park itself opened in 1983, so there are some classic rides that can be found there.

When we arrived at Pleasurewood Hills, on a Bank Holiday Monday, the park itself didn’t have a whole lot of people walking around. Upon entry we weren’t given a map and later I went to go find one at the gift shop. This place was also very bare, with lots of empty shelves and very little lighting. This vibe sort of haunted Pleasurewood Hills. There was a deserted, broken arcade, a bunch of rides sitting in the overgrowth and just a lot of nothing.

From here, we went to get on a ride, but found that the line itself was super long and not moving. This felt strange, so we went for some lunch, where we found the lines to also be extremely long and not moving, this turned out to be because of power cuts. One area had a sign for Pizza and Pasta. Kai wanted pasta, so we entered that area with him and Robin, just to find by “pizza and pasta” they just meant pizza. I watched another person get a black, burnt pizza and when he asked for another, they said no. After that, we left. We then went to a hot dog stand that had sausages instead of hot dogs, with tons of complex toppings. I ended up getting the salsa loaded fries, with Kai getting the salsa hot dog thing. There was a lot going on there! I think the menu was too complex for the workers there. Dann and Amelia grabbed some simple burgers at another place inside the park, which was much quicker.

Then, we finally went on rides. I must say, for an amusement park, Pleasurewood Hills didn’t have many rides. Kai, Amelia and Dann went into the line at one of the two roller coasters that were currently working. Amelia said it was the fastest coaster she’s been on, which is saying something as we’ve been to so many places. Meanwhile, Robin and I went on this massive water slide like a dozen times. This slide has you going on a rubber boat, two people at a time (you cannot go alone) and then sliding down. It was also extremely fast and the line went quickly too, even though there was only one worker at the top and two slides. Kai and Amelia met us here after their ride and got into line, however, there then was a wind warning or something, so they shut the thing down and told people not to wait in the line anymore.

We then went to ride the two tiered merry-go-round, which feels like it’s been there since the start of the park! There were a few other little kid rides; a little horse that you could ride around, a safari, and the classic tea cups. We passed through these and had a look at the laser shooting mining game. This ride seemed to have targets you could shoot, so we did want to ride it, but it was another ride that had literally no movement on the line and as the park was starting to close, we decided we wanted to do the toboggan instead. This ride clearly made people wet, so is perfect as a last ride.

The line itself was quite long, but we stuck it out and got quite wet on the ride! It was fast, with big splashes, and all of us could go on at the exact same time. It is a good ride to finish of the day. We aim to always have a positive attitude when out and about, so our children ended up having a good day, even if it was quite slow paced for an amusement park. I do not think that the price is worth it for Pleasurewood Hills, especially with the number of closed lines, lack of staff, and how closed the entire place looks.

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!