Travel In Our City: Blackpool

Last week I posted about visiting our local city of Manchester and getting to know more about the history and culture of the area. This week we have spent some time in the seaside resort of Blackpool so today I want to share our day in the UK's favourite seaside resort, which is only fifty miles from me.

For me Blackpool has always been seen as a fun but quite tacky place to visit and quite often one to get drunk in surrounded by stags and hens. I have visited the Pleasure Beach on numerous occasions and always found it fun, but not exactly to the standard of Alton Towers and the likes. I decided to venture back to the theme park, this time with the new Nickelodeon Land in mind for the children, and after seeing how much they enjoyed our trip to Legoland, I was excited to visit.

Nickelodeon Land has been open for four years and is aimed at families, including those with toddlers and young children as it has a range of twelve rides with only two having a height restriction on (most have height restrictions unless accompanied by an adult). In the four hours we were there we managed to get on seven rides which was pretty good as we didn't go with any of the speedy passes, which were an extra £10 per person. To be honest the queues weren't bad at all, I think the longest we queued was for Diego's Rainforest Rescue and that was around half an hour. The rest we got on in ten minutes or less and a couple we walked straight onto.

The children' favourite was Backyardigans Pirate Treasure ride, which bumps you forwards then backwards at quite a speed and my two both loved it. They also enjoyed Wonder Pets Big Circus Bounce, which looks pretty dull but was actually really good fun as it bounces you up and down. One of my favourites was Rugrats Lost River log flume ride as we were unable to take Little J on the log flume at Legoland and he was dying to. Miss H freaked out a bit as we got to the top but they were both full of smiles as we splashed to the bottom.

A couple of sticking points for us were the lack of food outlets in Nickelodeon Land itself - it was either the snack shack where we could get hot dogs or the pizza kitchen which was £8.50 per person and far too much for us. We ended up having to wander into the Pleasure Beach for more selection which was a bit inconvenient.

Another one was the price - for some reason you have to pay the full price for the Pleasure Beach, you cannot only buy Nickelodeon Land tickets. These were £30 per adults and £27 per child, and worked out not far off the price we'd pay to get into Legoland which is much larger! I used Tesco club card vouchers for myself and my sister, meaning we only had to pay £54 for the children but it seems extortionate to me. It doesn't make sense that you can't buy separate tickets for Nickelodeon Land, which I believe they used to offer, especially considering we didn't use any of the Pleasure Beach at all.

Overall we had a great day at Nickelodeon Land and it is definitely worth a visit, however I'd recommend you use you Tesco vouchers or similar as £94 for a family of four is a lot of money to spend on only twelve rides.

Unfortunately the rest of our day was rained off meaning we got drenched and ended up calling it a day at four. We intended on visiting Blackpool Tower later, as again it has been many years since I last visited and I understand it has had a bit of a facelift since then. It is one of the UK's most recognisable landmarks and of course host to several series of Strictly Come Dancing! As well as visiting the top of the tower you can also see the circus and dungeon on your visit, making it well worth a trip as part of your time in Blackpool.

A couple of other places of note are Sandcastle Water Park, which has eighteen slides and is the UK's largest indoor waterpark, Blackpool Zoo with over 1500 animals from all over the world and of course Blackpool Sands, which stretches along the whole seafront. For a trip further out do try Lytham-St-Anne's - a beautiful seaside resort south of Blackpool full of Edwardian and 1920's villas complete with bandstands and a paddling pool for the warmer weather.

Blackpool really is a fun place to visit. Once the sun sets it s a completely different story, but if you want somewhere quirky and family friendly then it really should be on your list of family days out.