Hyde Park Winter Wonderland Christmas Funfair

Name: Hyde Park Winter Wonderland
Start: 2024-11-21
End: 2025-01-05
Location: Hyde Park

Where? Hyde Park When? 21st November 2024 to 5th January 2025 10 AM to 10 PM Price? Standard: £5; Peak-time (evenings and weekends): £7.50 Note: The admission ticket just grants you entry. You have to pay extra for the rides once you're inside Everybody must book an admission ticket. You will only be allowed to enter during your chosen arrival time, but you can stay for as long as you like afterwards · See hydeparkwinterwonderland.com Parking: Nearby car parks Buses: 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 19, 22, 30, 36, 38, 52, 73, 74, 82, 137, 148, 274, 390, 414, 436 Bus fares Trains: The closest station is Marble Arch Central Train fares

Craig’s review… It's easy to find Hyde Park Winter Wonderland because you just follow the sound of funfair screams all the way from Marble Arch.

The first time you clap eyes on its big perimeter of unscalable walls and security staff searching everyone's handbag to see if they're carrying a bomb it will remind you of a big prison camp, but once you're inside it's a completely different story. If this place doesn't give you the Christmas spirit then nowhere will.

Christmas market & Bavarian beer hall

Everywhere you go is the seasonal sound of Bing Crosby and Perry Como and Swiss-style chalets selling knitted mittens and dangling candle holders, while warm smoke and aromas float over from the wood-burning fires -- they've got those fire-filled dustbins making campfire crackling sounds like cub camp when you were a kid.

Food stalls at Hyde Park Winter Wonderland

They're selling real fairground food like hot dogs and onions, meat pies in gravy, jacket potatoes with baked beans and butter on top. I've got the smell of vinegar and chips now... roasted chestnuts... hot toffee popcorn, waffles and crepes.

Fairground rides & Rollercoasters

I forgot how loud a funfair can be. It's all blaring music and a background track of chatter and screams as the rollercoasters trip cameras that flash in your face. They've got waltzers, dodgems, carousels with silver lights and icicles, laser lights strafing the floor by your feet... one zone is dressed up like the North Pole with a huge Ice Mountain ride that has polar bears and penguins and a real live waterfall cascading down the front (real roaring water!).

Winter Wonderland ice skating rink

I was planning to have a go on at least one ride tonight but they all look too scary now. There are lots of fairground games I could try but I don’t want to win a four foot dolphin that’s too big to take home so I have a stroll past Santa’s grotto. I'd quite like to peer inside but I don’t think I can pass myself off as a five-year-old kid with my forty-year-old face, so I end up watching the ice skaters doing laps of the Hyde Park bandstand.

I think the world is split down the middle into people who are happy to give ice skating a go and those who prefer to just lean on the side watching everybody else fall over, and I'm definitely the latter.

When I make my run for London Mayor I'm going to make sure this place stays open all year round to cheer us all up.

A word of warning about the queues on Friday and Saturday night: I walked past at 4 PM and there were probably about a thousand people lined up for the bag search -- and that's not an exaggeration. It probably took them over thirty minutes just to get through the gate.

Worth a visit? ★★★Value for money? ★★★Good for kids? ★★★Easy to get to? ★★★