West Midlands Safari Park
What do you expect from a family day out? Here is the extensive criteria I have in my head to tell whether I have had a successful day:
1. Happy children
Okay I was going to do a huge list of what I want from a good day out and then I realised that actually it comes down to one thing – that the children are happy and smiling and have a great time. Money is tight, so a day out is often planned long in advance and meticulously budgeted for. The last thing you want is tired, grumpy, bored children. I have had a few days out where I ended up feeling so stressed it all seemed a huge waste of time and money.
Luckily the safari park was not one of them. My overriding memory of our day is of happy children: happy children equals happy parents. We have three children under five, including tempestuous two-year old twins, and we also took our teenage niece. A mix of ages is always hard to cater for – yet they all thoroughly enjoyed themselves. With five women (plus Dad and a toy giraffe) all in an enclosed space for a couple of hours this was some feat! I was pretty worried they would be bored sitting in the car but they were enthralled by the animals and couldn’t wait to see each one.
Of course one thing is essential with any trip to a safari park and that is:
to get close enough to the animals…
In fact you want to get THIS CLOSE…
It’s hard to pick highlights of the day as there were so many.
For the hubby it was that although there was lots to see it was all close together – this was important as we hadn’t taken a pram because we needed the extra space in the car. It was the perfect distance for the twins to walk without getting too tired.
For Rose it was seeing the “biggest apple ever”
For the toy baby giraffe it was seeing the mummy giraffes*.
For Charlotte it was the rather amazing sea-lion show. She clapped away the whole time and loved it when the sea-lion jumped out of the water to splash a ball. The sea-lion had the same name as one of her cousin’s and she kept shouting “Well done Callum!” although afterwards she got a little confused and called him Logan – her other cousin’s name.
For Molly it was riding in the little train back to the car.
And for me? Well this picture just sums it up. Pure happiness.
For me that makes it the best day out.
We visited West Midlands Safari Park as part of the Moneysupermarket competition to find Britain’s best family days out and we sent the tickets so we could do the review.
*Although rather sadly for us baby giraffe must have decided to stay with the other giraffes as we couldn’t find him when we got home.
