When I was first contacted about going to Tayto Park, I turned down the offer with the explanation that I thought my five and three year old were too young for it. I had for some reason a notion that it was all rollercoasters and things more suited for teenagers through to adults. Well how wrong was I! When I looked into it more and spoke to friends who had visited it I was assured there was more than enough to keep my two ladies happy for hours.

First things first my most important piece of advice is to measure your kids. Access to rides is decided based on height; over 84cm they can go on all of the kids rides and usually with an adult, and over 1.1m they can go on most of the kids rides without an adult. So don’t go on your own with two kids under the 1.1m or you’ll have to split yourself in two. One of mine was over the 1.1m and the other over the 84cm so it just meant I went with on everything with the 3 year old and the other lady was able to go it alone.Rides – there is a whole area dedicated to rides for smallies. Within this area are rides, a climbing wal, tree house and air bouncers. Together we all went on the mini ferris wheel, the train and the spinning honey pots, half together (ie me with 3 year old and 5 year old on her own) we went on the leap frog, the carousel and the racing horses and alone the two girls did the air bouncers and the five year old did the climbing wall herself a couple of times.Other than the rides there is a really large area with animals; from porcupines, all different types of birds, foxes. There is also a separate section with tigers and leopards. And there is a petting zoo.

The biggest hit with my two was the massive play area which was just fabulous and did I mention it was massive!? And its surrounded by lots of chairs for the parents to sit in and the play area was well manned by staff who stopped kids running up slides and had first aid kits on them which I thought was just excellent.

There is a talking tree outside the Lodge restaurant which is brilliant and worth seeking out. There is a hut with face painting (and no queue!!!) and an arts and crafts area.Fossetts Circus is there too and ran 4 shows a day. We went and it was a good half hour of acrobats, juggling and a funny act, perfect length for small girls and a great way to rest tired legs.

There is an Ice Age area with dinosaurs, woolly mammoths, sabre toothed tigers and bears which is nice.

There are two water areas where the water sprays out like a hose (that’s a really bad way of describing it!) but we didn’t actually make it into them, I had the girls UV swimsuits with me and their doodle sandals but we simply didn’t get a chance to go there.And there are HEAPS more things, off the top of my head there was a Sky Walk, a huge twisty slide, extreme zip wiring, the massive wooden rollercoaster, the Viking splash and other rides more suited for daredevils! Also there are tours of the Tayto factory which we didn’t get to either, there is no production on a Saturday so I wasn’t sure if it would be all that interesting.Price – basically €30 per person (adult or child over 2) which gives you access to the park and unlimited access to rides. You can buy a park ticket for €15 and buy tokens per ride but with most rides about 2 tokens (ie €2) and the circus 5 tokens the €15 unlimited ticket makes sense quite quickly. Access and amenities – extremely easy to navigate with a buggy (I brought ours for the three year old). Even though the park appears huge it is actually quite compact and to get from one side to the other would only take about 10 minutes walking with two small kids. Plenty of toilets within easy reach of everywhere and they were clean. There are food stall selling ice cream and drinks almost every 100m and I think about three places to eat a meal. We ate in the Lodge where an adult meal (which was lovely) was €12.95 and kids meals were €5.95 (I think) and one would have more than fed my two. There are also lots of benches and picnic tables so you could very easily bring a picnic for the day too. It rained when we were there and while outdoor cover wasn’t plentiful there was enough you could get to at a quick run.Queues and crowds – I can only assume, it being the first weekend in July, that it was a busy weekend but it didn’t seem that way to us, if that makes sense. The queues were either pretty short or non existent for any of the rides we went on.

Staff – I think the staff need a special mention because they were simply excellent. The way they managed the rides, the way they manned the playareas, there were lots around on hand to ask questions and they were all so polite and so helpful. They were strict when needed and fun at all other times.Other useful tips

• You get a free bag of Taytos on the way out so don’t go buying them before you leave like we did.
• Just after you pay to get in there is an ATM and there is also a box full of plain white arm bands for you to write your child’s name and your phone number which is a great idea.
• Wear comfortable shoes as you do end up doing a lot of walking naturally. And wear layers, our day started out warm but of course, it being Ireland it rained, so the girls had dresses with leggings or jogging bottoms with shorts underneath. Then jumpers and raincoats, all of which were discarded and put back on numerous times during the day.
• I brought the buggy even though the 3 year old really doesn’t need it but it did give her little legs a break and gave me somewhere to just dump all our stuff. You have to leave them at the edge of rides when you go to queue and go on them so make sure you have a bag or else deep pockets to keep cameras, phones and wallets on you at all times, just to be careful.

This is not a sponsored post, we were invited to Tayto Park so we were given free entry but writing a blog post was not a requirement of that we simply had such a good time that I thought it would be worth documenting. 

Discovering Cork – Fitzgerald’s Park Hotel Westport – the perfect family getaway