Plans for the rest of 2024

What’s on the horizon??

Well, we ended 2023 on a high with a trip to Florida and we’ve already done a lot of great things so far in 2024. Most recently our roadtrip southbound taking us to back to favourites Alton Towers and Chessington, down to new places in Paultons Park and Stonehenge. We’ve used our National Trust passes a few times lately, at Chirk Castle, Erddig Hall & Penrhyn Castle up here in North Wales, which we’ll be writing about soon.

But we’ve got a few things coming up that we can’t wait for. Some new things, some old favourites, some attractions we haven’t done for a long time and some things we just can’t wait to do again!

We’re heading out for a week in Salou and a stay at Port Aventura World’s Hotel Gold River. Whilst there, we’re excited to visit Port Aventura Park and Ferrari Land for the very first time and get rides on the classic coaster Shambhala, and Red Force – the tallest coaster in Europe and 4th tallest coaster in the world. Along with that they’ve got the awesome looking Caribe Aquatic Waterpark for us to explore! Whilst we’re excited for this, we’re also a little nervous. We’ve heard some horror stories about Port Aventura’s operations, plus it’s the school holidays so it’ll be mega busy and mega hot! It’s also out first time flying with Ryanair, so we’d best get the bags the right size…

We’re heading away for a few days in September, so we’ve booked ourselves a little theme park roadtrip, with a couple of parks on the itinerary and something we haven’t done for a long time, and Elliott has never done!

We’re going for our second ever visit to Thorpe Park, having only been for the first time last year we missed out on a few coasters last time: Nemesis Inferno was closed and The Walking Dead was busy – so it’ll be good to get to try those. And then there’s the main event. The UK’s newest, tallest and fastest coaster – Hyperia. Both me and Evan are excited to ‘Find our Fearless’ and ride Hyperia for the first time… if its open!

It’s a family favourite, so we’ll be heading back to Legoland Windsor for a day in the park to enjoy all our favourite attractions, like Mythica and The Dragon, along with riding the new roller coaster ‘Minifigure Speedway’ for the first time. Something else new this time is we’re staying the night in the new Woodland Lodge, which includes a few rounds of golf at the new Adventure Golf area that opened last year.

We love the Harry Potter films (well, mainly me and Jo, but the kids like ‘em too), so we’re taking a trip to the ‘Warner Bros Studio Tour: The Making of Harry Potter’ for the first time in a few years to see all the great sets and props from the films and to check out what’s new since our last visit. It’s Elliott’s first time, and we definitely haven’t seen Gringotts or The Burrow, and it’ll be set up for the ’Dark Arts’ event from 13th September until 10th November, so there’ll be Halloween theming, Dementors and Death Eaters galore! We’ll be treating ourselves to a cheeky Butterbeer too!

Link: Warner Bros Studio Tour

If you love the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World films, then go and check out Jurassic World: The Exhibition. It’s amazing. We visited when it was at the London ExCel a few years ago, so we’ll definitely go again now it’s a little closer to home at the Trafford Centre in Manchester from August 2nd. It’s a short and expensive day out, but worth it for the Indominus Rex and T-Rex scenes alone.

Link: Jurassic World: The Exhibition

Then we’ve got a sneaky addition to our plans that we didn’t expect this year…

We’re heading back to Florida!!! We had no plans to go back to Orlando this year, having been back in November for the first time in 8 years, but there was a sale on with Virgin and a week in Cabana Bay, with a Volcano Bay view room seemed like a good idea. As we’re only doing a week, we’re just doing the Universal Parks to visit the Wizarding World and get more rides on Velocicoaster, and Volcano Bay to enjoy all the slides we missed last time and get a few laps on Krakatau Aqua Coaster. We might squeeze in a day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios to visit Galaxy’s Edge and Toy Story Land too. No Iron Gwazi this trip, but I’m sure we’ll be back again when Epic Universe opens.

In between these trips, we’ve still got our National Trust Passes and there are a few other exhibitions and such we might visit. And who knows, maybe another theme park or two. We’ll see!