Flamingo Land Resort, Yorkshire, September 2025

We’ve never been to Flamingo Land before. It’s been on the radar for a few years, but always seemed a little pricey in comparison to the other parks when you consider we usually get offers for Alton Towers or Legoland, so when they had an offer on earlier in the year we stored away some tickets for later use.

The offer was on back in March to buy open dated tickets for £29 each. The website currently shows an open dated ticket priced at £58 per person, so it was quite the bargain and a handy little outing stored for sometime during the 2025 season. Currently, dated tickets show from £46 online (age 4 and over) or a family ticket from £168 for 4 people. Oh, and parking is free for park guests. I do love free parking.

Flamingo Land is a Theme Park, Zoo and Holiday Park all in one. Like a Butlins, but with more focus on the rides and attractions, and with lots of animals. There are static homes along with pitches for caravans and tents. It’s located in Malton, North Yorkshire which is about a 2hr30min drive for us down here in Wrexham.

Well, it was time to cash in our tickets. We thought that now the kids had all gone back to school after the summer holidays, the parks might be quiet, so all we needed was the weather to play ball too. It had given a bit of rain in the afternoon, but we thought we’d risk it. And the plan was a success. The car park was so quiet we were right by the entrance, the ride queues were mostly walk-ons and the rain stayed away until park close.

We had a potential 8 new coaster creds to claim on our first visit, and most of which were rides we were looking forward to like Sik, Mumbo Jumbo and Kumali, and then there’s Hero. By all accounts one of the worst coasters in the UK. There’s lots of flat rides and fun kids rides to do too, like Mischief Mansion, Pterodactyl and Cliff Hanger, a zoo to explore with lots of animals and lots of food options to choose from. As it was quiet, we could hopefully see everything. Here’s a few of the rides we enjoyed.

Velocity is a launched motorbike coaster from Vekoma. We weren’t sure if Evan would be getting on Velocity this year as the height requirement was at 1.5 last year, but thankfully it was back down to 1.4m this year, so all good. We went for this one as our first ride of the day and really enjoyed it. It has a good launch and a decent layout to follow. The restraints dig in a little on your chest on some corners though, but otherwise lots of fun.

The ‘main event’ coaster at Flamingo Land. The Intamin 10-inversion coaster opened in 2022, Sik is pretty much a clone of Colossus at Thorpe Park but with better trains and much more comfortable restraints making for an infinitely better ride experience. We had several walk-on rides on Sik and enjoyed every one. Its a bit rattly but still comfortable. Not sure about the theming though. The station is like a nightclub with constant ‘boots and cats’ tunes pumping, bright coloured banners and themed around a clothing brand I’ve never heard of.

Mumbo Jumbo was a fun ride and one Elliott at just over 1.2 was happy to have several laps on. This was the ride that seemed to have the longest queue all day, mainly as the cars only take 4 people and there’s only one running while a second loads so it took a while to get through. Was on 20-30 min queues most of the day but we managed a few 5 min queues at the end of the day. Its an S&S El Loco model coaster with a few inversions. Elliott loved it.

We loved Kumali. This 19 year old Vekoma SLC inverted coaster felt pretty smooth. We didn’t have a bad ride on it all day. It was pretty fast and has some good loops and views across the park. It looks like the little brother of Montu at Busch Gardens with its yellow and blue colour and theming. A great coaster.

Another one Elliott loved. Pterodactyl is a 150-foot Zamperla Star Flyer in the Dinosaur area of the park. As you‘d expect you get great views from up there, especially down over the Rhinos and Cheetahs next door. Was a bit chilly up there today though!

Right next door to Pterodactyl was the family spinning coaster Twistosaurus. Another fun little coaster that we could all enjoy. We didn’t get much of a spin when we all went on but Jo and Elliott had more fun on it. Too heavy with us all on perhaps.

A kooky ghost train with cartoon vampires, werewolves and Frankenstein monsters causing mayhem. Not great, but a bit of fun for the little ones.

Cliff Hanger is an S&S Space Shot Drop Tower – The same as Thrill Towers at Ferrari Land and Dr Dooms Fear Fall at Universal Islands of Adventure. This one was much better than either of those. The launch upwards was great and the drops were fun too. It has a good cycle and wasn’t just a ‘one and done’ like Dr Doom. Great fun, if you like that kind of thing!

Allegedly one of the worst coasters in the UK. A Zamperla ‘Volare’ model coaster on which you have to lie on your stomach and be buffeted around the track. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for us, it was closed for maintenance all day. Regardless of it’s reputation, we we’re gutted it wasn’t open, but it gives us an excuse to visit the park again in the future.

Battery powered race cars that you can drive yourself. These things are always a pain to control and you always end up banging about on the guide rail in the middle. Evan won his race though.

There are lots of rides in the park. We didn’t do all of them as some were for small kids. Except the coasters, we did all of those… Need the creds! Here’s a few of the others.

Voodoo: A swinging ship ride.

Vortex: A rocking tug / spinning boat.

Runaway Train: A mini mine train coaster that smashes your knees to pieces.

Zooom!: An inverted plane coaster that’s a great first coaster for kids.

Splash Battle: Err, it’s a splash battle that looks very cute with yellow submarines and free to use water cannons off ride. You will get wet.

Rotataur: A mini Ferris wheel ride.

Navigator: a Zamperla Disk-o. I do love a Disk-o.

Flip Flop: A Fabbri Frisbee swing that was down for maintenance during our visit.

…plus a host of smaller kids spinning rides like planes and balloons, Dino fossil digs, soft play areas, splash pads, the People Mover monorail and the Zoo monorail and train rides that go around the park. There really is a lot to do.

It said zoo, but I wasn’t expecting a great deal of animals, but there were actually loads. We saw Lions, Tigers, Flamingos (I’d have been disappointed if there were no Flamingos in Flamingo Land), Seals, Giraffes, Zebras, Rhinos, Cheetahs, Monkeys, Hippos, Ostriches and much more. We had a good hour checking out the animals and I don’t think we saw half of what was there. We’ll definitely have to go and explore more. The setup around the Seal area looked good for shows and there were several high viewing areas and walkways around the enclosures to see into them. Glad we had the time to take a look around.

There were loads of options around the park. The kids wanted hot dogs, which we picked up 2 at £4.95 each, and they were fresh, hot and the kids said they were nice. That’s half the price of an Alton Towers hot dog and the quality looked much better. And just to point out how quick the queues were, whilst Jo and Elliott were in the hot dog queue, Me and Evan ran to Sik, had a ride and got back to the hot dog stand before they’d got the food!

Near Hero there’s an American Diner, near the entrance there’s the Sports Bar, there’s the Zoo Bar, a Coffee shop and more in Zanzibar Food Market, Jolly Sailor Fish & Chips, Street Food Kitchen for burgers, plus there’s ice cream and snacks all around the parks.

We were tempted by the Chinese food from Fortune 2 Go. Expecting just a few theme park Chinese offerings we were surprised to find a full Chinese Takeaway menu. And it was really nice. We chose the medium box for £8.60 each, where you can pick a base of rice/noodles and add a topping. I had noodles with Honey chilli chicken whilst Jo had sweet and sour chicken and rice. They were very full boxes and very filling. No complaints about the food or prices from us!

There were gift shops all around the park, with each selling Flamingo Land merchandise along with a lot of ‘pocket money’ toys. Stuff you could buy elsewhere a lot cheaper. Water pistols, slime, toy dinosaurs, plushes and such. Of the Flamingo Land merchandise, there were T-shirts, hats, keyrings, pins and magnets and all reasonably priced. We picked up a Sik pin for £4.95 and a magnet for £4.99, the kind of stuff that’s usually pushing a tenner at Chessington or towers. Plenty to choose from for a souvenir or a holiday treat.

What a great day! Yes, we very much enjoyed our first ever visit to Flamingo Land. We enjoyed multiple rides on most things, including walk-on rides on the big attractions, had long walks around the zoo with spare time to just sit and eat and enjoy the day. We were fortunate enough to be there on a quiet day, but I’d hate to be there when it was busy. I can imagine it’d be chaos.

As a little extra bonus, the website said the park would be open until 4, so we were rushing to get last rides in at around 3:30, only to spot a sign saying it was open until 5, so we got a few extra rides done.

It’s a lovely place that just feels like it needs a little TLC, some sprucing up here and there. Some of the rides could do with a lick of paint to restore the vibrant colours and liven them up. Fingers crossed the improvements they’re currently making with the flume ride and around the zoo will look great.

All in all a successful first trip and we can’t wait to return in the future.

Visit the Flamingo Land website to book tickets or find info on holiday homes and camping.