Reviews of Combe Martin Wildlife & Dinosaur Park, Ilfracombe
Review by Mike on 16th August, 2009
Add your review Date visited: June 2008
We visited last year with our three year old granddaughter and had a brilliant day despite some heavy rain showers. Highlights were the sea lion show, the howling wolf pack demonstration, and impressive flying (despite some unhelpful weather) by a variety of birds of prey.
Visitors do need to be reasonably fit due to the terrain of the site and, as the car driver, I was concerned by the entrance, pay booth, and parking arrangements.
We hope to visit again, and soon, but would avoid visiting at busy Bank Holidays.
Review by Julie on 18th August, 2007
Add your review Date visited: August 2007
Our group, which comprised of 8 people ranging in age from my 5 year old niece, to my 62 year old mother, travelled for nearly 2 hours to unfortunately find several examples of bad planning which marred our visit a lot. Firstly on arrival, we found 2 lanes of non moving traffic, due to the system of payments being taken from the car. This caused not only a traffic jam, with several cars starting to overheat, but also a lot of confusion as we were travelling in 2 cars, and wished to buy a family ticket, with the 4 people that applied to being spread between the 2 cars. I explained to the man selling the tickets that my family ticket also applied to my sister and my son who were in the car behind, but this got totally overlooked and resulted in my sister repaying for herself, which in turn resulted in our having to walk unsafely back down the very steep slope, against the traffic, to rectify this mistake.
We found little in the way of traffic direction to the car parks, and ended up having to park in the very top carpark which was very difficult to enter due to another very steep road which was very difficult to negotiate. My sister in law who was driving expressed her concerns about being able to safely drive out of the car park at the end of our visit to a member of staff and was told "if you have a dodgy handbrake we can move you to a lower car park". Her hand brake was fine, our concern was the steepness of the slope combined with the very wet grass. I appreciate that theycannot control the weather, but they should take these factors into consideration when expecting people to park in these areas.
Also, my mother who suffers from asthma and is not able to walk great distances found it extremely difficult to walk down to the park, and was only able to return to her car by way of the shuttle service. I asked the member of staff when we parked if she could move to a lower car park, and was told "no, only people with dodgy handbrakes". It was not easy for my mother to move around parts of the park, due to the steep paths again, which we saw also caused difficulty for people with buggies, young children and it would be impossible for anyone in a wheelchair to visit. Yet having read several leaflets advertising this park, as well as their own website, nowhere does it state that any of the above people would have any problems. In fact, the wording on the leaflet says "disabled visitors can access parts of the park"
The other critiscm I feel compelled to make is the lack of toilet facilities. To only have 1 set of toilets in any public attraction is ridiculous, especially when so many people visit with young children who find it difficult to wait while they have to trek the whole length of the park to the toilet.
My other comment would be that the dinosaur show, creatures of whom my 5 year old niece is a huge fan, only ran once an hour. An hour is a very long time for young children to wait, especially in the rain - again not their fault but more frequent shows would have avoided a lot of discomfort. As an animated show that does not require staff attendance I would think it would be relatively easy to run more often. Also, an increase of under cover attractions would be a definate improvement when the weather is bad.
All in all, due to these factors our day was very disapointing
Review by caroline Rainbird on 18th August, 2007
Add your review Date visited: 15th Aug 2007
definately not a place to visit in the rain as very little under cover activities. Entrance a shambles as entrance fee taken from car, causing long tail backs on to the main raod,car parking up steep hills, Park not suitable for people with walking difficulties or families with chldren in buggies. Lack of toilet facilities. some interesting things in the park but could do with a lot of improvements.
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