5 Reasons to Appreciate your Home Park

Whether it’s the theme park closest to you travel-wise, or the one you visit the most, we all have a home park. After spending years visiting the same park you often get to know the place to a high level of detail, allowing you to pick up on things the casual visitor might miss. But sometimes we get bored of our home parks, or begin to notice their flaws after successive visits. So here are 5 reasons why we should all appreciate our home parks! 

1. Easy (ish) transport

Your home park is often only a short journey away (at least in the grand scheme of things). Whether you’re a 5 minute or 60 minute trek away, it’s usually the closest place you can go to get your adrenaline fix. Fancy some roller coasters, why not just pop-in for the afternoon! 

2. There’s no rush!

Whether you like it or not you’ve been to this park before. You’ve done the rides plenty of times already, and have no real desire to run around trying your best to ride every single tiny attraction. In my opinion this is a nice thing. Being able to take a theme park day slow really allows you to soak in the atmosphere a park might have. Instead of chain riding that roller coaster, you can sit back and enjoy the screams of other guests whizzing by. Save your energy for the next new park visit!

3. No maps required

If you’re like me, you know how to get from A to B in your home park at lightning speed. Need to get from one side to the other? Easy! You don’t need to fumble about with an oversized and often badly designed map. Just consult the more detailed one in your mind, find the shortest route, and away you go!

4. Forget those inaccurate queue times

If you’ve been to your home park enough, you might start to remember how long certain queues take before you get to board that next ride. Say the queue starts around the entrance sign; you know that’s X amount of minutes, but the wait says something different. By roughly knowing how long the queues takes you’ll be able to avoid under-estimated queue times, and quickly ride those roller coasters with heavily over-estimated queue times. Talk about cheating the system!

5. From humble beginnings

Most of us have fond memories of our home parks, with some dating back years and years. The further back we go, the more we realise that it was our home park that potentially sparked it all. For me, going to Alton Towers every year with my family and friends made me more and more interested in theme parks; eventually leading to me becoming the enthusiast I am today. I’m sure there are lots of enthusiasts out there who also owe it all to their home park!

So there we go! We often take our home park for granted, but it offers a different experience to most of the other parks we visit. Whether it’s the rich history you have with the place, or the fact that you know it like the back of your hand, we should always appreciate our home park! 

- Harry