Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Wonderful fun in the sun |
| Disadvantages: |
None |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
In August of this year my husband and our 2 kids, my son aged 14 and my daughter aged 9 went to Salou for our summer holidays. Salou is very big and noisy with plenty to do, not for someone looking for a quiet holiday.
We had a wonderful holiday but the definite hightlight was PortAventura Theme Park. It way exceeded my expectations. I never thought a theme park could be so much fun.
Before we went over to
Spain we were advised to purchase our theme park tickets here as that it the cheaper way to do it and there are always special deals on the tickets here. We managed to get 4 7 day tickets for the price of 3. We were so glad we did this as the tickets were so much dearer over there and you also had to queue to buy the tickets whereas we were able to straight into the park without queueing.
The theme park itself is only a 10 minutes bus ride from the centre of Salou and the buses are very regular and cheap, although I think it is a competition with the bus drivers to see how many people they can fit onto their buses!
The theme park is set out into 5 different areas - Mediterranian, Polyenesia, China, Mexico and the Far West. Each area is very well themed and you do almost believe you are in the specific country. The rides are amazing, I have always been pretty scared of roller coasters and white knuckle rides, but by the end of each visit to the theme park I became more and more addicted. The kids too were on top of the world.
Another thing not to miss are the many shows. They were very very professional and not to be missed. I liked the Polyenisian one, this was made up of a group of Hawian ladies singing and dancing to Hawian music on a beautiful manmade beach, who needs to go to Hawaii!!
There are plenty of places to eat and drink on site and also many snack bars, which sell beautiful fresh fruit.
The queues weren't bad either, that was one thing I was dreading. the most we queued for a ride was 40 minutes and that was only twice. The average time we queued was between 15 - 30 minutes. All queueing areas were in the shade too, which was quite refreshing.
The only bad points I can honestly say are the heat and the fact that you must walk many miles every time you are there, which in the heat seems a bit harder!
We found the best time to go was about 5pm and we stayed until 12 midnight. The park was slightly quieter then and of course it was getting cooler.
The closing show and firewroks display was AMAZING. I have never seen anything like it in my life, it almost brought a tear to my eye. If you do stay for the finale though get to the Mediterranean area at the start of the park in plenty time as it does get very crowded. Also at about 11.45pm they start to close down parts of the park and you end up having to walk really long ways around the park just to get there.
The park was beautifully clean and well looked after and we would go back there in a minute, we're at this moment trying to get book again for next year.
My kids have always wanted to go to Florida but it doesn't appeal to myself or my husband as it sounds a bit too hectic for us. I think PortAventura was so much better as you have the best of both worlds, a theme park holiday and a relaxing sunny beach holiday.
I hope I've made it sound as good as it is!
After some advice I would like to add that buying the ticket here for the 4 of us for 7 days only cost £180, which we thought was great. Also Salou is on the north east coast of Spain on the Costa Dorada.
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