Thornton Hall Country Park — Attraction in Borough of Pendle

Visited on 4th dec as we had booked for the Christmas adventure. I attended with my partner and my three children aged 12, 3 and 4 months.

I have to say that the whole experience was shocking and one of the worst Christmas experiences I have been to.

Firstly, welcome drinks- why on earth you would give hot drinks to children and adults and then give them less than a minute to consume these before asking them to start writing their names in a passport when some children need help with this. Consequently we were left juggling all the hot drinks and nearly had an accident as we were trying to help our 3 year old. Apparently you get 20 mins in this area it was definitely not.

Additionally, when the passports were given out the elf, Jingle, decided not to give my 12 year old one, presumably she presumed that she was too old for this activity day? I had to ask for one.

This really upset my 12 year old as she said she felt left out. I had paid for her and she was there for the experience and to enjoy this with her brother.

This was then swiftly followed by us getting on the trailer for the deer feeding.

As I have said I had a child under 1 year with me. He is 4 months old and was in a baby carrier located on my front. I sat in the trailer with my family and before I could even blink the young man decided to pull the safety bar down over us without warning me. Had my arm not been over my baby this bar would have closed on his back, Instead I felt the pressure on my arm which was lucky. Surely if you can see someone with a baby you would say before you pull the bar down.

The Mrs Claus experience again was rushed. We were shown a cookie very briefly and for people like ourselves who were seated at the back my three year old didn't see properly. They were then asked to decorate their own cookie in the same way. Pretty hard to do if someone hasn't seen and worse still given less than 3 minutes to do this.

The food in the diner was the worse food we have eaten. The Sausage was raw and the pizza base was stale, either that or over cooked. And to continue with the rushed theme of the day, a young man must have asked me 3 times if he could clear the table when it was evident that people were still eating and i was trying to feed my baby.

All in all this was the worst experience and was very rushed from the start right up until leaving the diner. Considering the price that we paid for this we should have been given more time and I would have...

I had high hopes for Thornton Hall farm, with several really good competitors close by and a higher price than almost everyone else I just assumed Thornton would live up to it. Unfortunately in the winter they close down the back half of the park, the walk that accompanies it and the bouncy trampoline/pillow for the kids. I’ll be honest, this left me frustrated before we’d even begun, we had allowed almost two hours before our soft play booking but there really is a very limited amount to do so having parts of the park effectively taken away without notice really felt wrong (especially when the price is the same regardless)

Around 45 mins before our soft play session we had completely exhausted everything there was to do, slides had been well and truly slid and every animal there had been petted. You aren’t allowed into the soft play area until your designated time and there is nowhere at all heated to go while you wait - we opted to drive ten mins up the road to Greggs to kill half an hour before our session started.

The soft play was good, the kids had a great time there and the food looks better than a lot of similar places but definitely not in line with the prices (at least £16 for a burger and chips it felt a little extortionate so we just went to Billy Bobs after our visit. An equally expensive meal but one that we know is worth the price!)

All in all it felt like a very carefully planned exercise in maximising profits and not really putting too much time into the customer experience. There’s a few petting farms near us with the same amount of animals to see for a couple of quid per head. At £40 for our family of four once you factor in a pack of animal feed each for two kids and the booking fee (you HAVE to prebook so the ‘booking fee’ is actually just an additional cost. Why you would pay a fee to book something still baffles me) it’s just really bad value for a very average petting farm.

Locally Hesketh farm is a far better petting farm experience (more to do and everything on site feels a lot more reasonably priced) and there are plenty of equally good soft play areas nearby. We left Thornton feeling like it’s just another place trying to milk parents for every penny they are worth whilst giving the...

This review is concerning the Christmas event and not the farm as a whole. Starting with the positives the staff are great and the costumes are much better than most places I have been. The effort to decorate the interiors of the rooms you go to was also quite good. In fact the whole thing is quite good if they hadn't ruined it and there are some areas that improvements are needed for the price. The kids play area was very good and indeed the farm side of it looked like it would have been a good time. The cafe is overpriced.

Now to the bad points. The worst part of this day was that it was rushed, almost to the point of being comical.

The Gingerbread decorating with Mrs Claus probably saw the children get approximately 2 minutes to complete.

The build a bear should be called stuff a toy as that's pretty much it. Whack in the stuffing and tie it off. Again small kids have no chance of doing this unassisted as the time given was about 3-4 minutes before they want to get it bagged up to give to Santa.

The Reindeer viewing on the "Santa Express" - a large quad pulling a few carts that is in no way decorated - was possibly the worst. After a short ride to a field we were parked about 30 metres from the fence line which contained the deer who were all about 50 metres or more away from the fence. Lucky for us the deer wouldn't come when called so we had to drive up the fence. At this point the deer came over. The driver threw one scoop of feed over the fence and shot back in the quad and we were off. A max of 45 seconds we were there! Had the deer come over on the first call I think we would have only seen them from a good distance away.

Santas Groto whist nice on the inside is a large shed with a few white lights on the outside. I think we all have a preconception about the way a meeting with santa goes on. An Hello, a have you been good?, a what do you want for Christmas? and a present. None of that! A small bit of dull narrative and the kids were given back the bear they stuffed earlier. Very poor!

All in all not worth the money, far too rushed, which...