The Ice Cream Farm — Attraction in Great Britain

Avoid!

I’m afraid we had a really rubbish day at the ice cream farm.

We went with our young family (5 and 3), hoping for a fun day out. After playing we went for lunch. The food was of a standard that I’d expect at a cheap fast food place. I’m happy to pay for good quality food, particularly for my children. The food was simply poor quality, UPF rubbish. I paid for cheese in my burger and received a slice of orange plastic cheese on a cheap, highly processed bun. We found the food horrible and didn’t bother finishing it. I mentioned this to a member of staff and whilst they didn’t directly say anything I got the distinct impression he agreed with me and wouldn’t have wanted to eat it either.

We went on to try out the sweet shop escape room which was 10 mins long and sounded like it was aimed at young children. The puzzles were great- perfect for our age range and accessible to both children with support. I felt like the staff member running it was very poorly trained however. We’d arrived early and were allowed to start early, the lady dashed off after a brief intro so at the start our children were understandably still getting to grips with the challenge and environment. After our ten minutes was up the lady came back in , announced that we’d failed and started to prepare the escape room for the next guests. At this point my daughter was just on the last puzzle and was sounding out each of the letters. The woman clearly wanted us out so I assumed we’d already gone over our time significantly without realising it. I checked and we still had 4 minutes of our allotted window left as a result of starting early. I told my daughter that she was fine and we could carry on as the staff’s behaviour was really flustering her and we were literally on the last three words of the last puzzle. The lady, to my incredulity, corrected me ‘no you’ve not made it, your time is up’. I said to her that if it wasn’t too inconvenient my daughter would just like to finish reading the code. When my daughter handed her the scroll with the secret recipe the lady barely looked at her, and shoved it back in its place. With all of this I assumed there must be a big queue of people waiting, but there was nobody waiting and I checked the booking page- there was nobody taking the next few slots after ours. The lady then waived us off with ‘have a great day guys’ oblivious to the fact that she’d just destroyed my daughters reading confidence. My daughter said a few things afterwards about her abilities which were really upsetting. I would have thought a child’s escape room would have be run by staff with a modicum of common sense and discretion. Even if you had needed us out quickly (which definitely wasn’t the case) it could have been done with a bit of empathy. When my daughter handed over the scroll the lady could have behaved as if she’d been given the secret recipe. Why bother setting up an escape room that will feel real to a child if you’re going to treat them like that. I’ve done plenty of escape rooms as an adult and the staff have always made way more effort to ensure we enjoy it than this lady did for my small children. Overall I felt like it was a day where I’d fed my children appalling food and then signed them up for a good dressing down in the escape room. I emailed the ice cream farm on the day of this happening, it’s now weeks later and we’ve...

Bought the play passes when they could be used on more attractions. Came back for a second time c10 months later and now we will struggle to use the pre paid play pass even though it lasts for two years. We will have to come back more times to use them up - and pay for entry each time. Two activities that were play pass have been replaced with one which you now have to pay for separately by card. These were the mini land rovers and the ride on bikes. They have been replaced with a ride on quad thing which is £2 a ride. So I now have a lot of play passes which are going to be difficult to use up and when we go we have to also pay to use this ride because there's very little else my child likes there. And because two attractions became one the queues are naturally going to be longer. Gone from being reasonable value to a rip off. I'd like to not go again but we have these passes to use up so I guess we will be back. If you haven't been with the new range of activities I wouldn't really recommend it and I would not bother getting a play pass because I doubt many people would want to come for repeat visits given how limited it is. One of the few activities my child enjoys is the gem panning. Problem is it uses cold water with no heat whatsoever so it quickly becomes painfully cold for little ones to keep submerging their hands. First time we went it was relatively easy to find gems. Second time we went not so much. You would think they might replenish the cheap little plastic stones regularly to make sure you don't need to put your hands in very cold water repeatedly over a sustained period of time. 20 minutes + of gem panning and we managed to fill about 20% of the bag with the coloured plastic "gems". We filled it up with small stones in the end because there was nothing else to be found. This was early midday not last thing. The indoor water place has an area where the water is not working. This was a problem now and 10 months ago in the same area. I suspect it is permanently out of action. Don't want to lose money closing it down to fix it or don't want to spend the money fixing it? Who knows, but of course then it makes the other areas more crowded as a whole section doesn't work. Very limited for little ones (3 and under I would say - have to pay for ebtry over 18 months but there's not really anything for them). No oversight of the soft play and inappropriate use by older kids in the (very small) toddler area going unchecked. All a bit penny pinching and don't fancy rushing back. They've compromised quality / enjoyment over profit too much. Next time we go we won't buy food. Was happy to use the cafe (cheap microwave food) but now I'd rather not spend anymore here than necessary as it's not a business that seems to care about the customer experience anywhere near as much as it cares about its bottom line. Surprise me - tell me you accept the 2 year play pass value has been significantly devalued given its more limited use and you are prepared to refund the balance I have left so we don't need to visit your disappointing...

We visited the Ice Cream Farm to break up a journey to Wales. There had been a few previous reviews left by people who used to use this place before it became popular which I feel don’t truly reflect how it was on our visit. Firstly there are some things to consider before you travel here.

1. PLAN AHEAD - queues for ice creams will be long at times when other people will also want an ice cream. We had one person in front of us in the queue at around 10.20 but if you want one at 12.30 after you’ve had your lunch there’s a very high chance that everyone else will want one. The queue at this time was out of the door and slow moving.
2. There is a sand and water play that we thought would be the same as every children’s activity place we have visited. We were wrong. The sand and water play area is a huge barn half covered with sand and with a water system that allows children to control the flow etc. I reckon there was close to fifty children playing with the water but no one looked as though they were waiting for a turn as there was so many different features (opening/closing valves, wheels etc to this. HELPING POINT: TAKE A BUCKET/SPADE AND A SWIMSUIT/WETSUIT for your child as this will enhance their visit. They do sell bucket/spades here but it’s an unneeded additional expense. There is also a coffee/tea machine here if you’re one of the lucky parents who gets to sit down and watch what’s going on!
3. You pay a small charge to enter the park and then pay for what you use. You can pay for each individual attraction or can buy a pass card (£15 for 5 attractions - normally £4.50 each). The pass card has an expiry of 2 years time so to me it makes sense to buy one of those and use it on a later visit if you don’t plan to use it all on the same day. This is good for a day out where there will be a lot of adults (grandparents etc) who don’t have to pay a high entry price without using the attractions.
4. I’ve heard you can pay no entry charge if you want just an ice cream but only one adult per party is allowed in to do this. This is a great feature to have! 5)Take some pound coins as there are some shorter attractions that take coins or tokens.
5. A well maintained soft play area means that even on a rainy day there is something to do to burn off the energy the ice cream gives them!

We will definitely be revisiting The Ice Cream Farm when we are in the area. The ice creams we chose were excellent. Very tasty and stored so that they were in optimal condition(Double chocolate, mocha, nutella and popping candy but many many more flavours to choose from). There were boards throughout the queuing system with visuals of how they looked to help young children see what they wanted.

Hope the next...