Tapnell Farm Park — Attraction in Isle of Wight

Fantastic place to take kids, and the adults in our party had fun too! We were two adults and two kids aged 7 and 3. There's loads to do!

We arrived around 11am a week before the school summer holidays started, and it was pretty quiet. We started by visiting the Guinea pigs, rodents and reptiles. Then we found the excellent pedal go-karts and spent ages on them. There are single ones and ones with a passenger seat so you can give someone a ride, which was fab for enabling the 3-year-old to join in. The seats on the go-karts can also be moved backwards or forwards so that the pedals are in the right position for different people.

We the visited the soft play and the kids entertained themselves while we had a coffee and cake from the café. The coffee was decent but I wasn't impressed with the cake (vegan chocolate orange cake, the 'cake' part of which was a crumbly substance that was obviously supposed to taste of chocolate but just tasted odd. The icing was OK.) Most of the cakes on offer were vegan and it was really disappointing that there was no decent offering of normal cake. We then tried out the mini pedal tractors, which the 3-year-old loved.

We stayed busy with a visit to the goats, then the bouncing pillows (super fun!), sledge slide and playground, until we flopped somewhat around 3.15pm so had a short break in the café. The hot sausage rolls and cauliflower curry pasty were delicious. Unfortunately I never received the passionfruit, coconut and lime cake I ordered and paid for (an unsuccessful attempt to rectify the previous disappointing cake situation), and only realised I hadn't received it after we'd got home!

Then we went to see the meerkats, then fed the wallabies, which was a great experience. The keeper was very informative, let us ask lots of questions and let us hand-feed the wallabies several times.

We had a bounce on the trampolines and one more session on the go-karts until nearly 5pm. We had booked a table at the Cow for dinner at 5, which was great.

All in all a brilliant day out, despite the lack of good cake, and we all slept...

Tapnell Farm Park is an up-and-coming attraction with major improvements being made every season.

There are two bouncy pillows, like bouncy castles without walls! One for toddlers and one for the older kids and the young at heart. Great fun for everyone of any age who don't mind making a fool out of themselves!

There are pigs with their piglets, donkeys, ferrets, meerkats, wallabies (some of which were brought over from Seaview Wildlife Encounter before its untimely demise. RIP Seaview Wildlife Encounter!) amongst many other animals.

The indoor play area constructed from straw is a work in progress, with a new pedal go-kart track mid-build, two reasonably fast zip wires and as with the pillows, another go-kart track from the younger children.

The indoor soft play area has a decent sized climbing area for the older kids and an ample sized ball pool and soft building blocks and toys for the babies, very well maintained with a place to put your shoes up out of the way. I can imagine this gets very busy in peak periods when the weather is dodgy.

Whilst we didn't eat at the park this time, we noticed the selection of food and drink available was very good. The usual cafe food and drink were accompanied by fresh cakes, jacket potatoes, and freshly ground coffee.

My 8-year-old son absolutely loves this place and we will be visiting a lot this summer. The summer season pass is very reasonably priced at £30 per person from the end of March to the beginning of November. The winter pass in the remaining months is an equally reasonable £15.

Many memories will be made at...

This was a first visit to Tapnell Farm having been a regular to the Isle of Wight for 15 years. It was also useful to scout this out as a potential venue for my class when we visit next year on our week away.

We only booked for the Farm Park but Tapnell has a lot of other activities such as axe throwing, archery, football golf and an aqua park. These are all at additional cost and can be booked separately to the actual Farm Park.

Once inside, it became quickly apparent that the animals were secondary to the range of activities on offer. That said, there were enough farm animals plus others to keep the children interested and the indoor section with rabbits, guinea pigs, mice and reptiles/bugs was excellent. My children also really enjoyed the wallaby walkthrough which was fab.

Other things that kept us busy for well over half the day and included in the ticket were mini golf, swings, obstacle courses, zip wires, inflatable pillows, trampolines, a 'beach', pedal carts and a Shaun the Sheep race competition. Zorbs were also available on the day but these were an extra cost too.

All in all, this place was excellent for my two children aged 3 and 5 and would probably entertain them up until 8 or 9. But beyond this I felt older children would possibly find it a little tame and as such would not suit my Year 6 class. The football golf and aqua park would perhaps be a better choice of...