Watermouth Castle — Attraction in North Devon

If only the visitor experience was a good as the marketing! This is a weird and wonderful place and they are so close to getting it right, but ultimately, not there yet.

There have clearly been some investments made recently to the adventure play areas and these are great, but the dated and tired attractions around the rest of the park really let it down.

The grounds are lovely and the pixie and gnome theme is cute, but the features/animatronics around the whole site seem to be about 40 years old without ever having been spruced up.

The vintage arcade games barely worked, but happily swallowed your coins. There are signs around saying that if the machine doesn't work come and see a member of the team, but unless you feel like spending half your day looking for someone and getting your step count up in the process, you'll probably choose to lose a few 10p coins instead.

The lazy river ride was good in theory, but in practice only 2 of the water features around the ride were in working order, and the condition of the ride has clearly been AI enhanced for the advertising videos.

Sadly the Toboggan ride had to close after we had queued for 20 minutes, however, this is a safety precaution due to the weather and not the fault of the park. The staff at the ride were genuinely trying to make the right choice and were apologetic. I'm not entirely sure why the kids tube slide needed to be closed in wet weather, as its all undercover, but I'm sure there is a good reason.

Across the stated 17 acres of gardens, there are 2 sets of toilet facilities, both of which are tiny and were filthy when we used them.

Catering options and prices were OK, but in bad weather, the indoor seating is very limited. In good weather, there are plenty of outdoor places to enjoy a picnic.

There is plenty around to occupy a family with younger children for the whole day without a moment of boredom, I would say if your kids are older than juniors, then this is isn't the place for them.

Overall, we had a nice day out, but were disappointed in the quality and...

How good of Watermouth Castle to remind me to scan the QR code for WiFi upon entry - this has helpfully enabled me to compose and post this review whilst now waiting in a near 1hr 30min queue for the boat ride. Great use of my time. 👍

Unfortunately, with the new owners it appears to be greed, greed, greed. With the extreme level of advertising they have done with the place, and by making such a commercial tourist attraction, unfortunately Watermouth Castle has lost all of its magic and charm.

Upon arrival, you are met by an advert for the scare event - not suitable for under 12s. However the pictures of the characters are very scary and are in the doorway - young children can not avoid seeing these nightmarish figures.

Arrived at 1.30 after purchasing the ‘saver ticket’ - what a waste of time. You then spend the whole afternoon in one queue. Upon arrival cars were queuing to get in with not a single space in the entire carpark or woodland overflow carpark.

The site used to be kept immaculate but had rubbish floating in the water areas and broken stone walls as just two examples of disrepair around the site.

The previous animatronics, whether working or not, were a huge part of the interest and obscurity of this place - most have now been replaced with screens inside the barrels on the way up - children spend enough time on a day to day basis engrossed by a screen - they can see these anywhere. A huge lack of imagination and laziness on behalf of the new company.

Queues are ridiculous - for toilets, food shacks and rides. Finally get near the front of the queue for the boat ride and the member of staff tells a customer ‘the new animatronics are a bit hit and miss, sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t’. Great. Should have kept the old ones, they lasted years.

Such a shame - have been visiting here every year since I was a child and Watermouth Castle has lost so much of its magic and charm. A commercial, money grabbing venture now. No different to any other in the...

We went on a Tuesday during summer holidays, arrived around 11am and there was no queue to get in which was great.

Pros: Family friendly Worth going to if you're in the area 5yr old loved it Plenty of play areas for kids

Cons: Few rides are dependent on it not raining, unfortunately it rained during our visit so those were closed by the time we got to them. If you're there to see a lot of the castle, you won't, you walk through it looking at the bits from 100+ years ago but no real castle aspects to be seen. Food was mediocre at best, waffle fries were nice enough, waitress took my order then failed to actually order one half of it so when it came time to collect the food it was missing and had to queue back to reorder. Third time it had happened today so the cook shouted to the front staff. Hotdog was a cheap hotdog you'd find from a jar or tin, sausage content questionable. My wife ended up with a coffee she didn't want as my 5yr old said coffee when ordering and apparently that was enough for the till staff to put it onto the order. Some of the dungeon parts were a little too scary for some kids, probably those 8 and below. Some teens who were near us were screaming at some of them.

Things to note. If you intend on going, take lots of 10p and 2ps that you might have with you, all the toys and games they have around the place these coins only. There are change machines about, but no cash machines so atleast make sure you have some notes on you. It's very sloped, could be challenging for particular groups. Food at the attractions is much busier than the food at the end of the castle, but serve the same foods. Go to back to the castle for food as it's much much quicker, and with more seating, including indoor seating. If you hate mannequins, you'll be closing your eyes throughout the...