The Golden Carousel — Local services in London

Had an appalling experience relating to child safety/disability discrimination. Walked past and there was no queue, went up to pay for my children 9 & 3 to join. The carousel is obviously not safe for a 3yo to be on unattended. The man at the ticket desk was extremely combatative and obnoxious, and tried to charge me for the ticket to get on the carousel to safeguard my 3yo. I said no way he needs supervision. He is also disabled and I said there is no scenario in which I’m paying you so my child doesn’t get injured. The man was extremely hostile and the idea of having a nice quick family experience on the carousel had already been completely eroded by this man’s disgusting conduct towards me. My children were distressed. The man demanded a photo ID card from me to validate the disability. This is not lawful. I left the carousel in tears with my eldest son comforting me. I have reported this to the Southbank Centre who were amazing and are dealing with it, but I would also hope the local council remove the license for this business to operate as it’s clearly unsafe and non compliant with the...

Fun! There's not much clarity online about general policies so: it's a 120m height minimum for riding a horse unaccompanied, an elevation far beyond both our small 7-year-old and her 5-year-old brother. However in practice, this basically boiled down to me having to ride with them on an outside horse (with their 3 year old sister) and the kids side by side on the second and third horses in the row. Meant paying for an extra ticket but this seemed to me like a good way to avoid the indignity (!!) of riding as a family in one of the little carriages, and staff were helpful in outlining the options. I would say that the carousel itself is a bit faster and higher than others I've sent the kids on solo, so I can see why you might not be comfortable with a younger child riding on the outside row, though obviously the height restriction is a bit of a blunt...

A very beautiful, picturesque carousel just a short walk away from the London Eye. 🎡🎠 It goes moderately fast from what I remember. The carousel is a perfect ride for all ages and I'd definitely recommend a simple casual visit to this sweet spot. However, the drawbacks are that whenever the carousel is spinning, it makes an unusual loud noise that is annoying to the ears. Also, I wouldn't recommmend this carousel for fans of traditional fairground music as the band organ on the centre pole wasn't seeming to be playing any music. 🔈 That organ was something which I was really looking forward to, so I was somewhat disappointed by the fact. 🙁 I gave 4 stars in this review because the carousel ride itself is a wonderful experience but the presence of the strange noise and the lack of authentic band organ music removes 1 star...