Lollibop Festival

[vanessa520]

Little bird website has tickets for lollibop fest with 4 pounds of at the mo for fri and sun only. 18 pound each, ive saved 10 for me and my daugher!! The deal ends just before midnight. Im so happy i got this price saving 10 pound helps so much. Hope it helps you guys to!!! vanessa x

[????'s Mrs]

Just wondered what people thought of Lollibop?

Personally, I felt it was badly organised. Everything had exceptionally long queues which meant we didn't actually use much of the advertised stuff like face painting, etc. We queued for ages to see Charlie and Lola only to arrive at the front and be informed the 600 capacity was full - they must have known how many tickets were being sold, so why they hired a tent with capacity for only 600 is beyond me. Considering its the "big bash for LITTLE PEOPLE" I think they should have devised a better system for the waits, such as issuing tickets and telling you a time to return or (even better hiring more of everything). No toddler wants to queue for 30-40 mins per ride/etc. I won't be returning next year.

[ludoscotts]

thanks for posting this, was wondering about this. We couldnt go this year as we had family visiting but was going to consider it for next year. It seemed like a lot of money ?80 for the 4 of us but if it wasnt a great day might give it a miss.

[Fidgetsmum]

We enjoyed it a lot even though we didn't get to see CHarlie and Lola, for the same reasons as above - they hadn't got the capacity right - and we disappointed with that. We got Fidget's face painted in a stall selling fairy things (tutus, wings etc) - no queue and looked better than most of the face paints we saw there. We saw Rastamouse, Zingzillas and Cerrie from CBeebies on the stage, as well as Peppa Pig and my daughter was overcome with excitement. The food (we had the pizza from a proper stone pizza oven) was absolutely delicious. The tent you could change your baby's nappy in had a separate tent for breastfeeding with comfy bean bags and fantastic service by the lady manning it - she helped a mum who had a two week old baby with her bags, got her some hand sanitizer, got her a bottle of water and found a pillow for her without her even asking. All the nappies, wipes etc were free. And I really liked the random 'acts' you saw wandering around (massive inflatable lobster, the mechanical horse and the blokes on those springy stilt things jumping around dressed vaguely convincingly as kangaroos). We're looking forward to the story tents next year (Fidget a bit too young this year) as when we looked in, the kids were totally engrossed in the storyteller.

To be honest, I think it'll get better and better year on year. It wasn't perfect (a shame not to get into Charlie and Lola etc) but we liked the smaller outfits doing their thing rather than the big name stuff and felt it was just worth the money. I wouldn't have wanted to pay more.

We will be going next year. Hope that helps get another side to the story.

[Fudge]

my daughter who is 3.5 years old went with her Granny. They had a lovely day by all accounts except they did mention the long queues! Granny did say that the queues werent too much of a problem if there had been with another adult with them as then one person could have queued whilst the others explored.

[AliM]

We went this year and won't be going back! Our experience with 2 kids who had just turned 3 was that it was far too busy and not geared up for the smaller kids. There were a lot of activities that they'd really have loved to do, like trampolining and face painting, but I think it's unreasonable to expect pre-schoolers to wait in line for upwards of 30 mins. Things that were specifically for the younger ones, like Peppa Pig, were unbelievably busy and that meant they couldn't see properly or were pushed out of the way in the general scrum. At one point I thought they were about to be squashed against the barriers and I had to move them away. And don't get me started on the price of the food, drink and other stuff once we got in! A small bottle of water was ?4, a balloon was ?5, and imagine having to wait 25 mins for a cup of tea for ?3.50.

[Fidgetsmum]

AliM - you're right about the price of the food. We took a packed lunch and just had the pizza for tea to keep the costs down.

I think one of the ways we got to see more (and perhaps I should mention Fidget is only 3.5yrs) is I followed Lollibop on Facebook and Twitter leading up to the festival and looked up all the comments from people who'd been the day before us, so I guess we were pre-warned a bit as to what was likely to be possible and where we should limit out expectations.

Still, one shouldn't have to do that to have a nice time somewhere if you're paying ?20 a ticket - I agree.

[budur]

i wrote a long message and lost it! can't be bothered writing it again, but it was ABSOLUTELY DREADFUL, too many people and not enough things to entertain them, massive waste of money. for some of our friends it took 2 h to queue for some events and for food too!

[TheMontes99]

Don't get disappointed Budur, you can't regreat everything you enjoy doing, smile for everything you do

perhaps if you concentrate more tomorrow night when the stars are out, you will be surprise the history line

that writting about anything wasn't dreadful but was worht it. XX