Drayton Manor War of the Worlds Fireworks

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During the past 12 months, we have been regular visitors to Drayton Manor. The girls are always excited to go, but Libby has been looking forward to their fireworks display for months. It is safe to say that she wasn’t disappointed, they were spectacular!

We arrived at around 3.30 pm and headed straight for Thomas Land. The queues for the rides were longer than normal because the park was quite busy. That said, I’ve never found the queues to be unreasonably long there even at the busiest of times and we managed to go on a good few rides both in Thomas Land and in the rest of the park.

The park was decked out for Halloween with some lovely displays both around the park and on some of the rides themselves, such as the Sodor Classic Cars in Thomas Land. There were also additional stalls and catering set up for the event.

The fireworks themselves started at 8 pm and lasted a good 25 to 30 minutes. Not only were there constant fireworks during that time, there were water fountains, lights and lazer displays going on. The whole thing was set to the amazing War of the Worlds musical soundtrack.

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It’s actually really difficult to express how impressive this was. The soundtrack itself is incredibly captivating. The music is moving and emotive and the words draw you into the story. There was a water fountain with moving images on it, stunning lazer lights and incredible, huge fireworks.

We noticed that people were setting themselves up by the lake ready to watch the fireworks at around 6 pm to get a good spot by the lake. With small children, this just wasn’t an option for us, besides which we wanted to enjoy the rides as well.

That said, I would suggest that the people bagging a spot so early on were probably those that had seen it before. We had a reasonable view from where we were but if you have the patience (and no small children) it would be well worth instilling yourself right next to the lake.

The display started at 8 pm last night and I was really impressed with how well both girls coped with such a late night. There was enough to do to prevent tired toddler tantrums. It will be repeated today (Saturday) and tomorrow (Sunday) and the displays start at 7 pm on both days, which is a slightly better time for very small people.

The rides stayed open until 9 pm and after the fireworks, we all headed to Thomas Land where there were no queues at all. This was a great way to let the throng of people heading to the car park disappear and we just meandered out in our own time when we were ready.

The park had the forethought to set up traffic lights on the main road so leaving the park was relatively pain free despite the large numbers of people doing so at the same time.

If you are looking for an amazing fireworks display this year, I would highly recommend Drayton Manor. You can find out full details and book tickets on their website here: http://draytonmanor.co.uk/events/fireworks-spectacular

The event is only on for three nights, the last one is on Sunday.

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