Coral Reef Waterworld!
My Dad lives in Berkshire and I remember years ago going to Coral Reef with my then little brothers but it’s been years and years since we were able to visit. There’s no really great flume pools near us in Norfolk however, so it’s always been on my radar as we love to swim and it feels like a real gap in the market where we live. We used to have a wave machine pool with one flume in Sheringham but that closed down, and we also had the Aqua Park in Norwich when I was growing up which was kind of better than nothing with two fairly decent flumes and a lacklustre lazy river however, that too closed down and what we’re left with in the vicinity is not a lot. We have Marina in Great Yarmouth which despite re-opening recently after a massive glow up, it’s not really all that wowing. Better than nothing of course but with just a couple of tame flumes the pool is just a pool and the only really exciting part is the splash pad which past the age of 10 I can’t see being much of a draw. Venture further afield to Thetford and there’s a tremendously tired pool with one slide and (I think) a wave machine but again, it’s nothing to write home about.
Realistically, to get any kind of brilliant pool fun you need to book a Center Parcs trip (pricey) or go to Seashore Haven who do have a pretty fun pool and are probably worth the weekend away price for a couple of swimming sessions alone but boy do we miss something big and fun. I’ve had it on my radar to book Coral Reef when we are going to be close by for a while now and this half term was the time to strike as we had Legoland booked for the Monday and nothing to do on Tuesday while we needed to be over that way for a job on Wednesday. Beautiful, it fitted perfectly!
It was quite pricy I’m not going to lie and I really, really wasn’t convinced that the best part of £60 was going to be worth the one hour and a half time slot swim it bought us as a family of 4 (Posie and Raffie – cough cough on the latter – fitted into the under 5s section with a nominal fee) so that was and extra £1.10 each and it felt like a very expensive swim indeed. This was school holidays and the time slot isn’t active in the same way at all times so perhaps if we’d been given free reign on being there as long as we liked then it would have felt better. However, we gulped it down and off we went.
I couldn’t take any pictures as this was a public session with no photography. Shame, it always feels like such a shame when places do this to me because it’s not like I want (or get) other people in my pictures however, I guess it’s too hard for them to police and also they had a photographer of their own going around so that would be a money spinner spanner in the works. So, to give you an idea of what 5 big flumes (three of which Raffie could go on sitting on a lap and one Posie would have been able top had she been so inclined – she was not), a central pirate ship with cannons to fire water from and a little slide down into a toddler area which has shallow water, things to play with and a couple of other little slides, a high up area with a splash pad and a volcano which erupts every so often around a lazy river (sounds great eh?!) looks like, take a look at their promo video here: Coral Reef Waterworld | Bracknell’s Water World | Swim, Slides & Spa (everyoneactive.com) You can book there too and I’d say for busier times it would be advisable as it was pretty chocca block when we went!
Was it worth it or were my initial reservations about the cost founded? Well, we loved it! Truly we did. They had it running pretty smoothly with the timed sessions coming in and going out very well indeed. The slides had a 20 minute wait for the two big ones and the others were around 7-8 minutes so while you’d not want to queue too many times for the biggies on an hour and a half session, the others were pretty good and we all had smiling, happy faces throughout and afterwards. I’d say they could let a few less people in to make that long queuing time a little more inviting or perhaps give everyone two fast track tokens to ride them twice each and then queue again separately if they wanted to go again. Just an observation but overall it’s pretty darn good and I’d pay the money again!
Thumbs up Coral Reef Waterworld, thumbs up!
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