Samsung kindly sent us a Galaxy K Zoom smartphone to try out, along with a family ticket to Chessington World of Adventures, so that we could have a day out to test the 10x zoom camera on the phone. We invited my sister & her family to join us for a proper family day out, with two three year olds between us to enjoy the rides together.
Izzy & Georgie were delighted to see each other, and Lydia enjoyed lots of Auntie Jennie cuddles too. It was a long day, but enjoyable. We visited on the bank holiday weekend and queues were not as bad as they could be, but pretty bad… the longest wait was for the kid’s roller coaster, with a one hour wait to ride.
It took us a couple of hours to reach the theme park, and we were pleased how short the walk was from car park to entrance – useful if you want to leave stuff in the car and nip out to get it later when needed; spare clothes, etc. The entrance gate was efficient and we had no problems at all with presenting our pre booked web tickets, along with the Tesco Clubcard voucher tickets we had purchased for my sister & brother-in-law. Children’s tickets are done by height rather than age, so children shorter than 0.9m get in for free. I think that this makes a lot of sense with theme parks when so much of the fun you can get out is directly related to what you will be ride on, and therefore to your height.
Our first ride was the pirate ship, which Georgie whimpered whilst riding but declared it to be great as soon as she was back on firm ground! We walked around the park, going on rides suitable for the children as we made our way through the various areas. The Bubbleworks indoor boat ride was next up, and a big hit with everyone, squirting us with water and filled with ducks and buckets of fun.
(click photos to view bigger)
The Tiny Truckers queue was too long & slow moving for my sister’s patience so that ride was abandoned in favour for the Carousel, and following that the Seastorm ride, before heading to the area outside the Sea Life Centre to say hello to the penguins and meet the Octonauts.
We ate lunch at the Adventurer’s Chicken Shack, and it was very tasty. The service was ok but there was a mysterious lack of forks – every table seemed to be lacking in them, with longer queues for clean forks than for ordering the food. The toilet facilities throughout the park seemed a little too sparse, with long queues creating several niggles in our day.
Unfortunately the Safari Skyway wasn’t working which was a shame, as Georgie in particular would have loved to have a go.
After lunch we headed to the Amazu Treetop Adventure for the girls to run off some steam in the climbing area and to meet the gorgeous monkeys. Up next was the “big* rollercoaster” for the two overexcited three year olds and their Daddies, whilst I walked Lydia around in the pushchair to encourage a much needed nap.
*big to a three year old, at least. Little to the rest of us.
While I was pushing Lydia around so she would drift off, I set off in hunt of a fridge magnet to buy; our traditional souvenir for everywhere we go.
I did have a bit of an uncomfortable incident at this point in the day, that I thought I would share for fairness sake, as it upset me. I went to buy Georgie a hoody, on a shelf marked clearly as discounted. The “before price” on the shelf label matched the ticket price on the hoody and there was a whole stack of them on the shelf, so I took it over to the till thinking it was a nice little bargain that my little girl would love.
When it came up at the full price I explained that it was clearly labelled as being on sale, thinking that it just wasn’t in the system correctly, but after some discussion with the supervisor, they told me they wouldn’t honour the price on the shelf and wouldn’t be giving me the discount. I left the hoody in the shop as it was far too expensive full price, and was going to take a photo of the shelf for this post before leaving the shop. As the staff were crowding around the shelf moving the hoodies around I decided it wasn’t worth taking, and so I left the shop and walked away with my sister.
Security guards came trotting out of the shop and after us, stopping us from walking away and asking to look at the photos on my phone to see what I had taken. I thought the whole situation was handled badly with quite rude staff in the shop and a frankly humiliating ending; being chased across one of the busiest areas of the park by security, as if we had been shoplifting or similar. It was very badly done, I felt. It wouldn’t have been so bad just to honour the price and then immediately correct the display mistake, rather than refuse to sell me the top at the price it was displayed at, and then chase me down across the courtyard.
After the girls finished on the roller coaster we split up for a while, so Izzy could check out the Sea Life Centre with her parents, while James and I took the girls around the animal packed Trail of the Kings in the Zoo, and then on a whole variety of rides in quick succession. Lydia and I caught a bit of the Madagascar Live! show which she really enjoyed, clapping and bouncing along to the music.
The others caught up with us for a last few rides before the park closed, and it was time to head off to find some food and go home for a much needed sleep!
We had a great day overall, despite the blip in the shop, and I have loads of photos and a fab video to remember our day by. I was quite pleased with the phone cameras performance outdoors, with crisp photos. The zoom lens is slightly annoying at times – as it pops out as soon as you turn on the camera, taking photos subtly with this smartphone isn’t on the cards, which is a slight pain with the kids at times. It’s an attractive smartphone, with a speedy processor making it powerful and nippy to use.
Indoors, the camera didn’t perform as well as I would have hoped, although the flash is bright and does help. The videos I took are really nice, apart from a tiny bit of juddering when zooming. The camera refocuses really quickly both during filming & when photographing still shots too.
I’m not a huge Android fan but I could see this phone appealing to someone who wants a great Android camera & smartphone combo. I think the camera is about the same quality as a compact digital camera, and better than all other Android smartphone cameras I’ve had experience with. The optical zoom really sets it apart from the competition.
I did have some problems with capacity and I wished I had put in a microSD card in which would have saved me the hassle; as it was I had to delete the worst photos as the day went on. We were testing an 8GB model which is less storage space than I am used to, so I was being a bit trigger happy with the camera without thinking about it! The screen is really crisp and clear, with decent visibility outside in the sunshine.
I had a bit of a niggling problem pressing the back button with my thumb while filming & taking photos, but I think I would stop doing that if I was more used to the phone, so it was more a case of user error rather than poor design. The screen is a little big for my dinky hands, but James could use it with no problem so again that’s more of an issue with me preferring smaller phone sizes in general. At the end of the day I would certainly recommend the Galaxy K Zoom to anyone who was after an Android phone to replace both their smartphone & digital camera.
Thank you to Samsung for the gift of the smartphone & Chessington tickets, we had a great family day out! #100daysoffamily
Oh wow! What a great day out apart from the issue in the gift shop! How rude of them!!
Chessington is a bit far for us but it looks like a great family day out although the gift shop incident is concerning! I’d love to see you link up at #WHWH
What a great day out, apart from the shop incident (I agree that was handled badly), and the camera phone does look a really handy item for days out. Thanks for linking up with #TriedTested
What a great day out! I like the look of the phone, it takes great photo’s x
It’s a shame as for me the experience in the gift shop would really put me off that place. We had a carrier bag with a toy in stolen at Legoland, and even though it was no fault of the park, they replaced the item for my niece. It makes such a difference when they have good customer service.
#Tried/Tested
What a hoo ha in the shop! How ridiculous.
I think the zoom thing would annoy me too!
Thanks for linking up with #TriedTested this week x
It looks like you had a fantastic time, I haven’t been to CWOA since I was a child! x
OH WOW firstly this looks a fantastic day but secondly, my phone is breaking and in really bad blogger style I don’t have a fancy camera or much equipment etc so this really does look fantastic!!! xxx