Matt N
CF Legend
24th-28th June 2024: Subtropical Swimming Paradise at Center Parcs Longleat Forest
Hi guys. I’m coming towards the end of a Monday to Friday break at Center Parcs Longleat Forest, near Warminster in Wiltshire, with my mum and my grandparents. I grew up visiting Center Parcs Longleat Forest, with my first ever visit being when I was around 2 and us taking family holidays there most years until I was about 16, but this has actually been our first time at Center Parcs since 2019, so it’s been our longest hiatus from Center Parcs by some margin. And we’ve had a great time!
A key component of our holiday has been the Subtropical Swimming Paradise, Center Parcs’ indoor waterpark offering. I know it’s not a theme park, but as waterparks are sort of “theme park adjacent”, if you like, I thought that some might be interested to hear some thoughts on Center Parcs’ indoor waterpark and the attractions it has to offer. I’ve had 3 waterpark sessions of roughly 1-2 hours in length during my holiday (one on Tuesday, one yesterday, and one today). I’m not going to do a proper day-by-day, blow-by-blow trip report of each session I spent in the waterpark like I would on a theme park trip, as it isn’t a theme park or even a particularly “major” waterpark after all, but I’ll discuss the attractions on offer and give a few general summarising thoughts on the Subtropical Swimming Paradise at Center Parcs Longleat Forest.
Let me start with some of the key attractions…
Attractions
Wild Water Rapids
The Rapids are an absolute staple of a trip to Center Parcs, and this trip was no exception! They’re a hard attraction to describe, being kind of like a faster-flowing lazy river with some whirlpools and concrete drops in there, but they’re great fun, and possibly one of my favourite ever waterpark attractions! I initially felt that the Rapids felt a little bit slower than I’d remembered from previous Center Parcs visits, and they definitely require a good bit of physical exertion, but nonetheless, they were still so much fun!
Half the fun of the Rapids comes from their unpredictability, in my view. Every ride is a lottery! Will you get caught in a slip stream? Will you get stuck in a whirlpool and be sent whizzing back round a good few times before you can get out? Will you get stuck in a jet? Will you fall down some of the drops backwards or sideways despite them theoretically being designed to be ridden feet first? The variation is so fun, and makes the Rapids ridiculously rerideable for me; I racked up 17 laps in total across the course of our 3 waterpark sessions! I wouldn’t mind betting that these are quite possibly my most ridden attraction of all time; when you consider that I’ve only had 31 all-time laps on my most ridden coaster and I racked up 17 Rapids laps in this Center Parcs holiday alone, I think it’s certainly very possible!
Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t at all dignified. Any semblance of dignity quickly goes out the window as you heave yourself over drops, get inadvertently dragged along the river and down drops and inadvertently rear end some poor unsuspecting person who’s stuck in a jet, and get stuck in a jet or whirlpool yourself and get inadvertently rear-ended by someone caught in a slip stream or getting dragged over a drop, so you might as well just embrace the chaos! It’s that raw chaos that makes the Rapids so much fun and an absolute staple of the Subtropical Swimming Paradise for me; they’re definitely my personal favourite attraction on offer in the waterpark!
Tropical Cyclone
Tropical Cyclone is the largest water slide on offer in the waterpark, and it’s a ProSlide Tornado-style attraction (although apparently not an actual ProSlide Tornado) with 4-person clover leaf rafts and a large enclosed funnel. Unlike the Rapids, this is a slightly more “typical” water slide.
I remember this attraction, along with Typhoon which I’ll mention next, opening back in 2017, and I’ve actually only done it a handful of times. I got 2 rides in on it during my waterpark visits, and I think it’s a pretty impressive slide! You gain really good speed during that signature funnel element, and there are also some interesting forces on offer during this! There’s not a lot else to it aside from this signature element, so it is a bit of a one-trick pony, but similarly to coasters like Stealth and Oblivion, I think the funnel alone is good enough to carry it and make it a really impressive slide! With that being said, I do not find Tropical Cyclone, or any of the waterslides for that matter, quite as infectiously rerideable as the Rapids.
Another interesting aspect of Tropical Cyclone to mention is that you can pick a “theme” for your ride. There are four on offer, and each one results in a different visual projection on the walls of the funnel. I’m sceptical of how much you really notice this during the ride, but it’s a nice touch!
Typhoon
Typhoon was added as part of the same 2017 expansion as Tropical Cyclone, and it’s another funnel slide. Typhoon, however, is a tube slide with two smaller enclosed funnels as opposed to the one larger one like on Tropical Cyclone as well as some slightly more fleshed out helixes.
I got 1 ride on Typhoon during my waterpark sessions, and I found it to be good fun. The ride picks up surprising speed during its helixes, the ride feels a bit more fleshed out, and the funnels themselves pack surprising forces given their size! Like on Tropical Cyclone, you can pick a “theme” for your ride; there are more on offer on here, although the difference is less notable than on Tropical Cyclone, with the theme only really manifesting as a slightly different lighting colour.
One thing I would say about Typhoon is that I did find it tiring due to having to lug the tube all the way up numerous flights of stairs. It would have been nice to have the tube carried up there for you like the raft on Tropical Cyclone is, although that is quite a pedantic suggestion on my part and I’m unsure of the practicality of that.
Water Pistes
The water pistes are two speed body slides with a relatively simple one-drop layout. One water piste consists of a simple straight drop, while the other consists of a double down.
I took numerous rides on both water pistes during my waterpark sessions, and I have to say that I find them great fun! You gain really good speed on the downhill descent, so by the time you’re at the bottom, you hit the landing pool with quite some speed! On the double-down water piste in particular, I somehow often found myself spinning a little on landing and finding myself facing the opposite direction afterwards, which I can’t really explain given that I was always sat facing forwards going down the slide itself!
Because of the way the waterpark is designed, the water pistes bridge the two “levels” of the waterpark; the upper level with the green body slides, the outdoor pool and the Rapids, and the lower level with the wave pool, lazy river and newer raft slides. They quite often have little to no queue, so I often found myself riding a water piste between levels instead of walking, which I found very cool! Why walk between levels when you can piste between them instead? It saves walking and is a lot more fun!
Other Attractions
In terms of some other attractions, the waterpark firstly has a wave pool with waves running at semi-regular intervals; a very loud Tarzan cry erupts across the whole waterpark to signal the start of the waves, so they’re hard to miss! The waves are quite gentle, but they’re good fun nonetheless. There’s also a small lazy river next to this, with a surprisingly fast current; my grandad, not a fan of thrills, referred to this as “dangerous” and said the current was a bit much for him! The current is not exactly Rapids-level intense, but you can get whipped along to a surprising degree when it gets going!
There are also two green body slides; a shorter, more open one that we always referred to as “the light slide” as kids, and a longer enclosed one that we always referred to as “the dark slide”. I did not ride either of these during my waterpark sessions, as the queues can be quite long and I’ve often found these to be somewhat sluggish in terms of pacing on previous visits.
There’s also an outdoor pool. The Rapids start from this pool, but it’s also a nice and warm pool to relax in, with some nice water jets and bubbly seats at the far end!
Let’s now discuss some more general summarising thoughts on the waterpark…
General Thoughts
In general, the first thing I’d say about the waterpark is that it’s really nicely themed/landscaped, for the most part. There’s lush greenery through most of the building, and there’s also some very nice rockwork and caves in places; the cave where the water pistes and green body slides exit is a particular highlight in this regard! The one exception to that is the area with the newer raft slides, which is a bit more of a concrete jungle, but even that has the odd bit of nice landscaping here and there.
I’d also say that it has a very nice variety of attractions. The Rapids offer a really fun and unique action river-style experience, Tropical Cyclone and Typhoon tick the raft slide box nicely, the Water Pistes offer a fun, albeit not particularly groundbreaking, way to tick the speed slide box, the green body slides tick the twisty body slide box, and the wave pool and the lazy river offer some other, more relaxing waterpark staples.
Overall, then, I think the Subtropical Swimming Paradise is great fun, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my sessions in there during this Center Parcs holiday! If you’ve never been to Center Parcs, I can imagine that it would be easy to dismiss as simply being “a holiday park swimming pool”, but I think it’s so much more than that and has a deceptively excellent waterpark offering that can fill a couple of hours quite solidly. Yes, it’s hardly a Florida-calibre offering, but as indoor waterparks go, I think it’s a pretty decent one. As a point of comparison, I’d say that it easily trounces something like the Alton Towers Waterpark, from memory; while I admittedly only went to the Alton Towers Waterpark once when I was 6, my vague recollections of it are that it was not nearly as fun as Center Parcs’ offering. I can’t speak for other villages, as I’ve only ever visited Longleat Forest, but Longleat’s offering certainly stacks up pretty well, in my view!
In terms of the rest of our holiday at Center Parcs, it’s been good fun! If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of Center Parcs, it basically consists of staying in a lodge or villa in the forest and doing various different activities. Some particular fun highlights from our holiday include coming 4th out of 31 teams in a quiz, doing tenpin bowling (which I was surprisingly good at on the first go of the holiday, but not so good at on the second), and playing crazy golf! Another really cool thing I saw during our holiday was when we ate out at Bella Italia, and we encountered these really cool robot food delivery systems:
Aren’t these just awesome? I certainly thought so, anyway; I thought they were really clever, and I’ve never seen anything quite like them before!
Thanks for reading; I hope you’ve enjoyed this review! I know it’s not from a theme park, but I hope you still found my musings interesting. We’re checking out of Center Parcs tomorrow and heading for a day out at Longleat Safari Park next door, which we also haven’t visited since 2019, before heading home.
In terms of where my next theme park trip report is likely to be from; there is a strong chance that it could be from Thorpe Park on 21st July, as me and my parents have provisionally pencilled that day in for a first ride on Hyperia after I got spited by it a couple of weeks ago. But if it’s not from there, I’ll definitely be doing one from Alton Towers on 28th July. Keep your eyes peeled, as another theme park trip report is coming soon regardless of where it comes from!
Hi guys. I’m coming towards the end of a Monday to Friday break at Center Parcs Longleat Forest, near Warminster in Wiltshire, with my mum and my grandparents. I grew up visiting Center Parcs Longleat Forest, with my first ever visit being when I was around 2 and us taking family holidays there most years until I was about 16, but this has actually been our first time at Center Parcs since 2019, so it’s been our longest hiatus from Center Parcs by some margin. And we’ve had a great time!
A key component of our holiday has been the Subtropical Swimming Paradise, Center Parcs’ indoor waterpark offering. I know it’s not a theme park, but as waterparks are sort of “theme park adjacent”, if you like, I thought that some might be interested to hear some thoughts on Center Parcs’ indoor waterpark and the attractions it has to offer. I’ve had 3 waterpark sessions of roughly 1-2 hours in length during my holiday (one on Tuesday, one yesterday, and one today). I’m not going to do a proper day-by-day, blow-by-blow trip report of each session I spent in the waterpark like I would on a theme park trip, as it isn’t a theme park or even a particularly “major” waterpark after all, but I’ll discuss the attractions on offer and give a few general summarising thoughts on the Subtropical Swimming Paradise at Center Parcs Longleat Forest.
Let me start with some of the key attractions…
Attractions
Wild Water Rapids
Half the fun of the Rapids comes from their unpredictability, in my view. Every ride is a lottery! Will you get caught in a slip stream? Will you get stuck in a whirlpool and be sent whizzing back round a good few times before you can get out? Will you get stuck in a jet? Will you fall down some of the drops backwards or sideways despite them theoretically being designed to be ridden feet first? The variation is so fun, and makes the Rapids ridiculously rerideable for me; I racked up 17 laps in total across the course of our 3 waterpark sessions! I wouldn’t mind betting that these are quite possibly my most ridden attraction of all time; when you consider that I’ve only had 31 all-time laps on my most ridden coaster and I racked up 17 Rapids laps in this Center Parcs holiday alone, I think it’s certainly very possible!
Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t at all dignified. Any semblance of dignity quickly goes out the window as you heave yourself over drops, get inadvertently dragged along the river and down drops and inadvertently rear end some poor unsuspecting person who’s stuck in a jet, and get stuck in a jet or whirlpool yourself and get inadvertently rear-ended by someone caught in a slip stream or getting dragged over a drop, so you might as well just embrace the chaos! It’s that raw chaos that makes the Rapids so much fun and an absolute staple of the Subtropical Swimming Paradise for me; they’re definitely my personal favourite attraction on offer in the waterpark!
Tropical Cyclone
I remember this attraction, along with Typhoon which I’ll mention next, opening back in 2017, and I’ve actually only done it a handful of times. I got 2 rides in on it during my waterpark visits, and I think it’s a pretty impressive slide! You gain really good speed during that signature funnel element, and there are also some interesting forces on offer during this! There’s not a lot else to it aside from this signature element, so it is a bit of a one-trick pony, but similarly to coasters like Stealth and Oblivion, I think the funnel alone is good enough to carry it and make it a really impressive slide! With that being said, I do not find Tropical Cyclone, or any of the waterslides for that matter, quite as infectiously rerideable as the Rapids.
Another interesting aspect of Tropical Cyclone to mention is that you can pick a “theme” for your ride. There are four on offer, and each one results in a different visual projection on the walls of the funnel. I’m sceptical of how much you really notice this during the ride, but it’s a nice touch!
Typhoon
I got 1 ride on Typhoon during my waterpark sessions, and I found it to be good fun. The ride picks up surprising speed during its helixes, the ride feels a bit more fleshed out, and the funnels themselves pack surprising forces given their size! Like on Tropical Cyclone, you can pick a “theme” for your ride; there are more on offer on here, although the difference is less notable than on Tropical Cyclone, with the theme only really manifesting as a slightly different lighting colour.
One thing I would say about Typhoon is that I did find it tiring due to having to lug the tube all the way up numerous flights of stairs. It would have been nice to have the tube carried up there for you like the raft on Tropical Cyclone is, although that is quite a pedantic suggestion on my part and I’m unsure of the practicality of that.
Water Pistes
I took numerous rides on both water pistes during my waterpark sessions, and I have to say that I find them great fun! You gain really good speed on the downhill descent, so by the time you’re at the bottom, you hit the landing pool with quite some speed! On the double-down water piste in particular, I somehow often found myself spinning a little on landing and finding myself facing the opposite direction afterwards, which I can’t really explain given that I was always sat facing forwards going down the slide itself!
Because of the way the waterpark is designed, the water pistes bridge the two “levels” of the waterpark; the upper level with the green body slides, the outdoor pool and the Rapids, and the lower level with the wave pool, lazy river and newer raft slides. They quite often have little to no queue, so I often found myself riding a water piste between levels instead of walking, which I found very cool! Why walk between levels when you can piste between them instead? It saves walking and is a lot more fun!
Other Attractions
In terms of some other attractions, the waterpark firstly has a wave pool with waves running at semi-regular intervals; a very loud Tarzan cry erupts across the whole waterpark to signal the start of the waves, so they’re hard to miss! The waves are quite gentle, but they’re good fun nonetheless. There’s also a small lazy river next to this, with a surprisingly fast current; my grandad, not a fan of thrills, referred to this as “dangerous” and said the current was a bit much for him! The current is not exactly Rapids-level intense, but you can get whipped along to a surprising degree when it gets going!
There are also two green body slides; a shorter, more open one that we always referred to as “the light slide” as kids, and a longer enclosed one that we always referred to as “the dark slide”. I did not ride either of these during my waterpark sessions, as the queues can be quite long and I’ve often found these to be somewhat sluggish in terms of pacing on previous visits.
There’s also an outdoor pool. The Rapids start from this pool, but it’s also a nice and warm pool to relax in, with some nice water jets and bubbly seats at the far end!
Let’s now discuss some more general summarising thoughts on the waterpark…
General Thoughts
In general, the first thing I’d say about the waterpark is that it’s really nicely themed/landscaped, for the most part. There’s lush greenery through most of the building, and there’s also some very nice rockwork and caves in places; the cave where the water pistes and green body slides exit is a particular highlight in this regard! The one exception to that is the area with the newer raft slides, which is a bit more of a concrete jungle, but even that has the odd bit of nice landscaping here and there.
I’d also say that it has a very nice variety of attractions. The Rapids offer a really fun and unique action river-style experience, Tropical Cyclone and Typhoon tick the raft slide box nicely, the Water Pistes offer a fun, albeit not particularly groundbreaking, way to tick the speed slide box, the green body slides tick the twisty body slide box, and the wave pool and the lazy river offer some other, more relaxing waterpark staples.
Overall, then, I think the Subtropical Swimming Paradise is great fun, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my sessions in there during this Center Parcs holiday! If you’ve never been to Center Parcs, I can imagine that it would be easy to dismiss as simply being “a holiday park swimming pool”, but I think it’s so much more than that and has a deceptively excellent waterpark offering that can fill a couple of hours quite solidly. Yes, it’s hardly a Florida-calibre offering, but as indoor waterparks go, I think it’s a pretty decent one. As a point of comparison, I’d say that it easily trounces something like the Alton Towers Waterpark, from memory; while I admittedly only went to the Alton Towers Waterpark once when I was 6, my vague recollections of it are that it was not nearly as fun as Center Parcs’ offering. I can’t speak for other villages, as I’ve only ever visited Longleat Forest, but Longleat’s offering certainly stacks up pretty well, in my view!
In terms of the rest of our holiday at Center Parcs, it’s been good fun! If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of Center Parcs, it basically consists of staying in a lodge or villa in the forest and doing various different activities. Some particular fun highlights from our holiday include coming 4th out of 31 teams in a quiz, doing tenpin bowling (which I was surprisingly good at on the first go of the holiday, but not so good at on the second), and playing crazy golf! Another really cool thing I saw during our holiday was when we ate out at Bella Italia, and we encountered these really cool robot food delivery systems:
Aren’t these just awesome? I certainly thought so, anyway; I thought they were really clever, and I’ve never seen anything quite like them before!
Thanks for reading; I hope you’ve enjoyed this review! I know it’s not from a theme park, but I hope you still found my musings interesting. We’re checking out of Center Parcs tomorrow and heading for a day out at Longleat Safari Park next door, which we also haven’t visited since 2019, before heading home.
In terms of where my next theme park trip report is likely to be from; there is a strong chance that it could be from Thorpe Park on 21st July, as me and my parents have provisionally pencilled that day in for a first ride on Hyperia after I got spited by it a couple of weeks ago. But if it’s not from there, I’ll definitely be doing one from Alton Towers on 28th July. Keep your eyes peeled, as another theme park trip report is coming soon regardless of where it comes from!