Wollaton Hall and Park

Went to the Titus exhibition on the 5th July and if you don't own a smart phone/iPhone you cannot pay for the car park. If you are elderly and don't own a phone then you have to walk up to the shop and pay but then have to walk back to put a sign in your car window, then walk back again. Most people without smart phones are elderly and cannot walk too far so all this walking backwards and forwards is very tiring. There are no notices on the machines telling you where to pay!! Then if you want something to eat there is nowhere to sit and eat it, so the elderly then suffer again by having no where to sit!! There are lots of steps and slopes so don't recommend it for people with mobility problems. The exhibition itself isn't as good as the chinese dinosaur exhibition, its a very small exhibition and not much of the original animal is there, so you are paying basically to see a replica T.Rex! We love museums and fossils but wouldn't recommend visiting this one, better off visiting the Natural History Museum or the Cardiff Museum which is brilliant.

Put some of the vast amount of money made parking in a disgusting dusty pot holed car park back into making into how it was thirty-five years ago!! Nice swing park and good fishing.. All paths and fencing was kept nice & neat. Also a cafetiere with decent prices. Now we have none of this. The gates have been made by a blind carpenter and a disgrace. The pathways are eroded away & no surprise somebody was stuck in a bog a couple of month ago. All the fencing is broken down even in the deer areas. Green algi filled Lake in the summer that is a quagmire in the winter around the path. Toilets are a disgrace!! 6 weeks ago we had a gathering and went to the toilet and even though charging full price for parking there was not a single toilet open ne it by the house or by the playpark.. 7 toilets closed!! Yesterday being Bank Holiday Saturday we had a meeting at 13.00 and very busy with jungle book on so would imagine the cushy staff being very busy!!! No not at all just pottering around on there little truck telling people to move so they could rob people for parking yet again on the grass. 14.30 there were 5 toilets open by the play park but by 5 pm every toilet was shut but a disability toilet so people were in the bushes and mums with kids doing the same but guess what still charging full parking price!! shame on the typical greedy council!! Go to Derby marketon Park that has cafetiere nice parking clean and well run and puts the money back into the park not into some numtys pocket.!°°°

Me and my family went to Wollaston Hall for the "Christmas lights", first I would like to say. It looked nothing like was shown on the adverts or when the news channel's were there! Very expensive for what it really is and the £3 parking is abit of a joke this should have been included in the price of the tickets. Stupid staff at the parking area waving their green light's only to come back around them again and them laughing at you only to show you the same route as the first. With there being a pandemic going on.. You are so crammed in with lot's of people who also think it's OK not to wear face masks even with all the signs saying to do so, and useless "Showtec Security" covering the event not asking or informing people to please wear your face covering. You follow a little path like cattle and you always get backed up because stupid people want to take a photo of a light bulb. How this place has been allowed to run like this, is beyond me. For the price you pay for the tickets and being rammed in like cattle I would say, stay away and don't waste your money or health. Way over priced.

Parking is diabolical You can only use a card or phone neither of which is easy Took 10 mins trying to work out what to do then gave up and walked to the cafe where there was a queue to pay for a parking ticket The counter assistant said that they had hardly sold any food as all customers wanted was a ticket. Not everyone can or will pay with a phone. 20 minutes out of a 2 hour slot to get a ticket
Then went to the fair in the grounds for another rip off £10 spent for grandkids in about 20 minutes and the crazy golf was pathetic
Another sorry mess by Notts City Council

I feel I’m going to have to echo many of the comments already made. Let’s be fair, the lights are fine, probably won’t blow you away, you may well have seen better, but it’s okay and there are some nice ideas. The real problem is the price, parking, and utter lack of any awareness that there is a pandemic. Let’s start with the price. It’s expensive for what it is and probably should be about half. The parking is interesting. We nearly got directed all the way from the entrance to the exit by the numpties waving their red and green sticks around. Did find a nice bit of mud to park in but for the parking charge they could at least provide a tow out and pressure wash at the exit. It’s not exactly thought through. Finally and probably the most critical part of this review social distancing. Well, I guess they are short of cash because it has been massively oversold. Be prepared to risk a nice two week COVID holiday after being herded along the route with the other cattle. It’s not socially distanced, and the staff have no intention of even pretending to follow COVID regulations, it should probably be shut down.

Wollaton Hall is a typical museum with a children's play area and a fairground a few hundred yards away from the Hall.
Currently, the key attraction is the T Rex and its history but the rest of the offering is stuffed birds and animals.
There is a lack of signage to be able to find anything but, having been there previously, we had some idea of where things are.
The main criticism is the lack of adequate management of the parking arrangements. There is plenty of it but all the pay machines have been taken out of action and payment, £5, can only be made by walking to a shop which is away from most of the car park or by telephone.
The play area was fine, quite a lot of equipment for all ages but the fair is expensive and there was a certain amount of queueing to access a ride.
Signage to find the Hall was scarce and, at the turning off the ring road coming from the north, there was none.
The management of the Hall could do better.

THANK YOU. This year I lost my Gran to covid, had a baby, lost my 16 year old terror and my business is shut. I have been coming to Wollaton hall for 40 years, my whole life. To see it looking so, so beautiful was just amazing and mesmerising. I felt like I was walking through a dream and my 8 month old daughter absolutely loved it. I spoke to a Marshall who said it took 3 weeks to get all the lights up. If you want to look at the lights it's not expensive, if you want food it adds up so eat before or bring a flask.

Booked to take my 4yr old on new years eve as thought it would be a nice kid bedtime friendly alternative to new year fireworks.

Easy to book and was pleased there was a booking system with limited tickets per slot. However, we did the first non vip slot and the car park was already really busy on arrival and when we came out, it was chaos on the parking front with cars parked all along the entrance and exit roads. In my opinion, it was overly busy inside the event too which made it difficult to maintain social distancing. There were queues at the light tunnel and star walk - about half an hrs queuing in total at these.

It was nice having a couple of hot drink huts along the walk, bit overpriced but always is at these kind of things. I was quite shocked at the cost of marshmallows for toasting though.. £3 for a skewer with 4 std size marshmallows, that's some mark-up! Could have done with a toilet block on the route too.

The lights themselves were really fantastic, congratulations to those responsible, a real triumph. The star walk was especially beautiful and the animation on the hall at the end was magical. We also loved the animals, especially the large deer and also the rainbow light tree.

All in all a lovely way to end the year.

Visited here on a wet and cold January day, this precluded me spending much time in the park area looking for deer, which was a pity. Also the industrial museum which was a major draw to me was closed as well. The house itself is worth visiting, although only one room was displayed in a way you may traditionally expect. The vast bulk of the house is turned over to a very old skool natural history style museum. There’s a big collection from giraffes to insects and fish as well as geological exhibits. I couldn’t say it was organised particularly logically, note there are opportunities for younger visitors to interact and play. The historic glasshouse with its music based on the plants within is also worth a look. Entrance to be fair is gratis, so one shouldn’t be too critical. Worth a visit, I wouldn’t return though unless I could enjoy the industrial museum and the grounds.

As we arrived we were instantly put off by the utter shambles that is the parking. There wasn't enough space for amount of people visiting the event, the carpark was extremely muddy and apart from 1 person with a green light, no one was at all interested in organising the parking. This has to rank as the worst parking that I've ever experienced. This initial feeling of dread worsened as we saw the huge queue of people, but we kept thinking, maybe once we get in it won't feel so cramped and we might have a small amount of space to feel a bit covid safe. However, once we entered it was worse than we feared and social distancing totally went out of the window. It felt totally unsafe and left us wishing that we hadn't wasted out money, on the expensive event.