Jayne Dowle: We’d end up eating grass to cut costs at theme park

It is certainly better value for a day out than any over-rated theme park. Recent research on this subject highlighted a truth which parents and grandparents already know. Theme parks are a rip-off.

This latest investigation [by the Sunday Times] found that a day out to Alton Towers for a family of four would cost a whopping £573 if car-parking, two children’s meals, two cheeseburgers, four ice creams and queue jump tickets were included. Presumably, this doesn’t include food for the parents who might end up being reduced to eating grass if my experience of cost-cutting on family days out is anything to go by.

One of my cousins once drove all the way to a theme park in North Yorkshire with his wife and two young grandchildren. When they arrived at their destination, he was so shocked by the entry price that he bundled them all back in the car and drove all the way back to Barnsley again. I know we’re careful with our money in Barnsley, but what sane adult can stand by and watch the bill ratcheting up well into three figures and think that is is a justified expense?

I certainly can’t. Each to their own and that, but I have an instinctive distrust of organised leisure on a grand scale. Never mind being scared of the big rides. I have an anxiety attack as soon as I get in the shop, confronted by a wall of plush animals, candy floss to the left of me, garish plastic gew-gaws to the right. Fun? Entertainment? It’s all designed with one purpose and one purpose only, to relieve people of their cash. Theme parks are nasty, cynical and, ultimately, as empty as a discarded popcorn carton. To me, there is nothing real or authentic about the experience.

This Bank Holiday, I can think of nothing worse than being in Blackpool Pleasure Beach for 10 hours, as a couple of friends and their children were recently. Knowing these friends, I think they stuck it out just to justify the exorbitant cost of the admission tickets. And don’t worry, they had whittled this down as low as possible by an intricate arrangement of voucher collection and headache-making online booking.

I’m sure they will treasure their photos, looking terrified on the Pepsi Max Big One roller coaster, but I’ll treasure my memories of wandering around Sheffield just as much. Give me a day out there any day. This city still holds the same pull for me as it did all those years ago when it only cost two pence on the bus. I’ve visited it for countless reasons, countless times since, but I still have the same thrill as I did on my very first time.

I went with my Dad and I was so young, there were still bomb sites in the city centre. However, there was also an escalator, the very first one I had ever seen. Even to my three-year old eyes, Sheffield represented an intoxicating blend of past and future. And it still does. You only have to step out of the train station to witness this. That amazing wall of water and the cityscape beyond; the poem by Andrew Motion welcoming visitors to the city, and the big white block of a building that was the Fiesta nightclub.

Although I came to love Sheffield as a child, it came to love me as a teenager. It was easy to reach, it had shops smelling of incense, selling clothes you couldn’t get on Barnsley market, and most importantly, it had entertainment. Ice-skating, pantomimes, and later bands at the City Hall and the university, the Leadmill and the Limit nightclubs, drew me like a moth to a flame. That was 30 years ago though. I don’t want to sound as if mine, or Sheffield’s, best days are behind us.

As the response to the Trip Advisor survey proved, Sheffield’s best days are just beginning. The new market is a triumph to this seasoned shopper, the theatres and restaurants can compete with any in the North and beyond. And just as I was introduced to it at a young age, I’m encouraging my children to embrace its charms. My son’s favourite activity is to visit Millhouses Park with his scooter and spend the day pitting his best moves against Sheffield’s finest. My daughter loves the Millennium Galleries, where she just likes to wander round looking at the art. I want them both to grow up understanding the geography of the place, to know its streets and its secret corners. I want them to respect its industrial past and be part of its future, maybe even study at one of the city’s two universities. Now, you can’t say that about Alton Towers, can you?