One of the nicest things about being a blogger, in my opinion, is when you are asked to go on days out or to review things that are a perfect fir for your family so when I got an email asking if I would like to review a new adventure golf centre that had opened we said yes.
Now obviously at this point I'd forgotten that we are all super competitive, that me and the kids have no aim and that I have absolutely no patience at all but I'm sure we'll come to all of that later...... This was taken at the very start when the lovely people behind the desk had registered us and given us our equipment but before the above kicked in:
There are two different 18 hole courses at Paradise Island either Course 1 which is Mermaid Rock or Course 2 which is Shark Bay. Each course has it's own theme but the favourite of the whole KB family was Shark Bay. We started however at Mermaid Rock which is themed as a far eastern bazaar, temples and jungle with some very funky statues thrown in for good measure:
And even a snake charmer hidden away on hole!!
You can just see O lining up to take her shot in the background. We did score this round but we were pretty terrible. I think it took E 22 strokes on one hole and I wasn't far behind him!! (This is about where my patience started to run out!!)
So 19 holes later we grabbed new balls and made our way around to Course 2 - Shark Bay! This was such a lot of fun. The themes on this side were split into four different areas and first up was the shipwreck:
And then unfortunately littlest was eaten by a shark:
J had a fight with an Octopus in the second theme which was under the sea:
I scored a hole in one on this one! Whoop!!!
Then met a shark whilst coming into land in section 3:
Next on theme 4 we hit the plains of Africa and a Cannibal Camp:
Then we were back through the cargo ship and back to hole 19 and the end of our Paradise Island adventure.
Entry can either be by timed booking or by just rocking up and paying your money. I would say that this is one of the only thing that lets it down as it was really busy when we were there (although this was Saturday lunchtime so probably to be expected!!) and we had people queuing behind us on every single hole which I found quite stressful. On a couple of holes there also isn't enough room for people to queue behind you so we had a couple of near misses at hitting them! When we go next time we would certainly try a different day or time. Some of the holes are also on the dark side so you can't always get a great view of what you're doing.... not that we're a competitive family *ahem*
Overall we had a great time and like I say the theme in Shark Bay seemed to grab the kids attention much more so than Mermaid Rock. We didn't see any staff apart from at the start but then I guess we didn't really need to. All of the kids got given different sized golf clubs that were perfect for them and after some arguing discussion managed to agree who would have which colour golf balls! The kids had varying opinions:
Oldest (14) said that it was a lot of fun and she loved Shark Bay but some of the holes could've been crazier...
Middle (10) said that it was irritating (mainly because he was rubbish at it!! Lol!!)
Littlest (8) said that it was one of the best days ever and that Shark Bay was awesome!
Paradise Island itself is really easy to find as it's located in the Intu Centre in the middle of Derby. There is loads of parking and it cost us about £4 for the couple of hours that we were there. The golf itself would have cost £30 for our family but we were there for at least an hour and a half so did get our money's worth.
*Disclosure - We were asked to review Paradise Island Adventure Golf and didn't pay an entry fee in return for an honest review. We did pay for our own parking etc. All views, opinions and photos are my own.
