Port Aventura

First things first, I'm not that keen on theme parks - too many people and too much queuing but we do tend to get to a theme park every 3 or 4 years.

Port Aventura is extremely easy to reach from Barcelona and is a very large park with about 6 major rollercoasters, 3 or 4 water rides and features such as the freefall drop of 100m (Hurakan Condor). It's divided into themed areas for China, the Wild West, Mexico and Polynesia and there are several shows that play in different areas.

We made a couple of mistakes to start with as we failed to anticipate the queues and got split up initially having failed to set a place to meet (actually meeting in the Wild West area would have been best). We were visiting in July so queues were often 30-45 minutes or more and even the minor activities had a 10 or 15 minutes wait. The problem this gives is that you can't fit that many rides into a day and you spend most of the time standing with children in long queues.

Having said that the theming and the rides were good. I was getting grumpy after the first two queues, but once we found the water rides it was more enjoyable. But may be a recommendation is to head to the park a little more out of season.

Some people buy the express tickets which allow you to queue jump and would save lots of time, but seemed very expensive, so it would depend on how rich and how much time you have, but they did seem to reduce the queue length to turn up and get on. One thing we got caught out on was trying to enter using the express lane rather than the regular queue - you will be turned back!

If you have small children then there are height restrictions on various rides. On the 'adult' rides 1.40 tends to be the minimum height to use the ride on your own. On others there is an absolute minimum of 1.10m or 1.20m even when with an adult. The only way to know what the limits are is to go to the ride - it's not on the guide - which on occasion meant disappointing our smallest.

The layout and look of the park is very good with lots of water around and the layout is pretty and well thought out so just walking around the park is enjoyable and there are plenty of places to stop and rest without the park feeling like it's exploiting visitors price-wise (there are drinking water fountains all over). And you can see the sea in the distance.

If you're a resident around here then there are quite often offers and give away tickets, particularly during the winter. We got two free entry tickets for children with the electricity bill for instance.

Oh and don't forget your suntan lotion.