A parent’s verdict: visiting the park with kids

▶ Melissa Gronlund takes her three- and five-year-old to check out the rides

The three areas to the right of the Warner Bros plaza make up the child-friendly section, with rides, food, and merchandise orientated towards your darling midgets.

Cartoon Junction is the place for families with young children (toddlers up to about six), and here I doff my motherly cap. If you have multiple kids you know how hard it is to cater for different age spans, and Warner Bros has created a largely separate area combining rides and soft-play areas for when the kids are bored of queueing or just need to run around by themselves.

One of the soft-play areas is for one- to two-year-olds, and its proximity to the rides lets you watch over the little ones while still keeping an eye on the others. The rides here are good, too — posh versions of fairground favourites — and I literally have to drag my youngest daughter off the Ricochet Racin’ with TAZ, a car ride that whips around the corners. “I LOVE SO FAST!” is her shouted-at-full-volume verdict.

Beyond this separated area, Cartoon Junction also has technologically impressive rides that are good for four- to15-year-olds. In Ani-Mayhem you don 3D glasses (with straps for the kids to better keep them on: nice touch) and aim your laser pointer at targets, racking up points as you travel through the ride. It’s like being in an interactive video game and can get addictive — I think I’ve done very well and then realise I was trounced tenfold by an eleven year old. Rematch?

Set in a big, impressive mock-up of a scary house, Scooby-Doo! The Museum of Mysteries is the flagship ride, and already the talk of the mum’s network. Not to stereotype you, mums, but I love how you can take a blank slate and within an hour and a half create some kind of stressful issue out of it. We’re two comments shy of a WhatsApp group: Is Scooby-Doo too scary for the kids? Did you hear that so-andso’s child started screaming before he even got on the ride? Warner Bros has done a good job of making the queuing areas entertaining for the big rides; the Scooby-Doo haunted house wonderfully elicits mock screams all around. And my kids love it, with it rising to our older child’s firm favourite. I’m leaving you, Scooby-Doo 2018 WhatsApp group! Being scared is all the fun.

Dynamite Gulch and Bedrock have the bigger rides, and the crowd lining up for the Fast and Furry-ous roller coaster is half kids, half adults (this area is best for those about six and above). Top marks go to the speed (“fast from the start!”) and the curves. Like at Yas Waterworld, it is the kind where your legs dangle free: maybe this is accepted roller coaster practice by now, but for old fogeys like me, it’s still pretty exciting.

Lots of kids of 8- to 11-yearold kids seem to love the water ride, Bedrock River Adventure, though I have to admit I’m underwhelmed: it’s a slow boat ride through the world of The Flintstones, which most kids don’t know nowadays, with one big splashy pay-off at the end. But the pre-teens go wild for it, queuing up again and again.

Looney-Tunes characters roam the area, posing with children and giving huge hugs. The kids were so sweetly excited: little jumps in place while waiting, lots of eyes full of wonder. My littlest one started out scared of them but ended the night with a sequence of Speedy Gonzalez high-fives – hats off to the actors behind the costumes for their expressive enthusiasm.

My final verdict: lots of grins. It is well-planned out, with food evenly spaced around the rides, and a variety at that: empanadas, manakish and salads, in addition to your more standard burgers and nuggets kids’ fare. Parents who have put in their hours at indoor kids’ play areas will find this place low on the sensory overload scale: especially in Bedrock and Dynamite Gulch, the area is pleasant and bright, and there is a good mix of ‘wowee’ rides as well as spaces where the kids can just run around and let off steam. You might want to bring a sweater because of the high air conditioning, but to be honest, my kids didn’t stop running once.