Travel test

WHAT: CBeebies Land at Alton Towers Resort – reopened for the summer season with three new attractions. The CBeebies Hotel has also revealed new themed rooms including the all-new Bing room.

Theme park entry starts from £36 per person and under-threes go free.

Hotel stays from £264.50 for a family of four B&B, Bing rooms from £334.50. altontowers.com WHERE: The nearest motorway access is J15 of the M6. Derby, Stoke-on-Trent and Uttoxeter stations have bus connections. EXPERIENCE: The already huge CBeebies Land reopens with the Hey Duggee Big Adventure Badge vast new play area.

Duggee himself makes regular appearances while youngsters can have a field day on the colourful slides, bridges and playhouse.

JoJo and Gran Gran at Home allows young fans to explore the house of the popular family and run around a virtual garden.

And Andy’s Adventures Dinosaur Dig sees young dino fans exploring fossils and dino bones, while listening to a hologram of Andy who is off on one of his time-travelling adventures.

The new attractions sit within the kids’ theme park alongside a host of other fun stuff. QUIBBLES: Predictably, there are queues for the popular rides at peak times. Especially at the new Andy’s Dinosaur Adventures, there was only a limited area for waiting, so if you didn’t time it just right, you had to keep going away and then coming back.

VERDICT: For those with youngsters to entertain, CBeebies Land is a really magical place with loads to see and do for a full-on day out.

Seeing the look on their little faces as they “see” their favourite characters from the TV in larger-than-life form is seriously worth the ticket price alone.

The hotel offers a great way to continue the magic.