Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland

Known primarily for the Speakers’ Corner quasi-sane political outbursts on Sundays, Hyde Park has been transformed into a neon Winter Wonderland this season. This is the kind of thing little kids will pull at your pant leg for, speaking only in extended vowels (‘Pleeease, Mummy, pleeeeease!’). Is it worth braving the cold for? Is the glitz and glamour promised by the posters and magazine featurettes really all that?

For one thing, the decorators genuinely deserve a pat on the back. Whether the Winter Wonderland really is a wonderland or not, it certainly looks the part. Glittery snowmen guard the entrance to the skating rink, fairy lights glitter from the food stalls and merry-go-round horses are painted and glossed to the nines. Soft jazzy tunes flow out of the loudspeakers, presumably because the organisers don’t want to overdo it with Christmas carols just yet. So far, so wondrous.

Theoretically, it should be possible to live here. Food and drink is readily available under heated wooden terraces. Dutch crepes, German hamburgers and traditional bangers ‘n’ mash are all here to suit any taste. The kids cradle mugs of hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows while adults burn their lips on heated-up Pimm’s (a half-baked perversion of a beverage), after heading off for a taste of the rides.

The rides are where it all begins to crumble. Just like a date who admits they’re broke after a three-course meal, money can ruin everything. Despite the Wonderland’s official website’s claims about great credit-crunch-beating deals, everything is so ridiculously overpriced that it’s best to leave your wallet at home, lest you’ll be tempted to open it.

Rides cost about £3-4, and just aren’t worth it. The average haunted mansion or rug slide will last a few minutes at best and leave you deeply unsatisfied. To add insult to injury, the tokens you buy to pay for them aren’t even the old-fashioned ‘fairground money’ you’d expect – they’re just paper printouts that look like a receipt from somewhere really, really boring. Even the ice skating rink is a bit of a disappointment, seeing that (like everything else) it’s overpriced (an hour will set you back about £10), and not big enough to accommodate for the demand.

The market area of the fairground is a bit more reasonable. Here, you’ll find weird toys and pointless trinkets, fancy earmuffs and rugs made out of reindeer hides (…Rudolph?!). If you’re organised enough to think about Christmas shopping this early, the market is a great place for stocking fillers. Theoretically, you can get the same thing at Woolworths at half the price (and without losing your nose to frostbite), but there’s something about buying things from a wooden cabin under garlands of multicoloured lights.

If you’re in the area anyway, if you have children under the age of 10, or if you desperately need something to ward off a suicidal Christmas-season depression, the Winter Wonderland is the place for you. Although the price issue is a bit of a rain on an otherwise sparkly, magical parade, it’s still a nice way to spend an afternoon. After all, spinning lights and sugar-laden snacks are the ultimate antidote to a bad mood, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Winter Wonderland is open 10am to 10pm until January 4, 2009
Hyde Park
Central London