My Review of Diggerland Yorkshire – Was it Worth the Money?

My little boy has loved diggers and dumper trucks since before he could talk.

I have no idea why some little boys are so instantly magnetically attracted to construction vehicles but mine was one of them. Because of this, we have wanted to take him to Diggerland in Yorkshire for ages, but decided to wait until he was a little bit older so he would get the most out of it.

Kids need to be at least 100cm tall for a lot of the rides and he’s hit that milestone now, so with his first day of school just around the corner, we figured we would make use of the last bank holiday Monday of the year and go check it out.

To bring you up to speed, Diggerland is a digger themed theme park, more or less. It’s full of rides and things that fit the theme, and there are a few of them around the country. Their Yorkshire site is our closest one, but they also have sites in Kent, Devon and Durham.

I’ve had a quick look at photos of the other sites and they all seem to have the same rides, so you can think of it as the same experience regardless of which site you are closest too.

This is my review of our day at Diggerland.

First Impressions

We are about 50 miles from the Yorkshire site, so it took us around an hour to get there.

It was a nice easy journey made all the better by the well run parking set up they have. Not that I drove of course, I have a man in my life for long distance journeys 🤭

We were told where to park and there was loads of room to get in and out so no stress there. It’s only a small theme park so the entrance was right next to us. It just looks like a big warehouse building from the front, so other than the branding you wouldn’t realise what it was. It’s not a particularly exciting start to the day.

However, when we got through the front doors the sign on the wall promised that “The Fun Starts Here”.

We met the Diggerland mascot, which is a Bob the Builder type guy in a costume, and had a photo with him, then made our way into the park after dragging our son past to shop.

When you enter the park itself, the whole thing is laid out in an oval shape more or less. There are rides and games around the outside of the oval and more in the middle, plus a little extra bit tagged on the end.

The overall footprint isn’t very big, but there are a lot of different stations within it, and it’s impossible to get lost. We thought the place was starting to look its age but there was plenty to explore so we got stuck right in.

The Rides

The park seems to be staffed by an army of teenagers. This is a little disconcerting when they are in charge of driving visitors around in great big construction vehicles, but to their credit they all seemed to be taking their jobs seriously.

We went on a spinny merry go round type ride first. You sit in a converter dumper bucket and get spun around. It was pretty tame, for little kids, and a fun way to start. Close by was the Formula One track so he had a quick go on that too.

Then we had a go on hook a duck, digger style. Operating the digger, you have to hook ducks out of the water. It’s really hard, but I did get them both out in the end. You don’t win anything, you just get to keep your dignity, and my little boy enjoyed making the machine jerk and shake as he operated it.

The Skyshuttle was pretty good. It’s a big extending digger type vehicle with seats fitted to the front, and it lifts you 50ft into the air and leaves you there for a while. You get great views of the park and the surrounding area and it’s not as scary as it might sound. My lad is 4 and a half and wasn’t scared.

Then there’s the Groundshuttle, which is essentially the same thing but instead of lifting you up high, it just lifts you a little bit then drives around a circuit.

A lot of the rides were quite similar to be honest. The game next to hook a duck was the exact same thing but you had to knock over skittles; you could drive go karts around a track, or mini F1 cars around a track, or big dumper trucks around a track. You could dig holes with real sized diggers, or you could dig holes with mini sized diggers.

Then there was a train that takes you into the woods where a few dinosaur statues are situated alongside more diggers, but you just do a loop then come back. Nothing happens.

It gets quite samey quite quickly, and our little boy was asking to go by about 1 o’clock.

The queues weren’t too bad though, which is the beauty of it being a smaller park with limited capacity I suppose. We never waited more than about 15 minutes for a ride, and it was usually much much faster.

Food and Drink

There is a cafe there that serves all sorts of fried food, plus generic snacks.

Think ‘council run underfunded leisure centre’ rather than ‘family focussed soft play with locally sourced products’.

I don’t mean to be unkind, but it was a bit dreary in there and the options weren’t appetising. I was glad we took a picnic. We got coffees, juice and some crisps though, and the staff were lovely.

There are some coin operated rides in the cafe but they were just another variation on the same theme: toy cars you drive in a circle.

The only place to get refreshments is the cafe, or the Digger Inn as it’s known, other than the ice cream shack at the other end of the park. The toilets are all at the front too.

This isn’t a problem because it’s only a short walk from one end to the other, but be aware the ice cream shack only sells ice cream and a small selection of crisps, drinks, and chocolate, and it doesn’t take card. Annoying.

Weirdly, the Digger Inn doesn’t sell ice cream, so have to get it from the shack.

It’s a weird set up at not cohesive at all, but hey ho.

Would I Recommend Overall?

The price of entry when we visited was £25.95 per person – so almost £80 for the three of us.

The selling point is that all the rides are included, except they aren’t quite. You need to buy tokens for the dodgems (the only ride that requires tokens). The little miniature Formula 1 race cars cost £1 a go, as do the cars in the cafe area.

We took a picnic to save a bit of money, but we spent another £15 on snacks, drinks, and an ice cream for my son. It would have been more as me and my fella were going to get one too, but the ice cream shack only accepted cash. It didn’t display that information very well though, just one small sign hidden by the queue, so I got to the front before I realised and only had £4 in my purse. Obviously, my son gets the ice cream over me and my partner in that scenario – can you imagine the tears if not!?

This all made it feel a bit disorganised and makeshift which, added to the overall ‘feel’ of the place, brings it down a bit.

There was no atmosphere either.

There is no music, no sound effects from the rides, just lots of digging scraping noises. I get it, this is Diggerland after all, but the vibe was a little bit muted.

Don’t get me wrong, we enjoyed ourselves and there is a lot to do, but probably not a full day’s worth of fun. A lot of it is essentially the same thing too: you’re either operating a digger or riding something in a circle for the most part.

We got there at 10.15 and left about 3ish, so got a good 5 hours out of it including stopping for lunch and a quick visit to the shop on the way out.

In conclusion, I would say it feels a bit pricey for what it is, but it’s certainly worth going if you have the money.