I have no photos as cameras were not allowed and I refuse to be ripped off by buying the photos they take! Here’s a tip to save on the ticket price (which, for 4 people is £97 on the door and £77 online); you can get buy one get one free by travelling by train and filling in the form you can get from the info booth or ticket booth; or by cutting out any of the Merlin attraction tokens that Tescos are doing on things like orange juice and cereal. However we paid for ours in full using Tesco vouchers, so we didn’t have to pay a thing. Brilliant!
A good job too because the full price is ridiculous and not worth that much money – much like most British tourist attractions. Another tip – don’t be fooled by the people dressed up in gory medieval costumes standing by the train station – they are not promoting London Dungeons, they are promoting the London Bridge Experience just across the road. Sneaky! They really don’t make that clear either.
Well anyway, I was surprisingly impressed with the London Dungeons. You went on a sort-of tour, and your group of about 15 – 20 people are walked from room to room by actors, who then introduced you to the next bit. So in one place we were told about the plague and the gruesome aspects of that; in another place it was about Jack the ripper; in another it was an old courtroom – this was my favourite as I found the adult innuendoes very funny. I also enjoyed the Victorian seance where we were spun around wearing 3d glasses and the effects were pretty good. (By the way, this is nothing to worry about if you don’t like spinny rides or get nauseous on spinning fairground rides – this was relatively slow and didn’t throw you around.)
At the end there is a new ride where you’re taken up and then suddenly dropped down. I was really nervous about this, but needn’t have been. Imagine Disney’s haunted mansion ride, but about an eighth of the height. The scary bit is the tension beforehand.
The whole thing took an hour and ten minutes, (See what I mean about value for money), but like I said earlier, I was really impressed – it was a lot better than I expected and all the actors were brilliant.
