Our Trip To Dreamland Margate

Visiting Dreamland Margate – Our Trip To The Kent Seaside

Have you ever been to Dreamland Margate, or Margate itself? If you’re looking for a colourful seaside adventure you should go; it’s brilliant. There’s also even a Dreamland Margate Roller Disco, which is all sorts of brilliant fun.

Exploring Kent – Our Trip To Margate

Since moving to Greater London nearly three years ago we’ve been meaning to explore more of our new area and local coastline but have never really got round to it. I’d heard lots about Margate – it was on Location Location Location and everything – and the revamped Dreamland Margate sounded brilliant.

So when Southeastern invited us to go on a day trip to take advantage of its offer on many local attractions including Dreamland, Margate seemed like a good place to start.

We headed up there a few Saturdays ago. Armed with buckets and spades…oh and raincoats, yellow wellies and the trusty Mr Tumble umbrella (Tumbrella?) because obviously it was raining.

How did we get on? You can see more in our video of the day which is here:

What We LOVED About Dreamland Margate:

Margate Is Close To London

Margate is only an hour and a half from St Pancras on Southeastern’s high speed train, so you can easily get there and back from London in a day.

Margate Is Really Colourful

Although it was a fairly grey day  a massive black cloud followed the train all the way from London  we loved looking at all the quirky graffiti and mural walls. And Dreamland itself.

Dreamland Margate *insert heart eyes*

Ah, we loved it! It’s a revamped Pleasure Garden that’s been made over with a quirky vintage / retro feel. And it’s so colourful! Inside there’s an arcade and soft play area:

Dreamland Maragate Roller Disco

I mean, look at it! There’s a whole retro roller disco at Dreamland Margate, where you can hire skates and go for a spin.

And outside there’s the retro fairground with rides:

The Octopus’s Garden At Dreamland Margate

While Dreamland is free to enter and wander around (you still need to pay for the rides), the offer is valid for the Octopus’s Garden soft play area. You have to fill in an online form and download a voucher beforehand, then present this with your ticket on the day.

The Octopus’s Garden combines a small traditional soft play setup – which our 4-year-old loved and I didn’t mind our nearly 2-year-old running around with her – with a mini beach, as well as small creative play areas and a cafe. It was reasonably busy on the Saturday we went but I’m told it’s often empty during the week. More of that on our video.

The Arcades At Dreamland

It’s good to know that the 2p slot machines never lose any appeal, even in an age with Paypal and contactless credit card payments.

The Food Is A Seaside Treat

There are lots of places to eat at Dreamland. We chose chips and ice cream, obviously.

Who says rain has to stop play? We had these two seaside classics. In the rain.

More Things To See In Margate

Before our visit I asked on Twitter and my Facebook page for some suggestions for things to do in Margate, but as it turned out we spent most our time in Dreamland and didn’t really get round to doing much. So if you’re looking for things to do in Margate, here’s all the other suggestions:

• Going to the shell grotto  a mysterious underground cave decorated with 4.6 million shells and no-one knows why? Can’t believe we missed this!
• The Turner Contemporary art gallery  sad we missed this too!
• Going rockpooling
• Afternoon tea and finding the ‘nice cafe area’

So we’ll clearly have to go back!

Thanks to Southeastern for working with us on this post. 

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