Laura Lewis visited Bute Park at Christmas – a favourite annual trip for her family – and highly recommends a visit to this popular Cardiff attraction.
I’m no stranger to visiting Christmas at Bute Park in the run up to Christmas, it’s become an annual tradition that my family always loves to do.
However, when visiting Bute Park this year, we found a completely different layout than previous years – much better in fact. The area for food, previously at the end, is now at the start – and given that the start and end is in the same place, we all agreed, this was a welcome change.
The lights are ALWAYS magical – however immersing yourself in lights and wonder as you walk through the park is only one of the reasons you get a fabulous, warm, glowing feeling inside. The music and scenery has been well thought out, it’s truly entertaining and a great way to interact with visitors of all ages, and this year Christmas at Bute Park also benefits for the first time from live music performances from RWMCD students – and we also got to see artwork created by local school pupils. This brought a brand new depth to what is already an incredible multi-sensory experience.
We really appreciated that the signage throughout helped a lot with directions, what to do, how to get involved and explaining who had contributed to what section of the park.
All of us ( 2 children and 2 adults) agreed that this time round had an extra wow factor we did not expect. There was less fire pits than last year for toasting marshmallows which they had for sale, but this did not hinder the experience as the area was not overcrowded anyway.
Cardiff Council confirmed last year that Christmas at Bute Park will stay in Cardiff until at least 2025, with organisers working to deepen their support for local communities since, and it’s so nice to learn that Christmas at Bute Park is providing complimentary tickets to up to 40 charitable and community groups. Their goal, to make the experience as magical as it can, for as many people as it can, definitely ticked all the boxes for us
All in all, a great visit and I highly recommend it. To anyone thinking of visiting, just go – and wrap up warm!