Need Barcelona/Port Aventura advice

[edie_w]

Here's the thing.....

We want to get some sunshine, some culture and some rollercoastering. A short break to Barcelona and a day or two at Port Aventura seems to fit the bill. :D But the caveat is we don't want to break the bank :( the bank already being somewhat fractured following the Orlando trip last October :D.

We'll be going for about 5 days somewhere between the evening of 29 July and the afternoon of 7 August.

It looks like my cheapest flight options will be with Ryanair from Liverpool to Girona and/or Reus on 30th and 5th, although I'm open to suggestions.

Questions before I start pestering Val with trivia....

Where is Girona airport in relation to Barcelona? How do we get into the city?

How crowded do you think Port Aventura will be mid-week in August? Should we stay on-site to get entry and FOTL access in with the price? Does this work and is it worth it? In fact how does it work?

Given that I could spend 3 consecutive days at IOA and not get bored, how many days do we need to "do" the park? Is one enough?

Would you consider flying into Girona and out of Reus or is that a mad idea?

Thanks guys.

xx :angel:

[Maggiemae]

Can't help with all the questions but can say as follows:

Reus is very near Salou/Port Aventura ...about a 10m taxi ride. Think Girona is quite a bit further away.

If you are staying in Barcelona you can catch a train to Port Aventura (there is a station there) but the journey is about an hour long and when we were there the trains weren't very reliable.

We were there in end of July/beg of August 2002. The advantage of being there in the summer is that the park is open until midnight every night. We spent two full days at the park and about 10 out of 14 evenings there from about 4pm onwards.

There is tons to do, the park is well laid out, well themed and has great rides. Food in the park is better than any you can get anywhere else in Salou too!. Think you would struggle to do it all in a day as its bigger than IOA I think.

Look out for deals on the tickets. We got a "Summer pass" which basically gave you 14 consecutive days admission for only £35. Obviously you are just looking at a short break but even for three days this would work out reasonable. Of course this was 3 years ago and I dont know if they still do anything similar.

As for crowd levels we found that it was busy during the day until late afternoon. After that it was fairly quiet with a lot of the rides having no wait at all and not more than 10m for he biggies (like Dragon Khan, Stampida, Tatuki Splash etc).

[steven1105]

Regarding how long you can spend in the park. We spent 3 full days there and that was before they had the water park. I felt there was plenty to do , and some of it twice.

Steve

[Shogun]

Fly into Reus if you can. It is very close to Salou, which is about 10 mins drive from Port Adventura. Barcelona is about an hour away. There is a train from salou to Barcelona.
Girona is about 2.5 hours drive from PA and about 1.5 hours from Barcelona.

[amandaanne]

If you fly to Barcelona - Gerona airport with Ryanair they put buses on from the airport - I think it was 13 euros return when we were there in April. The times of the buses coincide with the arrival of the flights are are very frequent and take about 45 minutes to get to the centre of Barcelona.

Hope this helps

[essexmick]

Originally posted by edie_w
Here's the thing.....

We want to get some sunshine, some culture and some rollercoastering. A short break to Barcelona and a day or two at Port Aventura seems to fit the bill. :D But the caveat is we don't want to break the bank :( the bank already being somewhat fractured following the Orlando trip last October :D.

We'll be going for about 5 days somewhere between the evening of 29 July and the afternoon of 7 August.

It looks like my cheapest flight options will be with Ryanair from Liverpool to Girona and/or Reus on 30th and 5th, although I'm open to suggestions.

Questions before I start pestering Val with trivia....

Where is Girona airport in relation to Barcelona? How do we get into the city?

How crowded do you think Port Aventura will be mid-week in August? Should we stay on-site to get entry and FOTL access in with the price? Does this work and is it worth it? In fact how does it work?

Given that I could spend 3 consecutive days at IOA and not get bored, how many days do we need to "do" the park? Is one enough?

Would you consider flying into Girona and out of Reus or is that a mad idea?

Thanks guys.

xx :angel:

girona is just slightly north of barcelona just over 62 miles and an hour away

[edie_w]

Thanks all. The flight times to Girona are better than to Reus, but it's worth thinking about.

Anyone else have any experience of the train between Barcelona and Salou? How much was it?

Do they do express passes in the park, or can you only get that by staying in one of the hotels? The rates don't lokk too bad actually, given the perks.

[Jes]

Can't answer any of your queries but I got some info for a friend a while back on their website which has prices for the parks, on site hotel details and links for train timetables. It might help with getting some of the info you need

http://www.portaventura.com/

June:D

[Scotty]

Getting FOTL in Port Aventura is what made us stay onsite at Universal Orlando. Even in early October it made a big difference. I have looked into Girona flights from Glasgow and whilst thay are doable It would be a hassle to geta bus into Barcelona then a train out to Salou. The El Paso hotel is lovely - didnt see the other one, we had 3 1/2 days there - arrived late at night and left mid afternoon which was plenty - we went to the water park too.
If I could get reasonable flights to Reus I would go again like a shot.

[dcmax]

We took the train down to PA which was fine (approx £10) but we bought a package wich included train & tickets at the railway station in Barcelona, big mistake as we still had to Q to exchange voucher for ticket. Just get train travel! Park may be full of school trips mid week (as it was for us in may) when NO fastpasses were in operation. We went to the only full service restaurant but service was rubbish and food luke warm.

Having said that it's a beautiful park with some fab rides & shows but elbows out if its busy! The locals dont bother queuing. Train times back to barce were a bit erratic too.

[edie_w]

Thanks everyone.

The plan so far is:

Fly from Liverpool to Reus early one morning
Taxi into Reus
Train to Barcelona
3 nights in Barcelona
Train to Salou
3 nights on-site at PA.
Taxi to Reus airport (unless we can find another reliable method)
Fly back to Liverpool.

Just deciding whether to go ahead or save ££ by going camping instead. :confused2

[orangebreezer]

We just got back from Salou last week..........don't know how good a deal you are getting but we paid £960 for a week half board with First Choice for 4 of us (DS is 13 so counted as an adult). Our hotel was a 5 minute walk from Port Aventura (we could see Dragon Khan from our balcony). The train from Barcalona to Salou was (in euros) 8.60 per adult, 4.30 per child return (beware guy stood next to us had his pocket picked during the journey).
Port Aventura was really nice with some cool rides, but it was full of very loud Spanish school kids running riot with no supervision. They don't cue and think nothing of running past you (nearly knocking you over) and shoving you out of the way to get to the front of the line. :angry:
We also watched as a group of Spanish lads (about 15) were openly smoking cannibis. They were moved on from the restaurant but were not asked to leave the park :eek:
Costa Caribe Water Park is also lovely and we were surprised at how quiet it was.
I was not holding up much hope for Salou but I was pleasently surprised. It was much cleaner and nicer than I had thought it would be. Yes they do have the usual Irish Pubs, English Pubs and fish and chips places but it felt much more family than young persons and it had a nice atmosphere.
We felt we had truely done it all in 3 days and we would go back again

[highlander447]

off season Salou is pretty nice as for those loud sanish kids they are a pain skipping Qs etc still I found a nice lound scottish %%%% gets their attention and if not respect fear works for me:beer: