Chessington weekend
Sep 21, 2016
After 9 months of fundraising our first Chessington trip finally happened!
45 children travelled from all over the UK and arrived super excited for the big weekend. After checking into the Azteca hotel they found themselves transported into themed rooms, where they found goodies locked in a safe. In order to get the goodies you had to complete puzzles to crack the code that opened the safe. There were more surprises in store when the children found air walkers and goodie bags kindly donated by Merlin. Many of the rooms over looked the zoos animals and everyone said it felt like you were in Africa! How many people can say they have seen giraffes from their bedroom window?
Everyone gathered together for a group lunch and surprisingly joined by Wimbledon AFC players who came and said hello to the children. They were fantastic, spending lots of time chatting to the children and their families despite the fact they had a match coming up (they won!).
After lunch it was time to feed the Sea Llions, this was accompanied by a lot of giggles!
The families spent the rest of the day enjoying all that the theme park had to offer before coming back to the hotel and gathering for the evenings entertainment. 5 beautiful girls wore the special princess dresses they had been sent by Post Pals. Issy and Amy spent a long time playing princesses together! All the children had to sit on the throne.
On Sunday everyone woke up bright and early and enjoyed a group breakfast with characters before our exclusive animal meet and greet. The superstars got to meet, touch and hold all different kinds of animals. The Macaw’s were really amazing! If you told them a joke they would laugh and if you poked your tongue out at them they would do the same back!
The rest of Sunday was spent in the park, not just enjoying the many exciting rides but having the chance of getting their faces painted, another group lunch (where a child caught a Pokemon he thought was impossible to catch!) and even more rides! All of the families were given wrist bands which enabled them to jump the queues and walk onto any ride and they certainly put this to good use!
Our Pal William S is extremely unwell (he was on the heart transplant list for 5 years but has deteriorated too much to remain on it) but it didn’t stop him taking volunteer Jaymee on all the big rides! William’s family, Grace and Sophie all tried to get him to open his eyes on the Kobra but eyes open was a step too far!
It was an amazing weekend, some children had previously met at the party before and were excited to see each other and others made new friends instantly.
Guess what Post Pals is doing next weekend? All of this again with another set of superstar families!
We will be sending out thank you notes to those who donated and held fundraisers for us but I want to give a very special shout out to Sarah!! Without her this trip would have remained just a pipe dream. Thank you to Dawn, Steve, Jaymee and Catherine for their hard work. Also a huge thank you to Nikki from Merlin who has put in lot of work (even when she was meant to be off) and has done so much to take the trip to a whole new level of special!