Revealed: The Harrogate district theme park which offers the best value for money in the UK

With half term coming in just more than two weeks’ time on October 23, a new ranking has revealed which theme parks will offer the best value for money for families - with Lightwater Valley near Ripon crowned the winner.

The ranking, created by JeffBet, the online casino operator, assigned each theme park a score out of ten based on historical crowd levels, queue times, attraction quality, opening hours, and entry prices.

This data was then combined with popularity, theming and seasonality data to name the best at Halloween.

Attraction quality was measured by counting the number of attractions in each park and calculating rollercoasters’ average visitor rating.

Entry prices consider both online ticket prices and parking fees - with some parks charging drivers as much as £15 a day.

With all of these factors accounted for, JeffBet calculated that Lightwater Valley near Ripon is the park that’s most worth its entry cost this time of year, with an overall score of 7.9 out of ten.

Despite being one of the lesser-known parks in the UK - reporting the lowest volume of Google searches at this time of year - this is good news for locals looking for an action-packed day out, as this lower popularity means shorter queues and smaller crowds.

Lightwater Valley has the most inexpensive tickets by far, with an average online price of £26 and free parking.

With a whopping 44 attractions and two roller coasters rated at 4.5 stars, there’s plenty for visitors to fill their time with for the 7.5 hours they get in the park each day.=

Even as theme parks are anticipated to surge in crowds this October, Lightwater Valley’s predicted level currently stands at 73% - while Thorpe Park’s is 83%.

The typical queue time for the most popular ride at Lightwater Valley averages 90 minutes, significantly less than at Flamingo Land, where visitors wait for 121 minutes.

Data is gathered from the providers’ websites, Google reviews, www.queue-times.com, Google Trends and Ahrefs.