Amberley Museum Reviews Summary

Value for Money

Pros:

• "£42 for a family ticket seems about par for the course for this sort of attraction."
• "Amazing day out!! Great value for the memories made."
• "It was a little expensive to get in but since the bus and train are all included in the price it seems good value."
• "Good value for money."
• "Excellent day out and good value."
• "For 15.50 including gift aid donation, it's brilliant value for money!!"
• "Excellent value for money compared with other large / outdoor museums."

Cons:

• "I thought this place needed more things to see as the price to get in doesn't reflect what there is to see and do in there, in my opinion."
• "It was very cold on our visit with grandsons so that may have coloured our visit. Not enough to engage our 5 year old and our 7 year old struggled to get too much out of the visit."
• "Due to next to no activities running we only stayed for about 90mins, left feeling disappointed which was a real shame."
• "We purchased tickets in advance, as advised on the website, so we're expecting the different craft sites to be open. However very few were, this was very disappointing."
• "Be warned though, we got there early afternoon and, although the site closes at 4.30 pm a lot of the exhibits were closed by 3.30pm which is disappointing and a bit of a swizz because they don't charge you any less!"

Staff and Volunteers

Pros:

• "The staff are mainly volunteers and are more than happy to tell you about the various crafts and show you how things work."
• "Everyone incredibly friendly and there is so much to do to cover a spectrum of interests for everyone."
• "The staff where very friendly and knowledgeable. Really made the experience across the whole site a huge joy."
• "The staff / workers are all so enthusiastic and love showing you their crafts."
• "The staff are brilliant and extremely helpful and knowledgable."
• "The volunteers are extremely knowledgeable and happy to talk to you for ages."
• "Every member of staff we encountered was friendly, helpful and made the day even better, and bearing in mind a lot are volunteers, they should be appreciated for their hard work."

Cons:

• "On entry and departure lady on entrance was quite rude and we received Negative vibes."
• "Loads of volunteers who are old people reliving their childhood dreams but don't actually want to interact with visitors apart from telling you not to touch."
• "It just spoilt it a bit for me as there was a school group in there at the same time and seemed to be everywhere we went."

Facilities and Accessibility

Pros:

• "The grounds have good accessibility in general. You shouldn't find anything you can't get to from what I saw."
• "Free train / bus rides."
• "Masive car park and excellent on site. Licensed restaurant and facilities with extensive Disabled access."
• "Fully Accessible loos both near the entrance and in the cafe."
• "Plenty of benches all over the site too and accessible."
• "Its dog friendly and best of all it's wheelchair accessible ♿."
• "Good disabled facilities and access throughout, however, the path to the road building hall is steep s gravely."

Cons:

• "Unfortunately, they couldn't get on the bus, even downstairs, as no ramp."
• "Not really ideal for wheelchairs really."
• "Some areas will be hard going with no access in the wooden sheds as they have steps in and out."

Exhibits and Activities

Pros:

• "A thoroughly enjoyable day out, in fact, there's so much to see and do for all ages you could probably spend 2 days looking round to get the full atmosphere."
• "A very interesting place with very wide variety of exhibits."
• "Kids loved the learning all about the different technologies on display."
• "Such a fantastic place to go I’d highly recommend it, we visited today with little ones ranging from 1.5 years - 5 years and they all loved it."
• "You can get around by bus and/or train too."
• "The kids loved it, especially the riding on the steam train and vintage bus."
• "So much interesting stuff to look at and do - everything from the history of the telephone to old fire engines."

Cons:

• "Displays are extremely poorly curated (if at all) with items cramped together with little thought to engaging the visitor with the historical or social context of the exhibits."
• "Due to covid some of the interactive items were not available."
• "A shame that most of the craft exhibits where not in operation."
• "Went with the grandchildren who are 3 and 5. To be honest interesting reliving the past for oldies but not good for kids."
• "Still love this place and all the memories it brings up for me but it didn't quite offer as much this time round as it has in the past. It lacked the interactions and learning experiences slightly....think they'd benefit from a couple more helpers as most things closed around 3.30pm when they were advertised as open until 4.30pm."
• "It was very cold on our visit with grandsons so that may have coloured our visit. Not enough to engage our 5 year old and our 7 year old struggled to get too much out of the visit."
• "Also, the steam train only works on certain days. Otherwise it's diesel."

Cafe and Food

Pros:

• "Food and drink is superb at the cafe."
• "Light and airy cafe, serving simple tasty food."
• "The restaurant served lovely food and afternoon snacks."
• "The food in the café is excellent and again the staff are all so good at their job."
• "Fabulous place! Food and good coffee is available in the restaurant."
• "The cafe/ restaurant is reasonably priced with hot and cold food which is delicious."
• "Very good cafe with a good choice of food."

Cons:

• "The Cafe food selection is extremely poor & could do with a serious upgrade to the menu. (Very plain and old fashioned fare)."
• "Cafe has basic selection."
• "One gripe (small one) is the catering. It's a bit like UK food used to be in the eighties and while it's sort of all right, it doesn't make me happy."
• "Only negative would be more choice of simple meals in cafe ie beans on toast all day breakfast. bacon sandwich."
• "Cafe was a little expensive, but we expected that."
• "Only negative was the queue for the cafe, but it was a hot day, some were waiting for hot food and others just for ice creams."
• "We had lunch at the main cafe and food was very good but it can get very busy with a bit of a wait (around 20min for us) to get the food."