Xplosive Events レビュー 639

Badly organised event. Very poorly organised or the site is not suitable, probably both. Fireworks were supposed to start at 8pm. We left at 8.40 and they still hadn't started. No communication as to why. £5 to £8 per person for rides. £10 for a cheap hot dog. Sound system and lights were good. I would avoid at all costs

Went to Abingdon fireworks last November… despite the issues with fireworks not being very visible through the smoke and the lack of bonfire to start with, we did actually really enjoy it. Stepson loved the monster trucks and the rides, yes they are pricey but we didn’t expect much less and the fireworks were pretty cool. We seem to have had a smoother ride than most with the parking as we got in quite early and left while the last lot of fireworks were going. Probably didn’t spend more than 30 mins queueing either side of the event.
So with that said, we’ve not only booked tickets for the August fireworks in 2026, but we’ve also bought tickets for 2 other families plus a gazebo pitch. £270 odd of money is a lot, to then be slapped with a £20 “service fee”!!! Nearly £300?!? I am quite angry about this and the only thing that stopped me from not going was the fact we were going with other families. What an absolute joke, I will be making a complaint and requesting my money back for the “service fee” because I’m not sure what sort of service the £20 covered when I had to do it all myself! £3 yeah fine, but not £20!!

Booked a family ticket which ended up costing nearly £100 Inc Parking.
When you initially walked in, it was chaos! First thing the kids see is the monster truck rides, which of course, is an additional cost.
Once we convinced them to go past, the next thing you come to is market stalls...again, run!
We decided to grab some food first, we went to the stall with the smallest que, we should've read the field as the food wasn't great however the price wasn't far off Michelin.
Once getting over the heart attack, of course the kids wanted to go on the rides next, obviously these also weren't included in the fee as these were £5+ Per Person. Possibly one attraction wasn't but that was over in 30 seconds.
After almost spending the daily budget in an hour, we decided to watch a couple of shows, kids excited for the monster trucks & us adults excited for the motorbikes....it wasn't worth us getting excited. The motorbike show was impressive but it wasn't thrilling, possibly saw 8 jumps in total between two guys....taking turns. Monster trucks just seemed to be racing up & down, the kids dragged us away within 5 minutes.
We then come across a donut stall....£5 per donut.
Drink stall....£11 per adult drink.
The only thing that seemed to be free was the live music...which took the kids attention for 10 minutes.
Possibly other stalls but everything was just so chaotic.
I do think they should have staff/stall reps going around asking kids if they want to get involved in the free things, or make it very obvious when something is for free.
It honestly would've been cheaper to all go to chessington for the day!

Hi,
I just wanted to take this time to say how bad the traffic system was which resulted in my family missing the fireworks. We got to Abingdon at just after 4 and were queuing for over 2 hours. My little boy is almost 2 and hadn’t had his dinner, we were hoping we’d have this in there, also my partner is pregnant and was desperate for the toilet. We couldn’t possibly wait in the queue any longer as we had not moved, even half a mile for hours. It was ridiculous, we’ve been to your event before and we understand it’s busy, but we never waited longer than 20 minutes to get in and even leaving. We left in time to get there for the 6pm show but when it reached past 6pm and we still were hardly moving, we had to make the decision to go and get food for our son and use the toilet. I would like a full refund including the car park. I can imagine I am not the only one to be complaining as there were so many people in the queue and when we left, the queue went back for miles with people who had left after us. It’s not acceptable, our friends continued to wait (having no children) and were refused entry as the car park was full. Hearing this, I was glad we made the decision to leave as we would have wasted more time stuck in the car to have the same outcome (missing the fireworks). Regards,

Abingdon fireworks
Been there many times in summer and it was good but this time couldn't see fireworks with big smoke . Getting out of carpark was an absolute chaos. Really disappointed 😞

The Parking infrastructure was a joke. 4 hours + to queue, and I did not even make it to the event. I had my hungry 3 year old son with me as we planned to get food on site. The roads were grid-locked and no hope for emergency services.
They are also declining refunds to a clear dangerous and IMO illegal event due to poor planning. Accoutability needs to be made with even organises.

This event was shockingly badly organised. The entire experience was ruined by a complete failure of logistics.
It took us three and a half hours to travel just 10 miles. The organisers made a big point of having 'fixed' the traffic management for this year, which is a complete joke and, frankly, mis-selling the event. It was chaos.
To make matters worse, there was a near-total absence of staff. There was no one directing traffic, parking, or pedestrians. The only staff we could see were gathered in one place chatting, completely ignoring the gridlock.
The fireworks themselves were irrelevant. The horrendous, stressful journey and lack of any management on-site made the entire evening a write-off. We will not be returning.

I’m not sure where to start with this review.

I live one junction away from Abingdon Airfield. It’s normally a 12 min drive. Today I allowed an hour for the journey but it took 2. I had three realistic options based on their colour coded routes. The A34 was complete gridlock so I opted to go via Marcham. I later found out that most people on the A34 never made it in at all.

The bonfire was due to be lit at 7pm. At 730pm they were still pouring petrol all over it to try and get it to light. Eventually, when they did try and set it alight it just didn’t go up as expected and within moments staff were clambering all over the petrol sodden wood to try and get the thing alight. The correct decision at that point should have been to abandon the fire and move on with the evening. That being said, it did eventually go up, however, the delay meant they couldn’t start the fireworks because someone had the bright idea of putting an enormous fire right in front of the fireworks display, so when they did start, 1hr15 mins late at 9.15pm, you couldn’t actually see them.

We made the decision to leave 10 mins in to the display, as did thousands of others, a) because you couldn’t really see the fireworks anyway and b) I knew the traffic was going to be a nightmare.

The event has huge potential. For next year I suggest the following:

1. Limit the number of tickets to avoid the chaos that prevented many people getting in tonight. The crowd size was definitely not safe.

2. Have decision points. If something hasn’t happened by a certain point, move on to the next event.

3. Put numbers or letters at the end of each row of cars so people can find cars at the end of the night. The idea of dropping a pin on Google maps is useless when the phone networks completely stop working as they did tonight.

4. Don’t put the fire infront of the fireworks display. Look at the weather forecast and build it down wind of the fireworks.

5. Have two sets of portaloos, one at each end of the event rather than one big area at the entrance.

In sum, lots of potential but a complete disaster tonight due to traffic and poor planning / execution.

My review was deleted from Google so I’m giving this a go instead. Makes me realise what a sham all these review sites are when legitimate reviews get deleted.

The fair is the big attraction for kids but some of the rides took down thier prices and were charging silly prices. £10 for a bumper car.others were upto £8.several rides were clearly priced and were £5 which i felt was fair.to much light during fireworks which obscured its visibility quite abit

Another absolute shambles of an event.

The organiser spent months on local social media pages going on about how he’s spent/invested a 5 figure sum in to traffic management & how everyone will be so suprised at how much smoother entering & exiting will be for the traffic getting in to be even worse than previous years…he either didn’t really spend that money or if he did he should be asking for it back as the traffic was worse than ever. Back to the drawing board on that one…

Also the fireworks starting an hour late…the same happened last year “apparently” because the bonfire was to big & because of queues to get in to the event. So this year they made the bonfire bigger and the smoke covered the fireworks and again the traffic was worse than previous years.

As for exiting, you have people saying people were cutting across the field to push in so they could get out faster, but others saying they were sent that way by the traffic stewards, staff clearly weren’t all on the same page!

Some traffic could be spared if they put a pedestrian entrance in the Wootton side of the airfield, I know I’d rather walk in than have to sit 3 hours in traffic to go less than a mile down the road.
I much prefer organised displays instead of people letting them off willy nilly & I love a firework but all events by this company cause a massive hassle.

As for people saying things are to blame such as the weather etc, it’s the same with every event that is held, the weather has nothing to do with it, the fact of the matter is that the organisers never learn from their previous mistakes, they couldn’t run a bath let alone a huge event like this one, all of these bad reviews speak for themselves, maybe it’s time to quit whilst they’re ahead

As seen as my review from google has magically disappeared, I shall write it on here too …..

Absolute shambles.
Says to make sure you arrive by 5, chance would be a fine thing if you could even get near there!
Sat in traffic for well over 3 hours and still nowhere near the front. As a family of 4, we can safely say NEVER GO HERE. Sitting in standstill traffic with screaming children is not what we had planned for our day out. Won’t even make it in time for the fireworks! Cant wait to watch them from the car as we try and get out the traffic to turn around and go home. Will be demanding a refund!
“UKs largest firework show” more like the UKs largest traffic jam! Very very disappointed.

Update…. We finally decided to leave the “queue” at 8.15pm. Fireworks hadn’t even started. Traveled 1.5 hours to get home, best part of the night.

This was my first visit to the Abingdon fireworks event. The journey, which should have taken approximately 45 minutes, instead took two hours due to a severe tailback on the A34 caused by the volume of attendees. Fortunately, I had left very early and managed to arrive just before 6 p.m.—I dread to imagine what conditions were like later in the evening.

The fairground itself offered a good selection of rides, although the £5 charge per ride felt extortionate. The food stalls were similarly disappointing: overpriced and of poor quality. I purchased a bag of candy floss for my son, only to find it rock hard. The DJ also played several songs containing profanities, despite the event clearly being family-oriented, and then attempted to dismiss the language by claiming the words were French, which only made the situation more inappropriate.

The bonfire produced such an overwhelming amount of smoke that it noticeably obscured the fireworks. Nevertheless, I still felt the display itself was impressive once visible.

We left the site as soon as the fireworks finished , and this is when the true chaos unfolded. Prior to attending, I had read the organisers’ assurances on Facebook that a new ANPR one-way system, supported by 120 stewards, had been implemented to improve parking. This system required a £5 fee, which implied a level of organisation and efficiency. In reality, the parking arrangements were absolutely dreadful. Leaving the car park was complete carnage: no organisation, no visible stewardship, and cars forming their own lanes in a wholly uncontrolled and unsafe manner. It took two full hours to exit the car park.

I have attended many large-scale events, some with far higher capacity, and I have never experienced parking management as catastrophically inefficient as this. Of the few stewards I did see—no more than five—none were actively directing traffic; instead, they stood at the end of the road chatting and contributing nothing to the situation. Under these circumstances, all parking fees should unquestionably be refunded. Charging attendees £5 for such an appalling experience is indefensible.

Despite all of this, my five-year-old son remained blissfully unaware of the surrounding chaos and thoroughly enjoyed his evening, which was the one redeeming aspect of the event.

I strongly don’t recommend this event!
Me and my partner were really looking forward to going to see the fireworks. We aimed to arrive for 6:30ish as we weren’t bothered about seeing anything before the fireworks.
We live less than an hour away from this event and it took us 3 whole hours to get in. 2 WHOLE HOURS OF VERY SLOW MOVING/STAND STILL TRAFFIC!!!
By the time we had got into the car park it was already 8pm and we actually thought there was no point in going in because we will get caught in a long queue to get out so we stood at our car waiting for the fireworks to start. However the fireworks didn’t start till 9pm so they were an hour late!!!!
Once the fireworks had finally started you couldn’t even see them due to all the smoke from the bonfire filling the sky. After 10 minutes we got in the car at 9:10 and drove home so we didn’t get caught in queues🙄
Overall a big waste of time and money!!
No wonder you can’t get a refund because everyone would want one!

Abingdon fireworks 2025.The worst fireworks I have ever seen covered by a massive smoke from the bonfire. Extremely loud music everywhere, rides and food overpriced, parking was a nightmare. Not worth the money. I’ve been three times, this one was the worst and sadly the last one.Google removes bad reviews.Save money and avoid this place.

Unfortunately getting into they event & exiting was an absolute shambles, gridlocked. Thousands of people going to one location just doesn’t work, definitely need to limit tickets. So much smoke & fog you could hardly see the fireworks. Let’s not talking about the pricing of fair rides & food 😐

So much smoke from the bonfire you couldn’t see the fireworks. Disappointing.

Every year we give you the benefit of the doubt that you've "fixed the traffic management". Every year we say never again. Tonight, after 2 hours to do 13 miles from Oxford to Abingdon, we eventually gave up and missed it. This is the last time. It's a shame, because the fireworks are normally great.

Really poorly managed event at Ducklington on 9th November. They delays the fireworks for when it started raining, it was late for kids even before they delayed it.

They didn’t advertise the updated time change even though they had ticket holder details. They must have known they were late when we arrived at 5.45, the gate staff told no one.

Would give minus points for dangerous events and bad customer service. Should be shut down as a company!!

Difficult to comment as we never made it into the event. The traffic management was, being kind, shambolic. We sat in queues for over two hours and eventually gave up and went home.
I contacted the organisers and asked for a refund. They admitted to the shocking traffic management but said that as the show went ahead no refunds would be made but as a goodwill gesture, they offered us free entry to their show at Abingdon.
We do not live in the area (we were on holiday) and Abingdon is around three hours for us so not really an option. I’ve asked them to reconsider their reply so let’s see if they do the right thing.