Theme Park Saver

After visiting Thorpe Park and Alton Towers over and over in the same year, it’s likely you’ll eventually get bored of the ride lineup and food offerings they have there and you’ll want to visit a fresh, new park which isn’t too hard to get to and isn’t going to break the bank of doing a big European trip.

Emerald Park near Dublin can luckily be visited on the cheap and is very day-trippable from most UK airports. It has a great ride and coaster lineup including the fantastic Na Fianna Force as well as a headliner woodie called The Cu Chulainn (pronounce it, I dare you) which is worth visiting for especially for how low-cost this can be done. This trip can even be done cheaper than day-tripping to a UK park not local to you by train or car because of how cheap the flights and overall costs are. Read on to see how you can do this for yourself..

Flights ✈️

Now, Dublin is one of the cheapest destinations to fly to from most UK airports due to it being within the UK Common Travel Area so you can get return flights from as little as £26. London Gatwick, London Stansted, Nottingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds, Edinbrugh, Liverpool and Newquay all have multiple flights a day to Dublin with Ryanair which makes this trip perfect if you’d like to visit new theme parks or test the waters out with your first European park.

With how close the park is to Dublin airport, you can even do this in an extreme day trip (fly out early morning and back the same evening) or if you’d rather see a bit of Dublin then stay the night somewhere cheap and make it into a weekend. If you’re flexible with dates and want to find the cheapest possible, I would use Skyscanner or my personal favourite Google Flights and change it to a 0 day trip if planning to do this as an extreme day trip and then try and find an early morning flight that lands in Dublin before the park opens and with good time to leave the park in the evening and get to the airport in good time.

Tickets 🎟️

This is the fairly simple part as the best and easiest way to buy park tickets is direct from the Emerald Park website where booking at least before midnight the day you visit will cost you €44 or on the day €55. Like our one of our best Theme Park Saver tip says, always buy tickets in advance to avoid any surplus costs on the day and uneccessary queues/time wasted when you could be in the park.

The website seems to be the only trustworthy and reliable outlet to buy park tickets, however, if you have a Blackpool Pleasure Beach Platinum Pass (normally on sale for £125) you do get a 1-day Emerald Park ticket free as part of the pass benefits saving you €44 for admission. More information can be read on this in our guide to the Blackpool Pleasure Beach Platinum Pass and whether it’s worth purchasing one.

Another way to get a cheaper ticket is through owning a Roller Coaster Club of Great Britain membership which is just £16 for the year for anyone to join and means you can get a 1-day park ticket at Emerald Park for €32 instead of €44. If you also plan to use the other benefits of a RCCGB membership or attend any of their trips, this works out to be very cost-effective however, it states that you must email the park in advance before buying your ticket to avoid disappointment.

One more big Theme Park Saver tip is that they sell a discounted-rate ticket for guests with a disability or medical condition (similar to the criteria needed for a Ride Access Pass in UK parks) for only €27. The criteria for this is very vague being smiliar to the Ride Access Pass system used in the UK so qualifying for it is likely easier than thought and what makes it better is that it includes free entry for their carer or +1, making it around €13.50 each for a park ticket if split evenly!

A childrens ticket (so only includes park entry, the zoo and rides in their junior zone) is also slightly cheaper at €40 and their senior ticket for guests over 65 is €32 if this helps to save you a bit more money.

Transport (the important bit) 🚗

Now to get from the airport to the park isn’t the simplest as there is no direct transport link however, depending on which way you do it can save you a lot of money! The two main options are either getting an Uber/taxi which will set you back around €50 (or even cheaper if split between people) or getting the bus which is far cheaper.

The bus is the most cost-effective way to get there coming to around €4 for a round trip to/from the park but it’s important you know what you are doing. When I last visited, you catch one bus (the 109A) from Dublin Airport (Zone 13) to Ashbourne and then another (the 105) from Ashbourne which stops directly outside the front entrance of the park. It’s about an hour each way including the changeover in Ashbourne which is conveniently next to a big Tesco if you want to stock up on Irish snacks (like Tayto Crisps and Club Orange!) during the changeover. It all sounds very complicated but can save you an awful lot of money by doing this over an Uber (and you get to see some of the more rural parts of Ireland!).

Another important thing to note is that Irish buses (or these ones at least from what we have been told) are pre-book only via the TFI Go app. Make sure you have this app downloaded and have created a TFI account before visiting and have selected Bus Eireann when prompted as this is the bus service that runs both routes. The app does not take Apple Pay or any similar contactless methods being card-only so make sure you already have your card details pre-entered or have your debit/credit card at hand on the day to enter in. It’s annoying having to do this but it should save time and bother with the bus driver if there’s a group of you going.

It may be different when you visit but these are the bus stops you want to enter on the app and purchase for each direction (taken from my trip in June 2025)-

Dublin Airport to Ashbourne to Emerald Park

Emerald Park to Ashbourne to Dublin Airport

Summary💸

So in summary, I did Emerald Park as an extreme day trip back in June 2025 and paid £30 for the return flights with Ryanair (arriving in Dublin for 8:45am and leaving at 7:55pm), €43 (around £35) for the park ticket and around £4 return for the four buses to/from the airport to the park totalling this extreme day trip to only £69!

And then of course, transport to/from your UK airport must be factored in as well as food, merch and whether you decide to stay the night in Dublin but I won’t include that in the total price as it’ll likely variate.

It is a really great park worth visiting with Na Fianna Force being one of the best suspended coasters in Europe (at least in my opinion) and The Cu Chulainn being a great wooden coaster by The Gravity Group which are a very rare manufacturer to come by in Europe.

If you need any help, advice or tips booking a trip to Emerald Park, feel free to reach out and I can see what I can do 🙂 

Dan