Outings: 'It was fantastic. Except for Noddy and Big Ears'

I had been waiting for Segaworld to open for ages, ever since I saw stuff about it in my comic. I've got a Sega Mega Drive and a Mega CD and I love Sonic the Hedgehog - he's the top Sega character.

I went with mum and dad last Saturday to the grand opening, the day before it was opened to the public. We got in free and all the rides and games were free too.

It was absolutely fantastic, except for the Noddy and Big Ears characters, who were wandering around trying to hug everyone.

When you go in you go up huge escalators, past cinema-sized TV screens all linked together with video songs trying to burst your ear drums. It looks like a futuristic highway, 200 years in the future.

There are several different floors with games like you get in amusement arcades. But the rides were extremely lame, not scary or exciting.

There were long queues for all of them and they are not worth queuing for. And the queues hardly seemed to move, unlike at Walt Disney World, where you keep moving and it doesn't seem to take very long.

I played a preview for a new Sonic game for the Sega Saturn. It's the first three dimensional Sonic game yet. That was great fun.

The best game of all was a touch-sensitive one on a screen where bugs crawled very quickly out of cracks and quickly went back. You kill the bugs by getting a play hammer and hitting the TV screen. The touch sensitive screen senses where the hammer hits and kills the bugs. We played this for ages because it was such fun. I got the highest score of the day.

We spent four hours there and it wasn't enough really because of all the queuing. You need to spend about five or six hours there, I think, to enjoy Segaworld to the max.

Segaworld was only free for us because we were at the special preview. Normally you have to pay pounds 12 to get in if you are 16 or over and pounds 9 if you are 15 or under. And then you pay for the games on top of that. It is very expensive. The best tactic is to decide how much you are going to spend before you go and stick to that figure - like you do at a fair - otherwise you could end up poor!

Michael Berliner (aged 10 3/4)