This policy explains what happens to information when you visit themeparks-guide.com. It describes what the site does today, not what it might do later, and it is updated when the site changes.
Last updated: 21 September 2026
Who is responsible
themeparks-guide.com is published by Theme Parks Guide, an independent travel publication. Theme Parks Guide is the data controller for the information described below. You can reach us through the contact page, which is the route for any privacy question, access request or deletion request.
What we collect
Information you send us
The contact form asks for your name, email address and message. That information is emailed to the site’s administrator and is used only to reply to you and, where relevant, to correct an article. It is not added to a mailing list, not sold, and not passed to any third party. There is no newsletter on this site and no account to register for.
Information collected automatically
Like most websites, this one is served by a web host that keeps standard server logs — IP address, browser user agent, the page requested and the time of the request. These are used for security and diagnosing faults and are retained by the host on its own schedule. Cloudflare, which delivers the site, handles each request on its way through.
Analytics
This site uses Google Analytics 4 to understand which guides people read and how they arrive. Analytics sets cookies in your browser and reports aggregate information: page views, approximate location at city level, device type, referring source and time on page. IP addresses are truncated by Google before storage and we do not receive or store them. We cannot identify individual readers from analytics data and we do not try to.
You can switch analytics off in this site’s cookie settings at any time, opt out of Google Analytics on every site you visit by installing Google’s browser opt-out add-on, or block cookies in your browser settings. Whether it runs before you have made a choice depends on where you are reading from; see “Your choices” below.
Advertising
Advertising status as of 21 September 2026: no display advertising is served on this site, and no ad network runs on it. The booking links described under “Booking links and commission” below are a separate arrangement, and they are running now.
Theme Parks Guide intends to add display advertising delivered by Google AdSense. When advertising goes live, this section applies: Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this site. Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads based on your visit to this site and other sites on the internet. You can opt out of personalised advertising at any time through Google Ads Settings, and you can opt out of some third-party vendors’ use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info. Third-party vendors and ad networks other than Google may also serve ads on this site once advertising is live; those vendors’ own privacy policies govern their use of cookies. This paragraph will be updated with the specific arrangements in place on the day advertising begins.
Comments
Commenting is closed across this site. No comment data is being collected, and no comment form appears on any page.
Booking links and commission
Some links on this site earn a commission. Links to hotels, apartments and booking sites are handled by Stay22, a booking-link partner whose script turns them into commission-tracking links as the page loads. If you book after following one, the booking site pays us a commission; the price you pay is the same either way. Every guide says so at the top, and the affiliate disclosure sets out the arrangement in full.
What that means for your data needs spelling out, because it is not what a cookie notice usually describes. Stay22 does not set a cookie. It recognises your device from the characteristics of your browser — fonts, screen, language and similar details — and keeps an identifier in your browser’s local storage under the names visitor_id_id22 and cache_id22, so that a booking made later can be credited here. Like any service your browser connects to, it also receives your IP address and browser details when it loads, and it processes data outside the EU. Blocking third-party cookies does not stop any of this; the cookie settings on this site do.
Stay22 sits in the Advertising group of those settings and does not load at all until that group is allowed. We never see your name, your travel dates or your payment details — what comes back is a count of clicks and, sometimes, the fact that a booking happened. Once you are on a booking site you are under its privacy policy, not this one.
Cookies
Cookies currently set when you visit are:
- Google Analytics cookies (
_gaand related), used to distinguish returning visitors and measure sessions. These expire after up to two years unless you clear them, and they are set only once analytics is allowed to run. - Functional cookies set by WordPress and the contact form, used for spam prevention and to keep the form working across a page load.
- Your cookie choice (
cookie_consent_26eca6) — records the answer you give in the cookie dialog or bar, so that you are not asked on every page. It is set by this site and readable by nobody else; a companion cookie,cookie_consent_26eca6_loc, remembers for a day which country you are reading from, so the right rules apply without looking it up again. - Stay22, the booking partner, sets no cookie. Once it is allowed to run it keeps an identifier in your browser’s local storage instead, as described under “Booking links and commission” above, until you clear it or withdraw consent here, which clears it.
You can delete or block all of these through your browser settings. Nothing on this site requires cookies to read. The cookie policy lists every cookie and every item of browser storage in use, generated from the services actually running here.
Visitors in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland
Where the UK GDPR or EU GDPR applies, our lawful basis for processing is as follows. Contact form messages are processed on the basis of your consent, given by choosing to send the message, and to take steps at your request. Server logs are processed on the basis of legitimate interests in keeping the site secure and available. Analytics and the booking partner described above are processed on the basis of your consent: that is why, where the GDPR applies, neither runs until you have agreed, and why you can withdraw that agreement at any time from the Cookie settings link.
A consent tool now runs on this site. What it asks, and what may run before you answer, depends on where you are reading from; both are set out under “Your choices, and what runs before you make them” below.
You have the right to ask what personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to processing, and to complain to the data protection authority where you live. Requests go through the contact page. In practice, the only personal data this site holds that could identify you by name is the contents of contact form messages, which are deleted on request.
Your choices, and what runs before you make them
What runs before you choose depends on where you are reading from, because the law does. In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, and in Brazil, Chile, China, Israel, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, Türkiye and Vietnam, nothing beyond the strictly necessary runs until you answer the dialog on your first visit — not analytics, not Stay22 — and Reject all sits on that first screen next to Accept all, not behind a second click.
In the United States you are shown a bar rather than a dialog, and it is not only a notice: analytics starts on arrival there, but advertising and booking-partner scripts stay switched off until you answer it. In Switzerland you get the dialog too, but analytics starts on arrival there and only advertising and booking-partner scripts wait for your answer. Readers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates get a notice instead: everything described on this page starts when they arrive, the notice says so, and the same control switches it off. Everywhere else, and whenever we cannot tell where you are, the strictest setting applies: nothing beyond the necessary runs until you answer.
Your answer is kept on your own device, in a first-party cookie called cookie_consent_26eca6 that only this site can read, so you are not asked again on every page. An answer lasts up to a year, and a refusal given in the dialog six months, before you are asked again. The Cookie settings link in the footer of every page reopens the choice, and withdrawing is the same two clicks as agreeing: the scripts stop and what they stored on your device is cleared, including visitor_id_id22, cache_id22 and the thumbmark_* keys.
Refusing costs you nothing. Every guide here is readable in full either way, nothing is paywalled, and no part of Theme Parks Guide is held back from readers who say no.
If you are reading this in the United States
Several US states give you the right to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information, and those words are broader than they sound: letting an advertising or affiliate partner receive information about your visit can count as sharing even though no money changes hands for your data and we have never sold anything of the kind. Rather than argue the definition, Theme Parks Guide treats it as covered.
So the bar shown to US readers carries a Do not sell or share button, and for US readers the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page reads Do not sell or share my personal information. The button switches off everything except the strictly necessary — Stay22 and any ad partner included — and clears what Stay22 stored on your device if you had let it run; the link reopens the full choice at any time.
This site also honours Global Privacy Control. If your browser or an extension sends a GPC signal, it is treated as a valid opt-out on arrival — you do not have to find the control and click it as well, and we do not ask again on later visits. Do Not Track is a different and long-abandoned signal, and to be straight about it: this site does not act on DNT, because nothing agreed what it ought to mean.
The record kept of your choice
Proving that a choice was offered and honoured means keeping a record of it. Each answer is logged with the date and time, the two-letter country the choice was made from, which of the rule sets above applied, a reference to the exact wording you were shown, and the choice itself, against a random identifier generated for your browser.
That record contains no name, no email address and no IP address. It holds a salted hash of your browser’s user-agent string, and the salt changes every day, so two visits on different days cannot be linked back together through it. Records are deleted after 26 months. If you want to see or delete the entries tied to your browser, ask through the contact form.
Children
This site writes about family travel but is aimed at the adults planning it. It is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has sent us information through the contact form, tell us and it will be deleted.
External links
Guides link out to park operators, official ticket pages and other primary sources. Once you follow one of those links you are on someone else’s site, governed by their privacy policy. We have no control over what they collect.
Where a guide embeds something from another site — a map, a video, a post — that embed is held back behind a placeholder until the relevant category is allowed, so it cannot quietly set anything on your device before you have chosen. Clicking the placeholder loads that one item.
Changes to this policy
When this policy changes materially — for instance when display advertising goes live, or a partner is added or removed — the date at the top will be revised and the affected section rewritten to describe what is actually running. We do not backdate changes.