Bunratty Castle and Folk Park
We are traveling to Ireland in June for 3 weeks and will have a car. During one week of the three, we will have a home base in Galway where our son and his wife will join us for a quick trip. We are thinking about several day trips to the north and a couple of day trips south. Our daughter in law's great grandmother came from Limerick so this is on our radar for an outing. I was also wondering about a half day or full day at Bunratty Castle and Folk Park. Does this seem like a quality experience to a first time visitor to Ireland or is it kind of Disneyish?
My comparisons would be that we have gone to Warwick Castle where we liked exploring the grounds, especially on the day when we were there where they had people in costume doing reenactments. We've also been to open air living history museums in Germany and liked those. On the negative side we thought the canned entertainment/dinner nights like we experienced in Howth, Ireland (arranged for our students by a travel agent) seemed contrived and unauthentic.
That said, have any of you experienced some of the things Bunratty offers and do you recommend it to others traveling to Ireland and how much time would you allow for a visit?
I've looked at the Bunratty website and I'm leaning towards going but I'd like to hear from others who've gone. Our 1 week visitors will only have time for our Galway day trips, experiencing Galway itself and Dublin for a couple of days before their flight back to the US. We will continue to explore more of Ireland after they've gone.