I took my 6 year old and my 2 year old to Little Acorns softplay in Worcester - and we all had a really great 2 hours there!
As many soft plays are, it’s on a trading estate. There weren’t many car parking spaces but we got one, despite there being a party on at the time - perhaps locals know where else to park.
It’s £8.50 for 2 hours, and considering I’d toyed with the idea of going to Legoland Discovery in Manchester this weekend which would have been over £10 for each kid (and that’s half price on a summer offer) and £20 for each adult, £17 for 3 of us to enter seemed ok - and it especially seemed good considering what a good time we all had.
It’s not run in sessions - you just turn up (the website says to ring to check if you’re going in the afternoon incase they’re quiet and have decided to close early) and sign in, writing down the time you’ve entered. They take the kids shoes and you write down the number of the pouch they’ve put the shoes in. This means if you come back and it’s more than 2 hours since you signed in, they’ll charge you extra.
Overall, it’s a little rough around the edges, but in a “someone took over a derelict unit on an industrial estate and did a really good job of doing it up” - rather than “someone spent millions of pounds building a softplay here”. And I’m happy with that. There were lots of toilets, as you’d expect, with good space to change a baby.
Inside one of the first things you notice is that there are people cleaning constantly - which is great, as we all know the reputation soft plays have as a germ den. There were girls walking around spraying surfaces in the cafe the whole time we were there.
The soft play itself has a lot of variety which is great - it’s the only one we’ve been to with a basket ball court! Whilst the toddler area has ride on cars. I did feel like the toddler area, and another separate baby area, were a little separate to the main area if you were trying to keep an eye on multiple kids at once (which I was, but we just all stuck together) but I don’t really know how they could help that. Plus with a high latch on the exit and the whole “signing out your shoes” thing, it felt a bit secure.
My two particularly liked the long slide - which is a proper high, long slide but one a cautious 2 year old was happy doing - and a game where you had to put balls up a tube which sucks them into an overhead container which then empties on you when it’s full. There’s also an air pressure target shooting game and a small climbing wall area by the sports court.
I was wondering if my 10 year old would be entertained there, and yes - I think he would for a while, especially with the basket ball hoops. I didn’t see an electronic element like there are at some others, where you race yourself to hit the right coloured lights, and overall I think the audience is more likely 8 and under, but all kids love a soft play for a while, don’t they?!
The thoughts and views expressed in this blog post are the author’s own and not that of Activibees.com or it's operators.
