To be shocked at the cost of family days out?

If your children are still pre-school age, you might be better with a term time Monday to Friday Butlins or Haven holiday.

You can get some really cheap deals. It gives you a pool, often soft play, bits of entertainment etc. You can take your own food or some of the meal deals are excellent but you are not then buying three meals a day.

Plus it's easier getting small children to sleep in a static caravan with their own room than standing in the en suite in a hotel.

You could have a decent break for the cost of a day out.

I was accused of being a "cruel" mother by my SIL as during the recent two week half term, we only did one day out. The rest of the time we did things at home or with family/friends to their houses which the kids were very happy with! But according to my SIL I am "ruining their development" whatever that means.

I took my daughter and her friend to a play centre over Easter and it cost me nearly £50! Entry, plus a very very basic lunch for them and a couple of coffees came to £47. It wasn't even an hours entertainment and the stuff they had is exactly the same as what's in my garden. Completely extortionate but the place was packed.

The central London stuff is because rich tourists don't care what it costs.

Normal people just have to work around it, Tesco or national rail discounts. We always bring picnics and water bottles, and a visit to London eye for example will be part of someone's birthday present. We even walk to save on tube fare sometimes.

To be fair £24 for a family (2 adults 2 dc?) isn't extortionate. Of course it would be much better if it was free, but animals do cost money to maintain. I have a relative who is a vet and frequents zoos, and says it is so expensive to maintain animals with high standards of welfare. The electricity bill alone for some zoo enclosures can be be tens of thousands per annum.

We only go when I can find offers to bring the cost down.

If you're travelling by train to London, book attractions via the National Rail website to get 2-for-1 or 1/3 off lots and lots of attractions https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/days-out-guide/2for1-london/?gad_source=1&gclsrc=ds

Cadbury and Kellogg's often have 2-for-1 tokens on their wrappers.

Some local attraction annual memberships are also valid in city centre attractions. Eg Annual Membership to IWM because we live near Duxford also gets us in to the IWM HMS Belfast and the IWM War Rooms (and somewhere else I think).

Stay in a family room at a Travel Lodge/Premier Inn on the outskirts of the city and use public transport. Or camp (that might only be possible in London, don't know about other cities). Youth Hostels are also sometimes an option.

I have never found a way around the expense of show tickets when you need more than 1 or 2 seats together. We're a family of 6 and so we very very very rarely go to the theatre and tend to limit it to one parent plus interested child/ren rather than the whole family going when some may not be interested.

We limit eating "out". I hate making sandwiches, but a meal deal plus extras from the supermarket on the way to the zoo is a hell of a lot cheaper than the zoo cafe. Take snacks. The only food item I'll buy at the zoo/theme park etc is ice cream (and that's only because I can't take it in there myself!).

Shops etc at attractions are for pocket money in my family. If I was paying then they'd all want several things from the shop and I'd be £50+ down. I give nominal pocket money each week and they spend it on the days out. They buy less tat when they're paying themselves! Sometimes I'll buy a t shirt or something for one of them, but that would count as clothing budget rather than day out budget.

Tesco vouchers for dinner out at Pizze Express/Bella Italia etc. I save them all year and we eat out during the summer!

It's not easy or cheap. But you can make each and every bit of it cheaper, and the kids and you soon get used to the changes and don't resent not having the "expensive" experience.

Everything is expensive right now but there's a few things I do to try and keep costs down for days out:

1. We have memberships for English Heritage and National Trust (one through work and another is around £13 per month).
2. We take a picnic when we go out somewhere, or at the very least, snacks and a drink. We got hot drinks as a treat at a recent visit to a NT site and it was nearly £20 for 2 x coffees, 2 x cake slices and 2 x cookies(!)
3. I buy a soft play pass for the summer holidays for our local soft play (it was £11 per child last summer) and that's an easy, cheap activity that we do at least once a week when they're off school.
4. The park, playgrounds, local woods, etc are all free to go and explore.
5. Make use of free days out or activities - local museums are usually free if run by the council and do very cheap activities/events, Heritage Open Days, free farm Sunday, etc.
6. Put ice lollies in a Thermos flask and they will last without melting so saves you having to buy an ice cream from the extortionate ice cream van!
7. Give your child a couple of £s and see what they can find for themselves in the charity shop to bring home and play with.

Some places we don't even bother going to unless we've got a discount code/offer - Legoland, Sea Life Centre, etc are all so expensive!

It's definitely so much more expensive than it used to be. It's (admittedly a small) part of the reason we're not having a second child, as these kind of things would be totally out of our reach paying for the extra ticket. It's the same story with holidays.

In my childhood, we regularly did days out. My parents are the tightest people on the planet, so no way were they paying the equivalent to what today's prices are.

There is a Council park in the next town to us. It has a lovely cafe and a little nature area which used to be free to visit - deer, pigs etc nothing exotic. They added meerkats and it is now 24 pounds for a family ticket. I think this is a shocking price for families to pay ( doesn't affect us as kids are grown). They told me they had to charge to feed and care for the meerkats 🙄

We went to Whipsnade a few years ago (pre-pandemic) and for two adults and one child, plus taking the car into the park, was £101. We only stayed a couple of hours, as it rained so heavily, so really didn't get our money's worth.

We live very close to Whipsnade, so we then got annual passes. Three visits, and the pass has paid for itself.

I bought Alton Towers fast pass tickets for my daughter and granddaughter a couple of months ago, which were £350. I paid for fast pass so they didn't have to spend most of the day standing in queues.

But yes, I completely agree that the cost attractions are keeping families away.

We never went to any of the attractions until we were teens and could go with school. Which used to get a large discounted price.

My own family we use schemes to reduce the cost because no one likes paying full price when you can get it using reward points. We have a vast amount of points build up because we use the Tesco credit card for all our spending. Many LEGOLAND trips, pizza express lunches to be had.

We get all the benefits and Tesco get zero interest as it’s always paid off.

A treat doesn't have to be an expensive thing , it doesn't have to mean spending lots of money

I love a good picnic with good people , an impromptu party , jamming together

I think people have forgotten how to make their own fun in this commercialised society which is such a shame - not just for your pockets

I agree that prices have become extortionate.
We have Annual Passes for a few local attractions but even with them we spend a fortune while there - £50 on lunch, £20 on ice cream and drinks, £20 on fair rides, then the gift shop!! It's never under £100 for a day out and we do something at least every month, plus cheaper days out other weekends like swimming, soft play, park. We always do something.

We did Alton Towers at Easter which involved hotel stay. Then May half term we did 2nts Legoland, 2nts Paultons Park so 5 days away and the cost probably exceeded a thousand.

We're going to London for the day on Sunday (we live North East) couldn't justify accommodation in the budget but £164 return train, £199 theatre tickets, then with a HoHo bus, plus food/drinks we'll probably be at £6-700 for a single day out.

We live in London so luckily don't have the expense of travelling and overnight stays here. We've had to compromise on housing and lifestyle etc to be able to afford to live here, so to compensate we try to max out the free days out here every weekend - the museums, galleries, big parks, festivals, family fun days.

We have a zoo annual membership (I take my preschooler at least once a week) and my dcs both have disabilities so for paid attractions and theatre/concerts we usually just pay 2 child prices and DH and I get in free as carers. I wince at the cost of full price entry even though we're on a comfortable income.

@poshsnobtwit I am in my early sixties and have been to both of these zoos once. I hardly think wishing we could go more is unrealistic. A treat should be every few months, not once every 30 years.

My point was that it was never normal for even wealthy families to go regularly to these places - they were always expensive and cost prohibitive for many. We need to treat them as a treat, we are not depriving our dc if they don't go regularly. You've been to two great zoos, no need to disappoint yourself by going to others!

I think the problem with this kind of thing is that

a) it greatly increases stress levels across the whole of society (people are either experiencing more stress from higher prices or more stress from having to effing plan everything they do)

b) it reduces competition among competitors by making it harder to directly compare prices from one company to another. And also because it means that “other consumers” do not benefit from the price-pushing-down actions of the minority of consumers who are very cost-conscious.

See this good article discussing the problem:

https://www.tomforth.co.uk/oneprice/

Most of us don't care that much about prices. We don't drive around looking for the cheapest petrol station before we fill up our cars. We don't go to three shops before we buy the milk to put in our tea. We don't check the price of a pint in a pub before we order one. Once we're in a shop we probably care which tea is on offer and we can be tempted to switch brand by a discount, but that's only because it takes a few seconds to decide.

But that's not what everyone is like. A small but important percentage of us are very price conscious. We do all of the things I just listed to find the best price, and more. A retailer that offers a good price or a big discount will quickly find themselves making lots more sales as these people find and reward them. And this is the cool part. If there's one price, we all benefit from these heroes of capitalism incentivising shops to lower their prices. Attracting the 10, 20, or 30 percent of the most price conscious customers is worth it for a shop because of all the extra sales they deliver, even if the profit they make off the rest of us is slightly lower.

But what if the price conscious shoppers don't pay the same price as we do? What if they always pay the lower price? The incentive for shops to lower the prices that the rest of us pay is much lower, and we can expect higher prices than otherwise.

My concerns are not ridiculous. There is sound economic theory behind them, and good economic work to show that both in theory and in practice a single posted price delivers the best outcome for consumers. Of course the economics are loyalty cards that are free to sign up for is slightly more complex and nuanced than bartering vs. listed price systems — but the basic property of the system is importantly the same.

@poshsnobtwit I totally disagree. I have visited Chester zoo and London zoo both once in my life. I would love to go back to them.

@poshsnobtwit it is the well off famiies visiting paid attractions every weekend. That is not normal for a lot of people, hence this thread about how attractions are too expensive to visit.

We've been to a number of zoos and it's the one thing I would say is a waste of money. Most of them you don't get much proximity to the animals, you get a far better view watching the TV programmes!

No one is saying it's a good thing to never have these experiences? You said we shouldn't have to accept the way of the 70s/80s where children didn't do these things regularly. I'm saying it's fine to not think you need to be doing this regularly. There is definitely now this expectation IME, and it's wrong.
And I think there's a big difference between not ever leaving your housing estate, to visiting paid attractions every weekend.

@poshsnobtwit I grew up on an estate that lots of kids had never left during their childhood. How is that a good thing? You are left as a young adult without basic experiences middle class children have had.

@ARichtGoodDram that only works if you live pretty close. We do not live close to any really good zoo, it is always a long trip away.

I don't think children's outcomes are improving because they are going more frequently to zoos and theme parks, it doesn't make our world any larger. We know that this current generation of adolescents have increased obesity, levels of anxiety/depression and overall mental health issues. No one is saying that we shouldn't go at all, more that is isn't an indicator of poverty if you aren't spending every weekend in a paid activity. It's like now a holiday in the UK is frequently referred to as a 'staycation' as it's not a 'proper' holiday if you aren't going abroad.
My 6 year old neice went to a birthday party recently, where the grandfather did very traditional party games (which cost nothing) in the garden. Things like Simon says, hiding certain objects with a 20p taped on, and a memory game where objects were put on a tray, covered with a towel and then each person had a turn trying to remember what had been removed. The children all came out saying it had been the best party ever, as it was nothing they had done before. It was very refreshing that they really enjoyed something that wasn't the usual very overpriced identikit soft play/ceramic painting birthday party.

For zoos it’s worth keeping an eye out on deals where you pay for one day and can return as many times you like for a year.

Some offer it all year round, but some mainly offer it in winter when numbers are lower

I played in the streets and enjoyed it. But life has changed. Most of us have much larger personal worlds than people did in the 70s.