Party ideas for an 11 (not gaming!)

[cherrylola]

Hoping there are some fab ideas here please! All my son’s friends are having gaming based parties this year (yawn). Although he would enjoy that (and they’ll all end up here doing that after anyway) I’d really like to come up with something better / more fun/ take them away from the screens for a while.
we live in a city so lots of options but what would a group of 11 year olds go mad for ?? It’s a group of boys and a couple of girls but the girls aren’t fussed about gaming

I will ask him of course just he’ll definitely feel pressured to go with the ‘norm’ of the gaming thing so I’d like to have a couple of really good ideas to also share with him as he’s not terribly creatively minded about this kind of thing!

Hoping mumsnet has got some killer ideas :)

Ten pin bowling, laser tag/nerf gun activity thingy??

Go karting?

We are doing highropes

Laser quest? Jump Inc trampolines? Ninja warrior? Crazy golf? Have a great day!

Go karting, go ape, clip & climb, plaster tag, escape room are all popular round me

Climbing party it started 3 of his friends going to climbing club

My eldest is 12. Birthday outings have been escape room, local activity centre (go karting, archery, zorbing) and the indoor climbing wall place.

Kayaking / paddle boarding

We had a gaming bus party for ds when he was 10 and they all loved it but he hadn’t been to one before and none of his friends had done one at that point so it was quite the novelty.
Something like TopGolf is quite good fun, you can do all the food and drink stuff there too and just come back for cake.
As you’re in a city you probably have some other really great options, we are in a relatively big town but there is a limit to what’s about, and what is here has been done to death. Which isn’t a problem if they still enjoy it of course.
We recently discovered something called Roxy Lanes (or something like that) when we were visiting dd at university, it was a perfect rainy afternoon place to appease everyone from the 20 year old dc down to the youngest 12 year old. There were a variety of games, we did non ice curling (brilliant fun), pool and the baseball batting thing which they all loved but I hated because I was crap at it 😂 there were loads of options but we only those three as we had to be out with under 18’s. Worth checking out if you’ve not been.

Oh, and escape rooms can be really good but you might benefit from having an older teen or an adult in them, although they’re often suitable from age 8/10+ they can be very tricky!

Crazy golf? We did that for an 11th birthday.

Is there on outdoor assault course near you? One of my kids recently went to a party at one and was really good fun.

We did an immersive VR experience for DDs 11th birthday - kind of gaming but we were all walking around in an immersive setting, it was such good fun!!!

We all loved it so much (kids & us adults) that we are looking at a VR simulated go karting session next.
Kind of gaming but so so so much more fun

Go karting was my first thought.

Its all gaming, paint balling or karting around here.