AIBU to think family days out have become unaffordable?

[ThisAmpleCritic]

Half term. Trying to find things to do to keep the kids occupied. Why is everything SO expensive?! We’ve exhausted the local free activities including various walks, playgrounds, splash parks, travelled to the nearest beach. We want to do something a bit more special and have looked at more “day out” type activities, including children’s theme park, zoo, steam train, castle, national trust etc but it’s just unaffordable. It frustrates me how as a family we’re considered good earners but we just don’t have enough left over to justify £100+ for one day out, not including travel and food and the inevitable ice cream and gift shop visit.

Is anyone else struggling with the cost of family days out or AIBU?

Yes and no.

when I was a kid I think we went to a zoo once a year or less. My parents were wealthy but our lives just didn’t center around child activities.

Now with my kids we rarely do big days out - we have a local membership to a farm park and do simple things. I know what you’re saying but I also think as a generation of parents we just have elevated expectations massively. Kids are doing more and more and more and I think we are all just exhausting ourselves.

It was always expensive. We rarely went to the zoo growing up because it cost a lot. We went to Thorpe Park yesterday and it was £25 each so x5 £100, we took water bottles but did buy lunch rather than carry a picnic so that was £45 plus fuel and parking. It was roughly £200 for a great day out with our 3 teens. I think that’s okay - treats should be something you save up for. There were also people there with fast track passes for whole families at £200 per person so £1k for a family of 5 - that felt mad to dh and I. The queues weren’t even that bad.

You can do those things for far less than £100. Family tickets for NT don't cost anywhere near £100 and you only need to go a few times to make membership worthwhile, so if you join, you'll then have a year's worth of cheap days out.

You don't need to buy tat from the gift shop.

Take your own picnic. The food in the cafes is not good, you have to queue for ages and it goes without saying that it's stupid money.

OP I hear you, it’s all so expensive now isn’t it? And social media makes it look like everyone is out all the time at attractions and you feel guilty.

I don’t know how old your DC are or where you are in the country but a few things that work for us:

• A handful of memberships which offer lots of free options up and down the country. We do National Trust and the Art Fund plus London Zoo (which also covers whipsnade) It’s incredible how much free or very very cheap kids activities museums and properties covered by the Art Fund/ NT offer - Lego exhibitions, playgrounds, treasure hunts, historical re-enaction etc. We don’t do much outside those membership.
• Legoland is a once a year treat, usually October half term and I juggle Bluelight, Tesco vouchers and Kelloggs vouchers to pay for it.
• Packed lunch ALWAYS and then just buy ice cream/cake and hot chocolate
• DC get £5 per week pocket money as standard and if they want to spend that in the gift shop then that’s up to them, otherwise we don’t go.

Aware that the above still represents massive privilege but it helps us manage things.

We went to visit a stately home - four adults and two children (and two children under 5 and free) = £180 entry fee.

Insane.

They have always been expensive.

This.. we rarely got to do these things, maybe once a year and we had money. I think the expectations have changed

They've not all but you have to plan carefully, which is difficult if you want to be spontaneous.

Also just to say that I massively agree about the cost of those farm parks with soft play barns. We don’t do them, but the NT and Whipsnade have amazing playgrounds. I often ask for a contribution to a family membership when people ask what the DC want for Xmas

When the kids were little we would do a ‘big’ activity pretty much every day during the holidays. Swimming, bowling, farm, soft play etc. I guess it was cheaper because of toddler rates and so on but now, as you say, it’s easily £100 for a family of 4 to go to the zoo. Same for something like the sea life centre, which my kids tend to run round and treat it as a race 😭

This half term we haven’t done one big day out. Not even free things like the beach because it’s not actually free is it, there’s parking or train fares. A round of ice creams is £15ish for 4 people. Even taking a picnic to save on lunch, it still costs so much and I don’t want to go and keep chanting ‘no’ to every request, that’s just miserable.

Maybe when they are older and actually get something meaningful from the experience we will start again but for now, we are not spending the cash.

We went to a zoo a handful of times in my whole childhood, and a theme park maybe two or three times. We weren't badly off, but those things have always been expensive.

Now with my own children we do something like that maybe once a year as a treat - the rest of the time it's cheap or free things. We do have National Trust membership though.

I think they’ve always been expensive. Big days our were rare and memorable treats when I was growing up. I was expected to occupy myself most of the time in the holidays. Either reading, drawing or out with neighbourhood kids. Days out as a family were on the moors or at the beach with packed lunches.

I agree - there’s only so many times you can go to parks without going crazy so the idea of a national trust membership would not excite me in the slightest.

I took two DC swimming last weekend and it cost £40 for us (+DH). Weekend before that we went to see some animals in a local “zoo” - more like a small conservation centre and that was £60. It was so small we spent maybe an hour there.

This is nothing new , my children are now in their 20/30s and it was much the same . The best way to do it is to buy annual passes and use them well , yes it’s more expensive upfront but you could always get them for Christmas / birthday gifts from relatives ( or money towards ) . The other advantage of passes is that you don’t really care if you only spend an hour or two somewhere whereas if you’ve paid £100 on the day to get in you feel you need to get your moneys worth .

I agree with PP - yes and no. There was another thread on this topic recently too, I think.

We tend to only have a couple of big expensive days out per year at big attractions and I’d expect that to be really expensive because of the cost of minimum wage labour being so high.

I think costs overall are so much higher, because petrol is expensive and also the cost of parking has shot up eg if you go to the beach. It’s impossible to get a cheap train anywhere any more.

We are quite lucky to live a 20 min drive from a forest with cycling trails and a free adventure play area, so we regularly do that and take our own snacks and drinks. The only obvious cost is parking (£3.60 for four hours or £7 for the day). But of course there was the up-front cost of buying our bikes and a car rack to carry them to the forest.

I think there is often a lot of pressure to be out and about doing touristy things, and in reality a lot of the time we have as much fun doing simpler things.

I work PT so have less disposable income than most. But, I have a few annual passes (small theme park chain, indoor inflatable, National Trust and a wildlife park) which give me a bit more freedom to take my kids to nice places throughout the year without needing to pay each time. Often for birthdays or Xmas, I ask family to contribute towards the cost of them as they can be expensive. This works for me and my family.

Completely agree. I am stunned by how much time and money parents put into activities and days out. By all means scouts, ballet lessons or similar but family days out when I was small were few and far between. We were expected to play by ourselves. Mum wasn’t expected to entertain us. Nor mum and dad. In fact Dad only had four weeks holiday and so two weeks in Summer, one week at Christmas and odd days.

Yes it’s expensive but I try to work out value for money. So a theme park might seem really expensive but then we could easily spend £30+ on a fair and that’s only an hour (or even less).

There’s a thread on this topic every year and there are those of us who budget and take picnics and those that eat out as well, visit the gift shop etc. Personally I’d rather pay for a great attraction as a treat and then take our own food and drinks.

Yes, things are expensive, but it's because business costs have risen out of proportion over the past few years. Wages, power, overheads, have all gone up rapidly far higher than general inflation, not helped by the ridiculous hike in employers NIC! The organisations running attractions have to increase prices to keep up with their increased costs.

Another factor is all the discounts they feel they have to give, i.e. OAP discounts, family discounts, "blue card" discounts, benefit claimant discounts etc., which mean people paying "normal" prices have to pay more to subsidise the discounted ones. If an attraction doesn't offer these kinds of discounts, they get slated on social media with the "sad face" etc. But someone has to pay!

@TY78910 I agree swimming is pricey! Our nearest water slide /wave pool is £55 for 2 adults and one child for 90 mins. It’s £18 for 2 adults and one child for an hour at my local pool.

We decided we would make swimming a big thing this year so we have membership- it’s £29 a month and my kid swims for free. So overall we are paying about £3 per swim and the more often we go, the better value it becomes!

It was always expensive.
As a child we went once or twice a year.
Families expect a lot more today.

I agree with others - I think the theme park/zoo type days out have always been expensive but now people expect to do them more. For us those are a 2 or 3 times a year at most treat and we use discount vouchers and take our own food. We also avoid the gift shop :)

We have National Trust membership and that gets you lots of days out, and if you use it a lot works out very little per visit.

The majority of "days out" are the things you've mentioned. If you've exhausted everything local (in less than a week?) maybe try travelling a bit further afield. At the age that your children sound like they are, an unfamiliar park with a decent playground can be spun out to fill a big chunk of the day if you take a picnic. Only cost then is petrol (and parking if not free).

"inevitable ice cream and gift shop visit."

They aren't compulsory.

It is expensive. A theme park is a whole days fun but you’re still talking 100 plus drinks or an ice cream.
There is always extras.
Even free events set you back a few pound.

Agree with other posters. Growing up we went to theme parks etc day trip to the coast once or twice a year. NT membership is reasonable ( if plenty of sites in a reasonable distance to where you live) lots of places in the North of England you can go once and get an annual membership:Eureka,The Deep etc we find this really good for during winter. We always take packed lunches to keep costs down. But I agree growing up, my parents definitely did far less with us and we were left to play/read/draw/make our own fun much more. We are moving more towards this I think as living costs increase.