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?

In terms of keeping the cost down, bring a packed lunch or we have done hot dogs in a flash before then put them in the buns when there. We find wrapping each on individually in foil and putting them in a flask of boiling water works best.

Don’t buy ice cream - we tried bringing mini milks in a flask for the first time yesterday. Chucked the flask in the freezer an hour before we left then they stayed frozen for five hours until we wanted to have them. Great success and saved money!

Parking depends where you go. Or how you get there.

ice creams and chips aren’t compulsory.

quickly putting those figures into an inflation calculator show rhat actually the prices have just risen as expected over time.

Not compulsory but nice.

If you think doubling in price in ten years is expected, when wages haven’t risen the same in that time, I don’t know what to say.

They can be very expensive and sometimes worth it if you do a theme park or theatre.

But often we simply get out exploring in nature with lunch & a few snacks and stop for coffee & hot chocolates. Total cost of the day is £15.

There’s always something to discover in our country: castles, beaches, hills, waterfalls, monuments, ruins, forests, rivers. Plus a lot of great things like Botanic gardens, parks & museums are totally free.

Are parents expected to entertain kids in the half term? Do kids now never get together with other kids and make up games etc, play rounders, cricket etc, we are having the weather for it. Costs nothing.

I am referring to theme parks, trips to the zoo etc. Since I was a kid, I remember it was always a special treat as it was expensive for a whole family to do it.

This should help everyone.

costoflivinghelp.campaign.gov.uk/summer-savings/?gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23869206373&gbraid=0AAAABCrP8ysoBAuH6gs1pmHy6y52J6GBz&gclid=Cj0KCQjwlerQBhDMARIsAB16H-VhWhEr5qL17fJAwLk6xwWEr9kRcr7ZtBOaR69Noon-Vbdq_NnjLZwaAjnhEALw_wcB

Our children have never been to Legoland, Drayton manor etc despite us both working and DH being a higher earner, just something we couldn’t afford, even the cost of going swimming at the local council pool makes me wince so something we only do occasionally. We do have national trust membership though which is only £14 a month so we use that quite a lot. An interestingly perspective though that was recently pointed out to me is that it’s not actually that these things are astronomically expensive, they feel that way to us as we only have £100 left a month after all our other bills and food, fuel, childcare, school dinners, clothes etc. However that’s because as we’re paying nearly 1k a month on just our mortgage interest payments ( to be fair to the mortgage company we’d be paying even more in rent) plus over 1k a month in tax. if we had even a 10th of that spare then we wouldn’t even be thinking twice that £25 to have a dip in our council pool was so too expensive as in reality £25 is less than 0.5% of our overall monthly gross pay

I’ve noticed a general increase in parents putting pressure on themselves to have a day out or activity planned for every day in school holidays. I find it a bit sad personally and I don’t think it’s great for kids to have every minute of their downtime planned to ‘make memories’. There is nothing wrong with unstructured play at home, but I’ve noticed an increase in parents trying to avoid it. The same parents tend to complain that their children are bored and behave badly when at home. I personally think it’s because children aren’t learning how to entertain themselves.

When they’re staying we always take the Gdcs to Bocketts Farm, so maybe 3 times a year, and although IMO it’s very good value*, I do wonder how many hard-pressed young parents afford it.

*so many activities, they never stop all day - and only a couple ever cost extra - IIRC the powered Go-Karts at £2 and the pony rides at £3.

This thread is quite interesting. I didn’t realise there was so much judgement on the current generation of parents for taking kids on days out. I now understand what my in-laws are getting at when I send pics and they just reply ‘looks like the children have been on another day out’. 😂

At least they are not inside on TikTok. Can’t do right for doing wrong!

Tell them you can't outsource the entertainment of your kids to the ones playing out on the road like previous generations of parents could, so needs must.

We went to Whitby last weekend, thought we'd take some photos of the children at the Abbey. Last time we went, we were able to do that and so we wanted to recreate the images a few years later. It would have cost us £50, so we decided not to. There were other people (couples) there saying the same. That's a crazy amount of money to wander around some ruins.

Not so much now as all their friends either on a day out or holiday themselves, at their ‘dad’s’ house or otherwise on their tablets etc, is sad really. A small minority of the kids still play out around here so it isn’t for lack of space etc. Many a happy an hour spent playing out as a child

Whitby Abbey is English Heritage.

You can currently get annual family membership with a discount code for £120 pa.

Civil Servants can get free membership with a fiver a month CSSC membership.

There was a free entry pass available a few weeks ago.

It's probably a minority who actually pay £50 to wander around some ruins.

Which is fine if you visit lots of English Heritage sites. We don't, so don't have annual membership. There were lots of people walking away without paying the entrance fee. I think you overestimate how many people can get in cheap/ for free.

I think you're making similar points there? There are obviously people who are either priced out or don't want to pay the full entrance fee, and they're the ones who were walking away.

The ones who go inside are a different group, and the PPs guess that most of them won't have paid the full door price sounds plausible to me. Between English Heritage members, people who've borrowed someone else's card, groupons, blue light, public transport discount, partner organisations... that's a lot of ways to get in, and no guarantee most of them would be willing to pay full price either.

I make a list in my phone of free/ cheap days out, mid cost days out and expensive days out. I then mix and match them. I find it easier when the weather is nice as I live in Northumberland where we are blessed with gorgeous beaches and great countryside with lots of free parks. Picnics and taking own drinks keeps the cost down a lot. A rainy school holidays is inevitably expensive- it always has been, but people generally have less disposable income these days.

£2.50 for an ice cream is cheap now, I paid £4 this week in two different locations and £5 for a portion of chips!

Days out can be expensive, but there are plenty of ways to enjoy them without spending a fortune.

For the cinema, I use a 2-for-1 code, book the cheaper seats, and take a can of drink and some sweets from the shop. Total cost for the ticket and snacks? Around £5!

Last year, we went to Thorpe Park for free with four tickets we won through a Cadbury promotion. All you had to do was enter the code from a chocolate bar on their website. I ended up winning 4 tickets to Thorpe Park, 4 to Chessington, 2 to Legoland, 2 to Sea Life, and 2 to the London Eye! We used them all except the Sea Life tickets.

Both English Heritage and National Trust regularly offer free entry days through newspaper promotions. In fact, I have two English Heritage vouchers sitting in my kitchen right now! National Trust also runs online offers from time to time if you sign up. Take a picnic and a flask of tea or hot chocolate, and you've got a great day out for very little money.

The Sun newspaper also ran free ticket promotions for years. I used to collect the vouchers every year and took the kids to loads of theme parks without paying for entry.

We've also done plenty of low-cost days out, such as feeding the ducks, strawberry picking, having picnics, and visiting farms with free entry.

While things definitely cost more these days, there are still lots of ways to enjoy big days out for much less. It just takes a bit of planning and keeping an eye out for offers.

YANBU- all that stuff is too expensive now for many families.

However, like a PP, when I was growing up, big days out like that were very infrequent- they would be a birthday treat or suchlike. We very rarely went to a restaurant or cafe. Days out mostly consisted of hill walking with a stop halfway for cheese and marmite sandwiches wrapped in tin foil. 😂 Or spending some of the day at the beach, again with a picnic from home. We might get an ice cream if we were lucky. Our holidays were always camping. I didn’t and don’t feel like I missed out on anything. I had a happy childhood and have some wonderful memories.

Your ILs sound like hard work, chin up!

You can park for free at my local beach!

When DS was smaller, we had an annual membership to somewhere each year. We‘re also lucky to have great playgrounds and forests around here.

I find a picky lunch works better than wrapped sandwiches. We‘ll help ourselves when hungry to cut fruit, cubed cheese, hard boiled eggs and maybe slices of fresh bread with butter (we live in Germany where the bread is amazing).

These days, we use holiday club a lot (€13 a day from 7-2, usually including a day trip/group pizza making/ a craft / an inter-club football match). DS is 9.

If home he‘ll occupy himself until 2pm, then we‘ll either go swimming/to the forest or he‘ll meet his mates on the village football pitch.

Even one of those cups with a lid works to keep a small lolly cold.