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?

I hear you, even if entry isn’t too bad and you take a picnic, it’s fuel, parking, extra snacks because they’re “sooooo hungry” after their full picnic. We have set up a bit of an expectation that if it’s hot and they’ve walked round nicely we generally always say yes to ice cream though so maybe that’s our fault, but we often get coffee so it seems fair to let them choose a treat too of course. Even if we dodge the gift shop it still seems to end up being £100+ total. We’ve recently joined English Heritage and that’s been really good. You don’t pay for kids (and you can take up to 6 with you per adult member, so can take friends too!) and we just look on a map to see what’s nearby and then go have a day out. There’s still fuel and snacks etc but not having the entry fee is great and the membership is worth it after only 2-3 visits. We’re in Yorkshire so there’s loads about. The kids do moan a bit sometimes though, they’d rather go to the hugely expensive soft play and farm 🙃

New favourite tip! Ill be giving this a go!

Yes I was going to say this. NT and many other places (eg. Zoos even) that offer yearly membership have always been unaffordable if you pay as you go - you’re kind of supposed to get the membership.

I always have about 3 family memberships of places on the go at once and we use every single school holiday and the weekend. Then at the end of the year when we feel like we’ve been to those places enough we’ll switch to a different membership of another place. As a system I find it works very well.

We do this too. It's a way to get some incredibly cheap days out, but you do have to plan.

I’ve paid NT membership for years, I think it’s about £12 a month for the family so that’s one good saving there. I also pay for RSPB membership which is about £5 a month. Used to pay English heritage but we only have 1 place locally so once we’d been 100 times it didn’t seem worth it!

As for zoos, theme parks etc, I think they have always been expensive. I remember taking my teen DC when they were very small to Chester zoo and even a decade ago it was about £100-120ish. I try to use clubcard vouchers now but we don’t go to places like that often at all, it’s something we’d do annually if ever.

My family was dirt poor when I was a kid so we just didn't go anywhere really. Maybe a couple times a year we'd go to the nearest beach and we'd get a couple of pounds each for the penny pushers. We were happy enough and always found ways to entertain ourselves.

I'm in a better position than my parents were, so we do more stuff. I am often a bit shocked by the price of things. Even the cinema is heading towards £100 by the time you've bought drinks and popcorn. We go to watch football when we can, which is usually about £200. We recently went to a big theatre show and it came to nearly £400 for our family of 4. I've bought tickets for DD and I to see Olivia Rodrigo next year, which was nearly £600 for two tickets 😵 Maybe it's the same as it was and it's just inflation.

I agree op, and I do think now a day out with any activity or theme park is more like the equivalent of a holiday in that money has to be put by for it. It is sad there are some experiences my kids will never get because we’ve a big family unless we properly decide to put money aside eg interactive experiences where it’s a large cost per person then extras when you get in. My kids went on a school tour to a place where there were green screens, the ability to experience weightlessness etc. The school obviously could only afford the basic room and ds was in awe when looking at the brochure. The cost in was huge and a lot of his class had been there to the higher level rooms. All of the kids he named had less in their family and two parents on very good wages so on us, we chose to have a large family but a bit disappointed still

More unaffordable, there is not a threshold.

I guess there are more activities these days that cost money, and those activities are the ones kids seem to want to do.

A hike or camping can be cheap if you don't subscribe to the nonsense of theme parks. But that has got more expensive too with the cost of petrol increasing.

It’s true that places like theme parks and zoos have always been expensive, but also that the cost of small local things has shot up. Even the cost of going to our local swimming pool seems to have doubled… then there are the costs of parking, food etc etc. I used to think nothing of buying a coffee out when it was less than £2, but at nearly £5 I can’t justify it. Perhaps the problem is that my wages have only gone up by a tiny amount so relatively everything really is a lot more expensive. Plus we have two teenagers now who eat a lot more and can’t get in free anywhere. It does feel like there’s loads of profiteering everywhere - we’re visiting Oxford soon and I thought about trying to take the kids to see some of the filming locations for Harry Potter, but it would cost about £80 for our family just to go into a college and have a look at the hall - that seems so expensive for what it is (and yes I’m aware there are free museums and that’s what we’re planning to do mostly). Christmas is a total rip-off everywhere - we’ve never done our local light trails as I’m not paying £20 a person to walk around a muddy field for 45 minutes looking at lights (lovely as they might be) and then having to walk past all the tempting treats like overpriced hot chocolate at the end. I think we got used to things feeling affordable during the early 2000s… I know when I was growing up in the 1980s, my parents would complain about things being expensive and we’d always take a packed lunch out, much like we do now. Even then things felt less profit-driven though - for example our local big attraction had two price levels, one to visit the zoo and adventure playground, and another just to visit the adventure playground which was pretty reasonable and we did quite often. We took my kids back to the same place when they were younger and there was only one entry fee and it was eye-watering.

Mine are 22 and 26 now so it was a while ago for us. However, we also had National Trust family membership which was a godsend. We have 3 NT properties locally, with a mill, a maze and a farm. There are also a few more further afield.

When the DC were primary school age, there were lots of trails to follow and prizes to win. We still went a lot in their teens when the properties were of more interest. The key to it not being ‘boring’ was to go with friends. We had a six-seater car which fitted 2 adults and 4 DC so even the journey was ok.

I was the day trip planner in our friendship group and with a bit of googling I found lots of interesting places to go.

Our local city has several free museums and art galleries or you can get a train to another city and explore their free stuff instead. If you travel by train you can go to a days out website and get 2 for 1 vouchers for lots of places.

We always took our own food for lunch - particularly with picky DC who would waste a lot, but may have a coffee and cake at the end. Cakes were always finished.

In all those years we never went to a theme park. DS went to Alton Towers with school but I don’t think DD has ever been. I was a SAHM and then went into a minimum wage job, so those were always too expensive. I don’t think DC felt like they missed out by not going. I will have to ask!

If Whitby Abbey is £50 you would only need to go to 2 other places of a similar price over 12 months to get your money's worth, that's hardly lots of English Heritage sites

@Porcuine20 Oxford is a really good value day trip. Some of the Oxford colleges are free to look around. Not big ones like Christchurch, but St Edmund Hall is free and has ivy covered quads, a graveyard and I think a new pop up cafe. I think Brazenose, Keble and Lincoln College are free too. While you are there, the Natural History Museum is free as is the Ashmolean Museum. You can have a picnic on Christchurch Meadows or go to the Covered Market. There is a lovely cafe overlooking the beautiful Radcliffe Camera building called Vaults and Garden. You can eat either in the Church vaults or in the garden then climb the church tower afterwards. It really doesn’t have to be expensive.

We are a bit lucky. We have a Reel cinema which has dirt cheap kids tickets. We have free museums, an aquarium where they do cheaper tickets a few times a year for residents (also buy a ticket and use it free the rest of the year) and a theatre which can give cheap tickets. Also not far from the sea. This is in Yorkshire.

Thanks, yes, we’re planning to do most of those - looking forward to it. Thanks for the cafe recommendation

It's always been expensive. Especially with more than two children.

I think the difference is that now, with social media and other societal changes, there's this idea that you always have to be 'doing something'.

As a 90s kid, theme parks/zoos etc were a once a year thing or less.

And days out with the parents/extended family were still just a few times a year but cheaper/free picnics, game of rounders in a park/national trust park.

I find it strange now that it seems that children have to be constantly entertained. outside of the home.

As a 90s kid, theme parks/zoos etc were a once a year thing or less
Our eldest was a 90s kid and we were always at theme parks , wildlife parks . It is no different to now - some people go out a lot , some don’t . Like now it was cheaper to have annual passes

I agree with those that say it was always expensive.

When I was growing up (70s and 80s) we rarely went out for day trips - I can remember going to the zoo once, Thorpe Park a couple of times (long before the days when it had rollercoasters, the highlight of the visit was James Bonds gondola!) and we went to Windsor Safari Park twice in 10 years - and we lived in Windsor!

A day out was a walk in the woods with a picnic with perhaps an ice cream from the van, a Sunday afternoon drive, a walk in the grounds of a stately home, or a trip to the outdoor swimming pool. In the summer holidays we would go once or twice to the cinema, and one visit to the fair when it was in town.

But we spent hours just out and about on our bikes, or playing in the local woods. The summer holidays seemed to last forever.

Expectations have changed. Kids no longer go out to play the way they did. Everything has to be 'organised fun', and that usually comes with a price tag. Parents seem to think they need to entertain their children constantly, and kids are rarely left to their own devices.

Yes, I think some day trips are expensive. But they always were, so we hardly ever did them! And we came from a higher than average income, middle class family.

So you were a family that didn't have to think about cost.

Which isn't what this thread is about.

Not at all , we just have different priorities to some people .

You said you were 'always' at theme parks, wildlife parks etc with your children In the 90s.

They've always been expensive so you must have had the money to spend on those activities that were very very expensive as I said.

But you're saying it wasn't to do with cost ?

But prioritises?

You weren't denying they were expensive? you said 'you have different priorities?'

So you're not denying that even 30 years ago in the 90s they were expensive days out?

But you were a superior kind of parent that paid for theme park days out?

So either you thought they were cheap or you thought they were expensive?

But you think choosing to pay for those days out was a 'parenting choice' .

I assume you think that choosing them was a better choice.

How did that make you a better parent?

I've done a little bit of reading up on the topic and it is significantly more expensive now. The price increases have consistently exceeded inflation by a massive amount. It may have always been expensive, but it is now more expensive.

Children having to be constantly entertained outside the home isn't a remotely new thing though, it's just that until a few decades back they were being constantly entertained outside the home by the other kids in the vicinity. We don't know what parents back then would've done if that hadn't been available, or what parents now would do if kids played out like they did in the 70s.