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?

It is actually good for children to get bored. It develops their imaginations.

@ThisAmpleCritic
various walks, playgrounds, splash parks, travelled to the nearest beach
All of that is more than sufficient for one half term.
If they complain of being bored, tell them to go and play with their toys or you will give them a chore to do.

A day at the beach was a 'big family day out' for us. Cost: petrol, parking, one ice cream each, maybe some chips.
We were expected to take our own pocket money to spend (we had regular pocket money saved in piggy banks).
We had a packed lunch.
That was a big event and a huge treat.

Agree. The irony also is that the vast majority of children today have far more toys, etc to occupy themselves at home than any child did when I was growing up in the 60s and 60s.

It’s always been expensive. When mine were little we used Tesco Clubcard points a lot for big days out. That did a zoo trip, maybe farm, and other local attractions on holiday. We tended to but English Heritage membership as that paid for lots of stuff as well. Always took picnics, snacks and drinks (sometimes bought ice creams, cake or a little toy)

I know what you mean OP, although I think back to my own childhood and we didn’t do many of those days out tbh.

DH a high earner but some things are so expensive I can’t justify it.

i would recommend national trust membership though. We pay I think £12 monthly for a family pass and there are some great places near us that we use regularly and when we travel around the UK.

Pricing structures have also changed, though.

I grew up in a seaside resort and we had a big fairground on the promenade. It was "open" to all, no need to pay an entry free, but instead, you bought books of "green tickets" which you exchanged for rides, with smaller/simpler rides requiring only a small number of tickets, but the big ones requiring a bigger number. I seem to remember going at least weekly during the season, sometimes 2/3 times per week. My mother would give me a relatively small amount of money for me to buy a "cheap" book of tickets and then I'd choose how to spend them, i.e. whether to blow them on 1 or 2 "big" rides, or go several times on the cheaper/simpler rides. Never spent long in the fairground, usually just an hour or so. A "day entry" ticket, akin to modern pricing simply wouldn't have worked for us. Years later, they changed it and turned it into a "theme park" where you paid a day entry ticket and could have unlimited rides on anything. It didn't last more than a few years before it closed down and is now a derelict eyesore!

When our DS was little, we took him to various small seaside towns and would often find the "old style" fairground (often travelling fairground in a park etc), where they still used the old ticket system and it worked for him too, as we could just "nip in" for an hour or so, he could have a few rides, and then we could go again later and do the same, so as to spread out the entertainment over 2/3 days instead of blitzing it in a day. Also worked for us as we didn't want to go on rides all day, so didn't have to pay our own entry fees that we'd never get monies worth for.

Really annoys me with the modern "day entry" tickets. Even abroad, we went as a foursome to places like water parks, etc., me and DH, my mother and our DS. In, say, a water park, we'd have to pay for 4 entry tickets, but my mother never went into the pools/slides etc so a complete waste for her to pay to just lie on a sun lounger. DS was mostly too young for the big slides, so just did the pools and lazy river and small slides, so not really worth it. Me and DH didn't like the big slides, so we didn't do them either.

I do think the "day ticket" pricing puts a lot of people off, but maybe it's the only way these attractions can generate enough income to cover their costs. When you see how many have closed down (obviously not the big ones like Alton Towers etc), but lots of smaller fairgrounds and indoor water parks etc have closed down, even high charges don't seem to be enough to cover the ever increasing costs.

When children are young it's easy to have cheap days out but as soon as they get older a day out at a national trust property and a picnic is quite frankly boring.

Theme parks are so expensive and often end up paying for fast track passes as the queues are so bad.

I think hobbies are a good option as it occupies their time e.g golf. Membership for ds is £400 for the year but he will literally spend hours and hours there so it's works out very cheap per hour.

Family of 7 so yes days out are expensive, we take packed lunches so no buying food at expensive zoo/theme park cafes, and our children get pocket money (except 2yo) so gift shop they use their pocket money, we literally just pay to get in.

You don't think disabled people should get a discount?

Yes, us too, but the club card deals aren't as attractive anymore. They used to be three times value, but now that's only two times. And usually you can find better discounts/deals elsewhere if you google for them, so don't need to use your clubcard vouchers.

Discounts should be limited to people who "need" them, i.e. can't afford it. Lots of disabled people could afford to pay. Probably more appropriate would be "limited access" tickets for the disabled who wouldn't be going on some of the rides due to their disability, etc., so wouldn't get value for money if they had to pay full price.

Likewise lots of OAPs can afford to pay, especially those with higher incomes/savings than young workers!

Likewise why should a well paid GP get the same "blue light" discount as a lowly paid health care assistant.

The fact is that there are so many people getting discounts that it affects the gross revenue, meaning the poor sods paying full price end up being charged more to compensate.

I think it depends how you do days out.

Many attractions offer free re-entry for a year, memberships that are often only slightly more expensive than day tickets or even reduced rates for people who receive any UC, the paying for childcare elements entitle you but people often miss this because they presume it's for people who don't work.

So whilst a single day out can be expensive you can save lots of money in the long run being strategic.

There are so many free events throughout the summer that you can take a picnic to, same with local beauty spots, beaches, historical sites etc.

We have days out most months because we home educate, we manage this by:

• making use of free returns
• museums and art galleries
• historical sites
• city visits
• nature reserves

Went often take art supplies, picnics, plant or bird spotting sheets, frisbees or other activities etc.

But you've already done so much and been to the beach!

What's wrong with staying at home and reading a book or playing in the garden?

I don’t expect free carer access to places but it does help massively to take DS to places. Due to his needs I can never fully relax somewhere I am on high alert constantly. He can’t manage a full day somewhere as after a short amount of time he will reach the point of overwhelm and need to leave or have a medical incident which means we have to change plans.

and that doesn’t even take into account the planning to actually get there!

Plus you'd likely be better off shopping at Lidl or Aldi instead and using the money saved for your days out, rather than paying Tesco prices so you can build up enough Clubcard points to get a discounted day out.

My DC are teens, when they were primary age I worked pt and budget was tight.

I colour coded activities by cost so free, or almost free things like going to the park, having a friend over, crafts etc were red, then cheap activities were orange and more expensive days out were blue.
I would say we would do one thing from the blue section and they could choose, and we would plan, often depending on weather ir what days i was working. Or during the summer holidays maybe 2 or 3 blue trips and the rest was made up of other activities. We always took pack lunch but would buy a snack or ice cream....and never got anything from a gift shop!!

If they complain of being bored, tell them to go and play with their toys or you will give them a chore to do.

Ah, memories of my childhood. We soon learned not to complain about being bored 😂lest we be given jobs to do around the house. That and the phrase "only boring people get bored" !

Depending on kids age, and interest levels, treasure trails are good, you download them online for about a tenner and then go to a nearby town. You look for "clues" or work things out, to solve a puzzle. They normally take about an hour or 2 but can be interspersed with a picnic or cheap lunch out

I agree it sucks but I also agree all those things youve mentioned sound lovely and more than enough!

Problem is Tesco food is often better quality than Aldi or Lidl.

I think it would be interesting to see how many people actually pay full price. By the time you have a disabled person discount (plus free carer place), discount for OAPs, discount for people on Universal Credit, money off schemes eg the Kellogg scheme if it’s still running I imagine there are very few people paying the published price. It might be most cost effective to lower the price across the board and improve accessibility for everyone.

I will note here, as I think it's pertinent, that when my DC got to age 9/10 and were allowed to "play out", that was pretty much all they wanted to do. They were out (with boundaries) all day, coming home only for meals, either on foot or on their bikes, meeting up with whatever children happened to be about. If I suggested going out anywhere, it was normally met with strong objections.
Is it parents that are assuming their children want more?

Art Fund membership makes lots of stuff free/discounted. We generally find it pays for itself very quickly. Some years we have an additional membership to something - we will probably do this more as the kids get older (English Heritage, RHS, ZSL...).

But then they'd lose the revenue from the "Mugs" who pay full price because they're too lazy or disorganised to find/use discount codes etc.

Yes definitely too expensive. Nothing is remotely cheap anymore! We met some friends recently to a play place and their tickets for 2 adults and 3 kids compared to our 2 adults and 1 kid under 4 (plus 1 baby who was free) seemed ridiculous expensive. We only planned to be there for 2 hours max and it was about £50 for them. Couldn’t take own food into their cafe either (I understand from allergy POV but bumped price up even more.

maybe too late now but I always set an expectation, we’re near a Zoo so we have a membership but we never go into the gift shop and I always take a picnic so I don’t spend anything whilst I’m there. Also slow your pace down, a day can be a visit to park on morning then play in house/garden in afternoon. Or take a picnic somewhere. We have a couple of garden centres here that have a free play area and can feed ducks etc. they don’t need to feel bored but they need to learn to play at home, play a football match in garden/ go on a ‘treasure hunt’ in garden/walks/ bake a cake/play with their toys /make a den etc

In the school holidays when young we had fun. Plenty of it.
And I never felt ‘left to find something as I was bored’. Some activities were organised eg. Brownies, scouts. Some at home, painting, art, baking. And a lot of playing amongst ourselves. Which we all enjoyed.
Never felt our parents should be more involved at all. They were happy we were having fun and yes, doing productive and positive stuff. But learning often to do so without having a parent to do it for us. We were imaginative and creative. It wasn’t done for us.