Experience Presents

[Parkmama]

Please can you give me some inspiration of Experience Christmas presents you have bought in the past or you're planning to buy this year. Can be any age, I'm keen to spend time with my family doing things and reduce the amount of 'stuff' we exchange!

Season passes to local attractions
National Trust/English Heritage membership
Axe Throwing
Falconry experience
Archery
Segways
Go Ape/High Ropes course

Bletchley Park tickets
Afternoon tea voucher
The Tank Museum voucher
Favourite Restaurant voucher

I have bought vouchers in the past for candle making workshops, calligraphy workshops and lino cutting. www.craftcourses.com is a great place to find experiences @Parkmama

Virtual reality experience shooting zombies with my nephews in battersea last Christmas was really fun! (Think company was called DNAVR and they have different options like escape rooms/games/roaming etc.. first time I experienced it and found the hour flew by!)

Also feeding the lions at port lympne safari park was a gift that was appreciated (cost about £80)

I would be careful with these and write a certificate IOU a day out - I see a lot of these companies going bump by the time you arrange anything.

Afternoon tea at Warwick castle.
I have had an afternoon tea in Blackpool tower watching the dancing and that was lovely.

For my older son to avoid lots of random gifts we have sometimes told family what he is saving up for e.g. a guitar and asked for money towards it so he can get something like that that he wanted.

My son likes learning languages on duo lingo and I often think a lesson or two with someone who speaks that language would be a great gift. E.g. meeting someone that speaks Japanese at a sushi restaurant for lunch. (Chaparoned by us as he's only a young teen). I think that sounds pretty cool.

A horse riding lesson/day experience?

As a family group (ranging from 9yrs to mid-60’s), we’ve done:
-Glass fusion workshop with Christmas theme (made tree decs)
-dot art workshop
-Crystal maze experience
-chocolate making workshop
-willow weaving workshop
-this year, the snowman in a cathedral with live orchestra then lunch after

Disclaimer: Live in Denmark so

• legoland pass
• tickets to kids music festival
• tickets to kids song for Europe
• monster truck show
• outdoor park
• holiday park

Theatre tickets - panto, circus, musicals
Days out - paradise Park, wicksteed Park, gullivers
Craft activities at a local gallery.

As someone said upthread I buy direct from seller rather than through 3rd party sellers.

Snowboarding lesson for a 11yo and 15yo. Already had to promise one to 9yo for her 11th birthday (minimum age there)

Yes I agree with this, I'm worried about some of the local places. I appreciate they might need the income now to make it that far, so it's tricky, but particularly if it's a big sum it would be awful to lose it.

We have done and loved Kielder Observatory and the School of Artisan Food bread making. There are umpteen million food ones you could do all over the place, but I can recommend that one though it wasn't cheap.

Guided wild swimming
Caving
Foraging
Crafting - including things like blacksmithing, wood turning as well as textile/clay crafts etc
Something like the tunnels under Liverpool
Forest coaster
Zip wire

We've booked a sleepover at the Natural History Museum for our 10 & 7 year olds.

In the past we have given:

• tickets to the Snowman ballet
• tickets to plays/ musicals
• Legoland tickets
• meerkat experiences
• Royal Palaces pass

Two I have been gifted and absolutely would not recommend.

• Buyagift “deluxe” two night hotel stay. So deluxe that the only hotels included were 1-2 star. In the end I used it to stay at a Jury’s Inn and still ended up paying an extra £100!
• I can’t remember what site it was from but it was a 3 course meal for 2 with champagne at Gaucho. The service wasn’t included in the price of the voucher and as the voucher was quite expensive we ended up paying almost £50 service charge! We’d actually had a horrendous meal with awful service so I felt no shame in asking them to remove it.

Theatre tickets
Short break somewhere
Go Ape
Sailing/rib experience

Or make a calendar of activities with the promise of something every month. Escape rooms, zoo trips, trip to beach, steam train ride, trip to pottery place - whatever is local or attractive to you.

I'd never buy anyone an experience voucher. They have expiry dates, companies go under, and often they're just bloody impossible to book like those hot air balloon things. I would however, pick an experience the recipient would like, cost it out to make sure I could afford it, and write an IOU for that, and I'd pay for it at the time they wanted to cash in.

Never buy gift vouchers. Write your own IOUs.

We do lots of experience presents in my family, lots of the expected ones like theatre/sport tickets, spa days, restaurant vouchers etc.

I got my DH for Christmas last year making his own knife at a blacksmiths forge, he loved that.
Slightly different but I've bought him one of the BBC maestro courses (experts doing 30 hour courses, the one I have for him is around creative writing) for Christmas this year.
For my birthday this year he got me gin making course and for my birthday last year he got me a swim with sharks at Blue Planet in Chester, which was frankly awesome!

Not a group gift but I've had great response from giving vouchers for car wash or valeting.

My sister treated us to a champagne flight on the Eye; we got two revolutions (an hour) with only 10 passengers in the pod; a wine expert and assistant brought boxes of chilled champagne and gave us a tutorial. Very heady experience in more ways than one! We also got priority boarding so no waiting in line and use of a lounge before and after.

(Note, this was not the 30-min, enjoy a glass of champagne thing being billed on their site; but rather the Tasting Experience in which five or six types of champagne are served and explained, with two full rotations.)

One of the best things we've ever done.

I have a couple of relatives who buy me all sorts of different often expensive experience presents. I hate it. Every one of them. It feels like I'm being gifted another task to add to my busy life. I'd never gift them to anyone else for that reason.

Tickets to the Nutcracker for the child with me to allow mum some time to shop, then meet up for a meal.

Theatre or ballet tickets (date checked first).

National Trust membership.

Jewellery making workshop on agreed date (just tell them date and rough location).

Holiday or weekend away.

Ice skating and day at the museum with lunch or tea.

I probably wouldn’t buy a voucher as the company may go bust or the recipient may forget to use it before it expires.