Pizza Express for 11yo party?

[LynetteScavo]

Could I get away with the Piccolo menu for lunch with 11yo boys? (DS tells me when he goes out for meals with friends they now order off the adult menu - I'm mean and still make him order from the children's menu)

Also, I've just seen Pizza Express do parties...has anyone had one for children this age?

DS is 10 and last time we went to pizza express he had a starter and an adult sized pizza and ate it more quickly than I did mine. He is getting a bigger appetite at the moment and a piccolo menu really wouldn't fill him up.

I've been to successful Pizza Express parties for younger children - say 7 or 8. Wondering if it might not be a little sedate for 11 year olds..... (And they would certainly want the grown up menu!)

My DD had her 7th birthday at Pizza Express, am not sure I would have one there for an 11-year old.

I would say they are too old for the child's menu. I took ds2 and 5 friends for his 10th birthday and they were all hungry after eating the three course child's menu. I had to order two more pizzas full size ones!

The plan was to go to the cinema, and then to pizza express for lunch. This school year almost every party DS has been to has consisted of cinema and then Nandos/Frankie and Benny's/KFC/Pizza Hut.

DS asked to do the same (although he suggested he wanted to come home for pizza and cake rather than go to a restaurant)

No one so far has been to Pizza Express, so I thought it would be a bit different.

What would you say the upper age would be for the Pizza Express parties? DD will be 9 this summer....

I'd say a strightforward lunch is a bit different to one of their parties - where they engage everyone in activities which any 11 year old boy would scorn.

Not sure about 9 year old girls. Might possibly be seen as a bit babyish?

My DS11 and DS9 both order off the adult menu at PE as the kids pizzas are tiny, they gave definitely shrunk them in the last year or so. F&B'a much better value and the kids pizzas are bigger.

DS and his friends would definitely want to wear the paper hats .

What are these activities they engage the children in??? Apart from making the pizza? Or would 10/11yo boys really think that was babyish?

Yes.

And use Tesco vouchers

It was quite a while ago. I can't recall exactly what they did.

I just know that the boys who enjoyed the party at 7/8 would not want that kind of thing at 11. It would be too contained; they'd want something to wreck or shoot and plenty of space to go wild in the open air. (By 12 they're a bit more sophisticated....)

At DD's party they were all given an activity pack that children would get at Pizza Express anyway. They enjoyed wearing their aprons and hats. I took pizza wordsearches and colouring in pizza handouts that I printed off the Internet. After they had all eaten their doughballs and pizzas that they had made, the guy there did a 'stick the moustache on Luigi' game before ice-cream. We had 21 six and seven year olds, he did say they do different games depending on how old the kids are and how many. The party went on for about 45 minutes over the 2 hours they said it would last.

I'm not worried about the boys wanting to wreck and shoot stuff- these boys are all very sedate (actually my ds isn't so much, but he really likes pizza) ds's party last year was paint balling... most of the boys found it a bit too active, and I really had to mummy them- mopping brows, tying shoelaces, ect.