party for 11 year old boy - any ideas? please??

[mimsum]

He's just switched schools so will possibly have the tricky combination of two disparate sets of friends

what's worked in your experience? his birthday's at the end of Jan, so can't do anything outdoors and there are never any decent films out that people haven't already seen so can't just do the cinema/pizza thing

inspiration v gratefully receieved

A lot of 11 year old lads round here do either sports parties (run at the leisure centre) or climbing wall parties. Do you have such a thing nearby?

a friend of mine's son got invited to a tobogganing party at the snowdome

Depends on where you are. How about taking ds and one or two friends to a sporting event - football or rugby? Sleepovers are always pretty popular. You could do a dvd, pizza, sleepover thing.

DS2 has just had his 12th birthday and I took him and 4 of his friends (plus another adult) to Go Ape - and aerial assault course. Pretty daunting (for me at least!) but huge fun. Came home to fish and chips and a sleepover and everyone thought it the best thing ever.

My DS will be 11 in Feb, he is going to have a Harry Potter theme birthday.
I'll set up some Halloween style activities, like bob for apples, treasure buried in slime(jelly and liquid soap), a haunted house area, with ghost music,& a ghost pinata.
I've got tiny cauldrons which I will put sand and a little candle in. All the kids will get a tattoo, wand and glasses. I've bought some glow in the dark skeleton balloons to decorate the house with.
For food I'll serve witches finger(crumbed chicken strips) fried worms(french fries)and sausages, mini ghosts(merangues), eyeballs (sweeties)in jelly, and mini bat cakes with ice cream.
Then they can watch a Harry Potter movie and have a sleep over.

We did a treasure hunt for ds's last party, which went down very well. We bought a picnic basket - supposed to look like a treasure chest- filled it with chocolate coins and buried it in the garden. They had to solve about 6 clues before they had the whole map (each clue was a piece of the map, when it was all fitted together it showed X to mark the spot where the treasure was buried) and some involved commandeering adults and making them drive somewhere so it was great fun. The invitation had ds's face as Captain Jack. The clues were all in Olde English type font and language. 2 hours, they all said it was the best party they'd been to for ages. Took a bitof creativity to organise but was utterly worth it. Really successful and didn't cost much either. AND it wore them out as the last clue involved a romp across some fields.

thanks for suggestions

it's got to be indoors as the weather's always shite at his birthday, so sadly treasure hunts/go ape etc is out

he's decided he wants to go bowling with his friends from his new school and have a sleep-over with his friends from his old school - I can see this birthday's going to run and run ...

DS2 had a laser party for his 11th (his birthday is in April so weather is generally rubbish).

The place we went to was a bit of a dive, but I think there are nicer ones. Your DS could take old and new friends to the same party, and they could all shoot each other

No idea where you are but lots of quasar laser links here