Boy's 14th Birthday party - please ask your lot what THEY'D prefer

[mumblechum]

Am hoping to hire a place up the road from us which is basically a large country house with fab garden etc. Not as posh as it may sound, it houses the youth club and apparently isn't that expensive to hire a big sort of dining room opening out onto the lawns.
DS wants to invite pretty much everyone he knows, his whole class & old village mates, so prob 40 or so kids.

Option 1. Hire 2 large inflatables eg gladiator game, lge bouncy castle

1. Hire fete games eg coconut shy,hook a duck, target shooting, sponge/stocks thing.

I can't make my mind up.

We could do it at night time and have a disco but ds isn't that keen on that idea.

What do you/your teens reckon would be the best option?

bump

are these both really crap ideas then?

DS1 (14) did a lazer quest type thing followed by a meal in a restaurant. DS2 (12) did Go Ape. They both want to do paintballing.

Thanks. DS has done laserquest twice, so prob. won't fancy that one again.

Go Ape is a possibility, as is paintballing, will look into those. He really wants to have loads of people, so I guess I'll have to dig deep!

Both options sound great but 14yr olds might be too 'cool' to get on a bouncy castle (esp girls) so I would go with option 2 which sounds like brilliant fun.

Then do a barbeque or get a burger van to come along - if the weather's nice they'll all just muck about and have a ball!

Two weeks ago, DS1 had all his mates over for the day. They went down to the beach during the day, came back and then had a barbeque.

They seemed to enjoy scheduling the day themselves with no assistance from us apart from providing the food. This seems to be the type of party that his age group are keen on up here. In the past month there has been a meetup with an Italian takeaway and a meetup with an Indian takeaway.

I like option 2!

Paintballing is really expensive though. DS2 has been to 2 birthdays there, and in both cases they all (a lot of them admittedly) paid for themselves.

Not sure how I feel about that tbh

I wouldn't dream of making them pay for themselves, but one way of making it cheaper would be, as was suggested above, doing a BBQ at home

I have been thinking though (re the paintballing) and the birthday part is almost irrelevant - it just gives a date to organise it on, which wouldn't happen otherwise. And they do love it. And it means nobody has to bother thinking of presents/handing over cash (although your DS might not be so keen if that were the case....)

I think that's quite an expense for a 14th birthday. Could understand it for a milestone birthday like 16 or 18.

I think 1 would work well - not a bouncy castle, but the more kind of 'executive' inflatables - bar fly, where you put on a velcro suit and throw yourself at a velcro wall, or that one where you are tethered to an elastic rope and have to run as far as you can and then get pinged backwards!
Well, the students at uni like them, so I guess 14 year old boys would!

Yes, that's what I was thinking, a bungee run I think it's called, or a gladiator thing where you knock each other off pedestals.

lazer quest here too for ds when he was 14.

voice of doom again today. but think about the insurances - extra that you may need to take out with these things - inlight of the recent case won against the couple who hired the bouncy castle

( am sure that is right up your street anyway)

am thinking an adventure park thing. woods - rope swings, rope bridges high paralell rope walking etc.?

\link{http://www.knockhatch.com/location.htm\knockhatch) the website is really shit

ds went for a meal and then to the cinema!!

with mates not with us - didn't want us anywhere near him