Sealife refuses entry to 17yos because underage

[JaninaDuszejko]

Just a warning to you all, teenagers can't visit Sealife Scarborough without an adult. My 17yo and her girlfriend drove over an hour to go to Sealife Scarborough and were denied entry because they were under 18 (by 2 months!). We had checked the website before buying their tickets and it said under 15s have to be accompanied by an adult so they thought they were fine but apparently not. According to DD they were told that the staff could not perform first aid on them without permission from their guardians which is clearly incorrect (DD is a lifeguard at our local pool, 8yos can go swimming without an adult which seems much riskier than visiting Sealife).

Obviously Sealife have completely ignored my posts on their social media so thought I should share it more widely here.

That’s madness

Have you pulled them up on Twitter ?

That is completely nuts. Were they refused entry by one member of staff (who could have made a mistake) or multiple? Did they kick up a fuss at the time?

That is madness

It is a trading standards issue for their website to be incorrect. Report it to the local council trading standards and perhaps the Advertising Standards Authority.

Ridiculous. The first aid thing is complete nonsense too - in the event of an emergency you act in the patient’s best interest regardless of age. You find an unconscious teenager and you’re not checking their ID or looking round for a parent before beginning CPR, or at least i bloody hope not! They’ve clearly made that up as an excuse. Maybe they’ve had trouble in the past with groups of young people? But still seems very unfair and their website should have their policy correctly.

I used to work at Sealife when I was 17! (admittedly was a while ago)

so you can marry, fight in a war but not visit dolphins 😂

sounds like they just don’t want unaccompanied teenagers if they’ve had problems before ?

Can’t get married or fight in a war until 18 either so at least that’s all equal…

Lots of places are the same - my 16yo and her friend weren’t allowed into the Cutty Sark or the London Museum of Water and Steam. It was a frustrating day!

I don’t see why museums or attractions do this - surely they want more young people to visit!

You can get married here without parental consent at 16

Not sure where you live, but you can’t get married until you’re 18 in Scarborough!

Scotland

Maybe you can get into Seal Life unaccompanied in Scotland too then? Especially if the wedding is held there.

I recently tried to take my 14 year old daughter to the “family matinee” at our local independent cinema. They refused us entry and said their website stated the films are for 12 and under (I checked, it says no such thing). They then said I could leave an 8 year old unattended at the cinema but not go in with my daughter because she was a teenager.

To top it all off, I then went to the same cinema a few weeks later with my 10 year old and spoke to a family there who consisted of two adults and a 16 year old at another family matinee.

Teenagers get such a bad rap and my experience in the cinema recently has been it’s either very young children running about, not being able to sit still for that long yet or adults on their phones, distracting everyone with the light.

I’ll annoyed by the experience still if you can’t tell! 🙄

How odd

How did they know their age? Did they ID them? Wtf takes ID to go to the sea life centre!?!

The staff screwed up. The website says adult tickets are for anyone age 15+ and under 15s must be accompanied (as OP said). So the cut off seems to clearly be 15.