KIDS PLAYS

About

Come for the morning, break for lunch and come back after — the day pass covers all of it, provided a staff member dates your wristband on the way out. Three separate reviewers volunteer this unprompted, and on a page where most venues sell a fixed session it is the single thing that most changes how a day works.

The floor is a jungle gym with a ball pit, slides, small trampolines and a separate crawlers' area, and what parents mention most is that all of it is padded: one describes losing sight of a child for a moment and not minding, because there is nothing hard to run into. Toys are rotated between visits, which regulars notice and mention. The restrooms draw the other repeated compliment — a diaper bin and disposable changing-table liners — which is a low bar that most places still contrive to miss. There is a hard ceiling on the whole thing, and it is height rather than age: anyone over five feet is turned away, and the rule is enforced rather than merely posted, which makes this an under-tens venue in practice however old the child on the ticket. Weekends run at more than double the weekday traffic, the widest gap on this page, with late morning through the afternoon on Saturday its own peak. Non-slip socks are required for adults as well as children, which catches people out.