Makutu's Island

About

The reviews here arrive in generations. Parents write about being brought as children and now bringing their own; one family has taken a fifteen-year-old and a four-year-old to the same building a decade apart; another drives down from Flagstaff once or twice every summer to do it again. Not many play centres accumulate that kind of loyalty, and it is the most consistent thing the review record says.

The build is a tropical island. Jungle Adventure is a multi-level soft play of slides, tunnels and rope bridges with a small aquarium set into it, wrapped around a giant central tree threaded with mole holes, climbs and totem poles. There is a frog-hopper ride, a bungee jump, an arcade running ticket redemption, and a separate toddler section that one parent says has recently been rebuilt. The centre of gravity, though, sits firmly with fives and up.

Longevity has a cost, and visitors name it without much rancour: the place looks its age. One describes dim lighting and a nineties feel, which squares with the decade-long histories elsewhere in the reviews. Nobody suggests it stopped the children enjoying themselves. It is also among the more dependable ways to get through a 110-degree afternoon, a point four separate reviewers make unprompted.