Kidzania is an interactive amusement world for kids. Children ages 4-14 can participate in guided role play - police, fire, airline pilot, chef, Doctor, judge, stylist, bricklayer, and many more.
The premise of Kidzania is that Kidzania is really a country. It has its own slang, "zee you" for "see you", for example, its own currency (a kidzo), and its own way of life. When a kid visits Kidzania, he can do so as either a tourist or a citizen (passport holder); a citizen earns more and pays less for services.
While in Kidzania, a kid can try on roles. Many roles are performed in well structured custom make believe environments. For example, a housekeeper cleans a single make believe hotel room. A cartoonist designs a strip in a newspaper room. A court case (defendant, prosecution, judge and lawyers) is tried in court. Other roles, such as police, paramedic and journalist, are performed with a participant visiting other areas of kidzania - a paramedic heals a wounded person, fire and police help fight a fire at a hotel. Each role takes 20-45 minutes to complete.
Most roles lead to pay - usually 10 kidzos. The kidzos can be spent at a few places - like the ice cream plant or the cooking school, or deposited into the local bank.
Kidzania's activities are branded - Coca Cola sponsors the soda bottling plant, ABS CBN, a media conglomerate sponsors many of the media booths including a full TV studio.
Kids learn about many different jobs at Kidzania. They also learn the value of work, cooperation and cleanliness, all while playing. The flip side is that given the nature of the play, none of the experiences is truly immersive. Kids never truly get dirty, for one, and since everything is scripted and time bound, their play is not open-ended; there is always a well-defined result and time of completion.
Kidzania Is fairly expensive. A single child ticket runs 900 pesos (roughly 20 US dollars) while an adult ticket is 630 pesos (roughly 14 US dollars). On weekends, the pricing effectively doubles since a ticket is good only for either a morning session or an afternoon session.
Kidzania can be a really fun way to spend a day doing make believe for children 4-10 years of age. For a parent, Kidzania can be an easy way to get pictures of your kid in all sorts of costumes and situations.
One final note: kids learn an important lesson about patience. Waits here, on a good day, can be fairly long. Popular activities like airline pilot or fire and rescue, fill up early and have 45 minute wait times.
Parents, on the other hand, learn how expensive things are in a make believe world compared to the real world. Come here on a weekend and you effectively pay double as your ticket only good for roughly four hours while on weekdays they are good from 9am to closing. read more