Our son is just getting to the point where the indoor soft-play thing is becoming interesting, so we were keen when we were invited to a friends' second birthday party here at the Big Apple. Our time was only spent in the indoor soft play area, so if you're looking for a review of the lazer tag, bowling, or game arcade, you'll have to wait for some other Yelper to get to the Big Apple.
In general, the play area was fun, for him, but there were a number of items that I found less than ideal.
1. Heat! It was so damned hot in the play area, we were all sweating. Now this was a party with 18 families, so it appeared it was nowhere near it's capacity, but still, everyone, without exception, complained about the lack of ventilation.
2. Disrepair. Mostly, things were in pretty good shape, but a number of things were kind of jerry-rigged with zip ties and duct tape. No single thing caused me great concern, but the sheer quantity of places where I saw these things made me wonder if a little more rigorous maintenance wasn't in order. I'm sure the wear and tear on such play things is massive, but for the amount they charge, I expected more quality to be honest.
3. Non-slidey slides. The biggest coolest-looking slide was, in fact, a dud! There's a slide that goes from the upper level of the play area down to the bottom where the parents were generally hanging out. This makes a total descent of some 4-5 meters. How cool is that??? Not much, it turns out. Kids were constantly having to scoot themselves down. One lucky parent was wearing the right fabric to make her slide down well, but everyone else was forced to self-propel.
4. I don't mark down for this, but the food served to the kiddies was the usual breaded-fried-potato-waste-on-a-stick. De regueur for such party places, they won no stars in our book because none of it met our child's dietary requirements (gluten-free). We never expect this, though, and always bring our own. My wife and I found ourselves the inevitable schadenfreude when we realized that our child's meal was way healthier than any of the other children!
Looking at the heat, and the disrepair, I can't imagine a full-capacity weekend, where there are wall-to-wall kids. read more