childrens

UNIVERSAL is opening a brand-new ‘kids resort’ theme park dedicated to families with younger children.

It will open seven different worlds around popular TV and film characters like Shrek, Spongebob Squarepants and the Minions.

Universal announced yesterday that it will open its Universal Kids Resort in Frisco, Texas, on July 1.

Sharon Parker, Director of Marketing and Sales for Universal Kids Resort, told NBC 5: “This is a theme park built with kids in mind.

“At the end of the day, we think that the inner child in all of us is going to brought to life once those families come to the park.”

Inside will be seven-themed lands inspired by Shrek, SpongeBob SquarePants, Jurassic World, Minions, Trolls, Puss in Boots, and Gabby’s Dollhouse.

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As it’s designed for children between 3-8, the experiences will be ‘kid-sized’ and will include immersive attractions.

Activities include a Trolls dance party, Puss in Boots-themed puppet show, sensory gardens, character meet-and-greets and water play.

In its social media post about the grand-opening – other rides include rollercoasters, swing rides, a playground, lazy river ride and splash park.

Along with the park, a new Universal Kids Resort Hotel will open just a few steps away from the entrance.

It will have a colourful exterior and inside will be 300 rooms and family suites, three restaurants and a swimming pool.

The hotel will accept stays that start on June 30 – the day before the park officially opens.

Rooms include Standard Queen, Deluxe Queen, and Signature Queen rooms, which can sleep up to five guests, and the Family Suites, which can sleep up to six guests.

Staying at the hotel means guests get early bird admission one hour before the park opens, and access through a dedicated entrance.

When it comes to shopping, whatever hotel guests buy will be delivered the room so they won’t have to carry it around during the day.

Tickets to the park are now on sale – there are one and two-day admissions.

One-day tickets start from $54.99 (£40.98) and two-day admissions start from $73.99 (£55.15) – this pass must be used in two consecutive days.

There’s also an annual pass option too for entry all year costing $129.99 (£96.88).

The resort is launching packages too – for example, a package would include a two-night hotel stay, early park admission and a ‘1.5-Day’ admission ticket.

Children’s TV presenter Dave Benson Phillips – who hosted CBBC game show Get Your Own Back – was left unable to walk after suffering with his health

A beloved children’s TV presente has recalled how he was left unable to walk after a painful health battle. Dave Benson Phillips, now 61, presented CBBC game show Get Your Own Back and has recalled how when he was in pantomime, he noticed something about his legs that alarmed him and he immediately sought help.

“I began getting tingling in my legs and to lose mobility. It was very slow, but it was very painful. It was quite scary,” he explained, before it was later revealed that he had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

Dave, who was already pre-diabetic, found out 10 years ago that he had diabetes. “I realised it was my own doing, my own fault. But it was still an incredible shock. It was a frightening thing,” he explained.

Dave is now using a Dexcom ONE+ glucose monitor to keep an eye on his blood sugar levels. “It has made having diabetes a lot easier, because it takes away all the guess work,” he explains.

Now, Dave is encouraging others to focus on their health after his own struggles. “I’ve had a real battle. I don’t like the fact that there’s things I’ve had to give up. But having diabetes made me aware of making good decisions about my lifestyle. I want to be around for as long as possible,” he told the Mail.

Dave had previously opened up about how he was one of the first victims of fake news being spread online. He shared: “Imagine my surprise when this lady said to me, ‘Look, you have a Facebook page that says some awful things about children with special needs.’

“I remember diving into Dixons. They had a computer connected to the internet. I said, ‘Do you mind if I take a look?’ The guy realised my distress and sat me down. We saw this page which looked like it was mine; pictures and posters of me, with all this information in between about what terrible people children with special needs are. It was a horrible thing to read.”

He recalls how he had to set up his own social media at the time, so that people could realise the other accounts were trolls. He explained: “The police got involved. One particular person had set up an algorithm that would bombard me; we found quarter of a million emails from one source, and we couldn’t prove who it was.

“Despite the fact that we can see who’s doing it nobody has to be accountable.”

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Talk to the passionate team behind KidSTREAM, a new children’s museum in Ventura County, and they’ll tell you about the many lofty goals they have for the 21,000-square-foot space which opened to the public Thursday.

They’ll describe how the museum is the first of its kind in Ventura County and how they hope to make it accessible to as many local children as possible through outreach, discounts and free programming.

They’ll explain how the immersive exhibits highlight the county’s unique industry and geography, including an agriculture area where young visitors can pick pretend fruits and sell them at a farmers market and an ocean exhibit where miniature replicas of the Channel Islands emerge from the bouncy blue “Pacific Ocean.”

A drone view of the museum’s Pacific Ocean and Channel Islands-themed play area.

Avery Hanchar, right, and her brothers Oliver and Carter, test their climbing and balancing skills.

They’ll share that the STREAM in KidSTREAM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Arts and Math, and talk about the activity carts and art projects that will enhance and support learning for young visitors.

But they are also well aware that for some families, the still-evolving space will serve a less highfalutin, if just as important, goal.

“Parents are looking for a good nap on the way home,” said KidSTREAM founder Kristie Akl. “And we can give them that too.”

Akl, along with KidSTREAM board chairman Bryan Yee and guest experience director Dani Hildreth, were giddy with excitement as they took me on a tour of the museum in the days before it opened.

This moment had been a long time coming, they said.

A high-energy former high school biology teacher with a make-it-happen spirit, Akl first began dreaming about a children’s museum in Ventura County in 2013 after taking her three daughters to KidSpace, a children’s museum in Pasadena founded by members of the Caltech community in 1979.

Akl loved Kidspace, but it was a full hour from the family’s house in Camarillo and she longed for something similar closer to home. For two years, she tried convincing others to create a children’s museum in Ventura County. When that failed, she formed a fledgling board in 2015 and incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2017.

A young guest chases a cloth blown out of the tubes at the museum’s Amazing Airways exhibit.

“I was always optimistic,” she said. “You have to be to do something like this.”

The original plan was to open the museum in 2020, but fundraising efforts were hampered by the 2017 Thomas fire, which destroyed hundreds of homes in the area. A few years later came COVID shutdowns. The delays were discouraging, but Akl and a growing community of motivated believers used the time to build out their proof of concept by bringing science projects to local schools, neighborhoods and community events, creating online workshops and giving farm workers free science kits to help their kids get exploring.

“It was a herculean task and a huge community effort,” Akl said. “Everyone leaned in.”

Today she estimates that the KidSTREAM Children’s Museum touched the lives of 70,000 children in the Ventura area before ever opening its doors.

Luke Delossantos, right, and his son Grayson play pretend.

“They prototyped a lot of ideas,” said Yee, a father of three who took over from Akl as chairman of the board of KidSTREAM in 2022. “That showed us what works and what doesn’t work and what we should do next.”

In 2022, the city of Camarillo donated the building that housed the former public library to the museum and in 2024, the team raised enough money to bring children’s museum specialist Hildreth on board. Construction began in 2025.

In addition to the agriculture and Pacific Ocean areas outside, visitors will find a camping exhibit with an obstacle course, gratitude tree and a series of different shaped tents where kids can play. There’s also a sand pit where children can dig up replicas of pygmy mammoth bones. (The pygmy mammoth is a dwarf species of mammoth that was native to the Channel Islands.) A nature area includes a sensory path designed with the unique needs of neurologically divergent children in mind.

“There are 200,000 kids in Ventura County from a huge range of backgrounds including a lot of farm worker families,” Hildreth said. “The space is designed for all of them, newborn to 10 years old.”

In addition to the outdoor play areas, visitors will find an indoor “makerspace” with a white Lego wall where children can create vertical designs, four tables for art projects and a super-sized Lite-Brite.

Visitors walk through a greenhouse at the museum’s agriculture area.

“When you are 3 feet tall, it’s your whole field of vision,” Hildreth said.

Admission to KidSTREAM is $16 for adults and children over the age of 1, $13 for seniors and military, and $3 for families with EBT, SNAP or WIC cards. Membership options are also available.

Yee said market research suggests the new museum will reach as many as 150,000 people, and there is still room for expansion.

“We’re 21,000 square feet now with room for growth,” he said. “We’re not stopping, but we’re so excited to open our doors.”

May 15 (UPI) — Texas Children’s Hospital plans to create the first “detransition clinic” in the United States as part of a settlement with the state for provided transgender care, officials announced Friday.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the settlement, which will also require the hospital to fire and revoke the medical privileges of doctors, as well as pay a $10 million fine.

The hospital will make care at the clinic free of charge for its first five years and offer services for children to detransition to their gender assigned at birth.

Paxton investigated the Houston-based hospital in 2023 for the transgender care services it offered at the same time the state legislature was outlawing gender-affirming care for children.

“I applaud Texas Children’s Hospital for changing course and committing to being part of the solution by agreeing to form a first-of-its kind Detransition Clinic that will provide free care to those who have been victimized by twisted, morally bankrupt transgender ideology,” Paxton said in a statement.

The settlement, he said, is meant to reverse damage caused by “ideologically motivated physicians who harmed patients with their transition care, which the attorney general’s office alleged included the use of false diagnosis codes.

The hospital, in its own statement, said that it had spent the past three years cooperating with the investigation, “navigating an unconscionable campaign of mistrusts and mischaracterizations of gender affirming care.”

It said that multiple internal and external investigations support that the hospital has been compliant with all laws — before and after the state ban on transition care.

“Today, we made the difficult decision to settle with the Texas attorney general and the Department of Justice, closing a chapter that has been wrought with falsehoods and distractions,” the hospital said.

“To be clear — we are settling to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation,” it said. “This settlement will allow us to redirect those precious resources to focus on life-saving care and groundbreaking discoveries of our exceptional clinicians and scientists.”

Video shows Israeli police confiscating and destroying footballs that were being played with by children in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, in what mosque authorities described as part of ongoing restrictions on Palestinians inside the holy site.