AS a live music lover, I have visited London’s The O2 – the UK’s most popular live entertainment venue – numerous times in my adult life.
But with my primary school aged child? Despite living half an hour from the venue, I’ve never even considered it as a day out.
Until that is, I took my son to iFly Indoor Skydiving over the summer holidays and we had a whale of a time.
Swapping my O2 beer goggles for mum goggles, I suddenly became acutely aware of all the other activities the massive dome offered, outside of huge concerts and bar-hopping.
So we boomeranged back there during a rainy weekend to try out yet another one of their kid-friendly attractions – Activate.
Activate bills itself as a ‘live-action gaming adventure,’ with nine different interactive game rooms featuring a bunch of activities for all ages and skill levels.
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In the laser room, we dodged moving laser beams to reach a target, in the hoops room we had to sink a certain number of basketballs in the hoop, in the grid room we pranced across a lit-up dancefloor, and in the strike room we aimed balls to blast asteroids out of the sky.
The best thing was every activity took max two minutes, so you were never waiting longer to get into your next game.
During our session, which costs from £22.95pp for 60 minutes, there were families with kids my son’s age, groups of ten year olds, mums with teenagers and twenty-somethings who’d come for an afternoon out, because you can set the level at each room before you enter.
It was the same when we visited iFly. In our group of seven, there were two tweens, a 16-year-old and a twenty-something couple on a date alongside my seven-year-old son and I.
And we all had an equally brilliant time.
While anyone aged 3 to 93 is welcome at iFly, you do need a degree of bravery because you have to get inside a huge, glass wind tunnel that sends air upwards at speeds of 120mph to 165mph, and attempt to do your best flying squirrel impression.
The wind is STRONG. So strong that you simply have to flop forwards as you enter the tunnel.
But I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a big grin on my son’s face as the moment he first flew off the ground, which only got wider when he opted for the special “High Flight” add-on, where the instructor took him on a spinning flight, 40 feet up towards the top of the tunnel.
Each session lasts around a minute, and everyone in our group got four sessions as part of their package (although that might change depending on group size), with the opportunity to add a High Flight to each of their goes in the wind tunnel, which cost £15 a pop.
It’s well worth doing the add-on at least once if you can afford the extra cost, as unless you’re planning on jumping out of a plane anytime soon, this is the closest you’ll ever come to flying high above the ground.
There are plenty more family attractions at the O2 too, especially the famous roof climb – with a special ‘Halloween Up at The O2 climb’ scheduled for on October 31.
But there’s also Oxygen Activeplay trampoline park and Clip N’ Climb, plus later this year they’ve got Guinness World Records London opening – the first permanent entertainment venue from Guinness World Records.
If all that fun makes you hungry, there are stacks of restaurants offering kid-friendly food – from pizza and burgers for the less adventurous eaters, to Mexican, Brazilian street food and Chinese hotpot.
We opted for Maki and Ramen, a chain inspired by the ramen shops of Japan.
As well as an extensive sushi menu, they serve up very good bowls of steaming ramen – we opted for their signature pork tonkatsu with a side of beef (my son) and the tofu hell ramen with a side of kimchi (me).
If you visit during the week, you can also take advantage of their £18 lunch deal that gets you a main, side and drink.
We popped next door to Haute Dolci for pudding, sharing two of their signature gelato sundaes garnished with warm chocolate cake, fondue chocolate and crushed Ferrero Rocher.
Stuffed to the brim with noodles and ice cream, my son was unusually compliant about a trip to the O2’s outlet shops.
The venue has a number of high street brands like Nike, Adidas, Kurt Geiger and Whittards offering up to 70 per cent off RRP, and I managed to pick up a couple of dresses for a significant discount and a pair of Nike trainers for my son for £20.
Great fun, great grub and great shopping in a totally rainproof destination? We’ll definitely be back.
Only problem now is my son’s keen to go to a gig now too…