The Liverpool Indoor Funfair is back for summer 2024. It’s being help at the Exhibition Centre Liverpool down by the docks, between Thursday 1st August and Sunday 18th August 2024. We were very kindly invited down to give it a whirl and here is everything you need to know before you book your tickets, including our honest review based on a trip as a family of 5 with children aged 4, 11 and 14.
What is the Indoor Funfair?
It is pretty much what it says on the tin. A funfair filled with rides, food stalls and prize games like a hook a duck, inside, making it a great day out come rain or shine. The main difference between the indoor fair and a typical fair you find on a field is that this is a pay on the door and have unlimited access to all the rides type event instead of pay as ride. The games and food stalls are, of course, extra.
What rides are there at the Liverpool Indoor Funfair?
There are a number of rides available from Bouncy Castles and Mini Trains for the little ones to jaw-dropping rides for the adrenaline junkies. You will find a mix of traditional rides like the Helter Skelter and the Waltzers as well as some more unusual ones like a Snow Slide and Crazy Bulls.
Height restrictions do apply and these can be found on the website so if you have a short adrenaline junkie who loves thrill rides it might be worth checking before you go to avoid disappointment, for context our average height 11 year old was only too short for one ride but he could enjoy everything else.
How much are the Indoor Funfair Tickets?
You can buy riding wristbands online for £13.99 or £15.99 on the door for a three hour session of unlimited rides.
You can also buy spectator tickets for those that want to come along but not ride for £6. We think this is great for families with small children where one parent can be the designated chaperone when needed and the other can be chief bag watcher and photographer.
Our review of the Liverpool Indoor Funfair
The first thing we want to say is that we felt this was great value for money. We went to a day festival last week where the rides were £4 each and when the youngest was unable to go on a small children’s ride alone we had to pay for the accompanying adult, this adds up very quickly and means you have two options, limit the number of rides the kids can enjoy, or prepare to remortgage your house post visit. Based off this your ticket would cover 3 or 4 rides but in fact you can ride as many as you want as many times as you want, making it affordable family fun for the summer holidays, which lets be honest can be hard to find these days. I’d also like to point out that we went on every single ride we wanted to and then went on some again and again, the queues were minimal even for the larger rides.
As a family with a real mix of ages we were very impressed with the range of rides available and the placement of them. This might sound odd but the big rides are mixed in with the little ones which meant we could easily take turns going from a large ride to a small one or even use a small one whilst the big kids were queueing for their ride and be back in time to watch them too, or on the odd occasion watch both rides from the same spot.This is much more preferable than having them segregated and then having to either separate off or keep going back and forth and enabled us to feel like we had really enjoyed some family time together not just in the same place.
The favourite attraction for both the 4 year old and the 11 year old was the play centre which houses 4 trampolines which both of them loved and for the 14 year old it was the dodgems.
Our adrenaline junkie 11 year old also loved Twist and Miami, his dad not so much!
We also thought the atmosphere was great with ride lights, music playing in the background and then different songs also playing on some rides too, however if this puts you over or you think it might be a bit overstimulating or you or your child have sensory needs and would prefer a quieter funfair experience then there is a quieter session that you can book on Saturday 17th August at 10am.
It’s worth noting that although the wristbands are inclusive of all rides there are opportunities to spend more money on things like food and games, however you aren’t made to feel like you need to, there is no hard sell or anyone trying to entice your child to play one of their games and then charging you for it but if you do want to spend a bit more whilst you’re there everywhere accepts cards so no need to worry about taking cash.
Overall we would highly recommend the Liverpool Indoor Funfair as a family fun day during the summer holidays as it really does cater for all age groups, in fact I would go as far as to say it is the ultimate family day. I would recommend booking online in advance as it is slightly cheaper and i think this attraction will be in popular demand so I wouldn’t risk booking on the day, that being said if you find yourself on the south side of the Albert Dock with nothing to do then you can buy tickets on arrival so it worth trying if you want to.
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