With the rain coming down in buckets and school holiday boredom fast setting in, I decided to take the kids, Samantha (7), Brooke (9), to try out one of the new Trampoline arenas that are popping up all over the place lately.

Attached to the local Westfield Shopping Centre, the Canberra Sky Zone Trampoline Park is located in Belconnen ACT. The complex is consists of several different trampolining areas, the largest being an area made up of multiple, interlinked trampolines. Two similar but smaller areas are used for games such as Dodgeball, plus there are two bounce-and-dunk basketball lanes, a three-lane bounce into a foam pit area, and a pair of high-bounce performance trampolines.

Pricing was on-par for similar Trampoline fun parks – 1 hour jump time, including a pair of “Skyzone grip socks” cost $18 per child or adult. After that it was $10 per additional hour-long sessions.

They do offer kids parties with three party rooms on site, however they are in the upper-end price range starting at $30 per child, with a minimum of 10 children. This price does not include the cake, lolly bags or adult platters, which start at $60 to serve 10.

Being Trampolining Park newbies, we awaited our session with anticipation. Given the rain, and the fact that it was a Sunday, the place was jam-packed with people bouncing, flipping or racing about. Parents of any younger kids were either bouncing along with them, or taking advantage of the scattered seating.

Whilst first accompanying the my kids throughout the centre, I noticed groups of teens drifting from one area to another. On the trampolines they careered around the bouncing areas with little regard for the younger children. It was worrying to see uncoordinated younger children bouncing alongside powerful teenagers who were performing wild flips and ricocheting off the side-walls! My plan to relax a little was scuttled as I found myself shadowing the kids closely, keeping an anxious eye out at all times.

After sampling most of the bouncing areas on offer, the girls settled down to their chosen favourite – the high-bounce performance trampolines.

This high-bounce trampoline area appeared to be a particular teen hang-out, with boys bouncing up to sit on the surrounding walls, walking along the pads between the two occupied trampolines and generally presiding over the area. When deciding to bounce, they took the trampolines over, urging each other to more and more risky stunts whilst the younger kids, who also wanted to make use of the best trampolines, waited in line.

Our one hour session was drawing to a close, but the kids were still enthusiastic to bounce so I went and paid for another hour of bouncing for both girls. With the change of session, a replacement teen attendant arrived to supervise the high-bounce tramps and for some reason began to turn disappointed children away, stating that the area was for the teenage boys to use only. Meanwhile the teens sat up on the wall chatting away with two now-empty trampolines below them. Due to this sudden, seemingly nonsensical exclusion of younger children from the only area my kids had found really fun, they came away visibly upset and asking to leave. It was five minutes into the second hour I had just paid for – bang went $20!

On our way out, I stopped to express my concerns to management regarding the lack of safe facilities for younger children and tweens, and the apparent teenage domination of the venue. Management apologised and agreed that all of their equipment should be accessible to all ages. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, and the way the centre was managed had soured our Sky Zone experience.

Exiting the Trampoline centre, I now found myself with two unhappy and unoccupied kids on my hands. Luckily there was a near-by fun centre to cheer the kids up and make up for the Sky Zone disappointment. All-in-all, it had turned out to be a very expensive day for me. Sky Zone had failed to live-up to the fun school holidays activity that it had promised to be.

Ever-undeterred, we will seek-out another Canberra Bounce house and see if we can’t find a more family-friendly trampolining centre to recommend to our Canberra readers and visitors, but unfortunately in the case of Sky Zone Belconnen, whilst this is a great teen activity, it’s perhaps not a great school holidays entertainment choice for the under-12 year-old children age range.

The parenting opinions expressed in this review are my own personal experiences and opinion only. Let’s go Mum was not paid or compensated in any way by Sky Zone Trampoline Parks for this review.

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