Clowntown Children Activity & Play Centre

I’ve been coming to Clown Town for a few years & my children absolutely love it. The place is huge! Lots of variety for all ages & is kept exceptionally clean. One of the best things is the coffee!! (isnt this essential in soft plays!). Great food, huge portions & great healthy options too. Overall one of my favourite places to take the kids to let of steam.

What an awful experience we experienced here today. We arrived and paid £28 for admission, sat down and bought coffees and crisps from the cafe here. All was fine untill a member a staff (a weekend manager) rudely aggressively approached us one of my children eating fruit and plain pasta that we bought with us, and told us to put it all away and buy it from their cafe. I calmly explained that we had bought items for the other children in the cafe, but that my severely autistic son would not eat food from their cafe and would only eat food that was packaged and sealed (one of his phobias), and explained that the food was not an allergy risk to others as it was just fruit and plain pasta. I was told “your son is no different to any other child here”. I explained that autism is very complex and that he would have a severe meltdown if left hungry. I was then told “well they only get two hours to play so feed him before he come or make him wait” I told him this was not fair to do this to a disabled child, and explained that several other tables were also eating their own food. He then told me if you don’t put his food in the bin now then I’ll ban you from coming here again. I told him that the way he speaking to me was not nice and that i felt he was discriminating against my disabled son. He then said “Fine don’t come here again , we won’t let you in, your now banned”. The lady sitting next to us was appalled and told us that it was disability discrimination and explained she was a journalist and that she has recently done several articles about this as it is a major current issue. We exchanged details as she requested as this outraged her as much as it did us. Another member of staff came and sat with us shortly afterwards (Terry) and apologised for the other staffs behaviour and explained it was for allergy reasons however this didn’t excuse the staffs appalling attitude and ‘banning us’, and telling us my child was no different to any other child and that he should stick to the rules like the other children.” He also explained next time we would get free admission for disabled children. When we went to leave clown town, the previous member of staff approached us and said “just to let you know Iv spoke to Head office and you are barred from clown town” I explained we had spoken to Terry who had apologised to us, and explained several other people had witnessed our whole experience one of which was a Journalist for the Guardian Paper, he told us “well terrys gone home and I’m telling you your barred”. I’m absoutely horrified at our experience here and Our disabled child being discrimintaed against. I have been coming here for 4 years and have never experienced this before and I am deeply upset and saddened about how we have been treated today. I hope the Newspaper story will shed some more light to member of the public with disabled children before they consider using this establishment.