Kids Day at Hampton Court Palace

We missed the car park at first and had to drive around, but once found there was good parking close to the ticket office (anpr pay at exit -12.80 for the day). The ticket office had no queue and we picked up our tickets easily. We had booked £1 universal credit tickets in advance and they did check it was valid plus asked for id. (If you claim universal credit I would highly recommend looking up £1 tickets as it gives access to spaces we would otherwise not be able to visit that are so beneficial for kids education).

Getting in was easy and we headed straight for the loos, followed by dropping off the buggy in a space next to the family room. This was very useful as it meant our packed lunch was easily accessible. Then we headed straight to the shop to pick up the free audio guide.

we explored areas using the audio guide and navigatated with the map. It was confusing at first, but eventually it all made sense! There was an option on the audio guide for a children's tour and I mostly listened to this so that I could talk to the kids about what they heard.

Oscar has been learning about kings and queens at school and so I was keen to cement this learning by showing the real life context of some of the kings he has learnt about. The audio guide was engaging for his age (6) and Mia (8) loved it too. Sylvie (4) only listened occasionally. So we played games like spot the animals in the tapestries.

We accidentally ran into some actors who played out a story in three parts over the day. All three kids really enjoyed this and it ended up as a highlight for them.

After we had thoroughly explored the palace and the kids had enough we went to the gardens. They are large and there were lots of families picnicking on the lawn.

We headed for the maze. The oldest hedge maze in Britain sounded like a lot of fun to the kids, I was concerned that we may spend the rest of the afternoon in there! Thankfully it took less than the suggested 20 minute average. This may be due to the kids theory that taking a right turn must be 'right'- well it worked!

Next it was time to visit the 'magic garden' play area. I wished I had taken a change of clothes because the water and sand play was really well designed. The whole playground was well considered and the kids could happily have spent longer there. I read at busy times you may have to queue to enter and you only have an allocated amount of time. It wasn't too busy on the day of our visit.

Then we had a quick pit stop for the kids to have an ice cream (I tried it, delicious) and a visit to the kitchens that we missed on our tour round the palace.

We were amongst the first to arrive and last to leave and I still feel that there were parts that we left unexplored. So all in all a successful day!

There were three cafes that I saw and an ice cream stop. The cafe inside the garden is the biggest and had a wide selection of hot meals and snacks. The snacks looked a bit on the expensive side, but the meals seemed reasonable. The ice cream that we had was a generous scoop and absolutely delicious!