Wacky Warehouse

It feels like we have been stuck inside, except for very brisk dog walking, for weeks, with all the snow, cold weather and colds. Today I thought I would take my daughter to the Wacky Warehouse that we are always driving past in Colliers Wood. I had a look on their website, and it looked quite inviting. There was a promise of coffee, magazines and newspapers in a "coffee corner" (this costs an extra 50p, compared to one which doesn't have the coffee lounge). The website also states that "there's a safe toddler area with squishy, squashy shapes for little-ones" what more could you want? We ate our breakfast, had a few quick rounds of singing along with the songs on the cbeebies website, dressed for action and set out on our journey.
When we arrived it looked like the play area was upstairs (via one very dirty lift), so up we went. The lady behind the counter was very friendly. There weren't any arts and crafts on, but there was going to be a Christmas party at 12 which she asked if we would like to be part of, but I didn't think we would last that long as it was only 10am. The price of entry was £3, which included a drink & biscuit, and was valid until 3pm. The coffee turned out to be a serve yourself sachet of Kenco (decaf!! but drinkable) and there were indeed biscuits, and 2 kinds of squash. So far so good. I thought I would save my coffee for later, and get on with some play time.
The toddler area was about 3meters x 8meters, a third of which was a ball pool with a slide, and 2 thirds was just empty space. The squshy squashy shapes were in the form of a large padded rocking lion and frog. There was also a mirror. Oh! I thought, how are we going to make this last for more than 10 minutes? There were about 8 other children in the play centre, which was lucky, as it meant the ball pool was mostly empty, I think we managed about 15 minutes, of sitting on the lion and playing in the ball pool before going for a coffee and squash break (and yes a small biscuit...). Fueled up on E numbers, we went back for round two, another 10 mins in the ball pool, before other children started jumping in, which made the balls move around like a tide overwhelming my daughter a little (what do I know, it was both of our first times in a ball pool) anxious not to be too overprotective I let her ride it our  for a short while before climbing back out with her. We then broke the rules by going into the (empty) over-5 area, which had far more squishy squashy shapes, making me wonder whether the over-5 part was actually in the levels above our heads.
All in all, I would give it 3 out of 5. Most of those points are because my daughter clearly had an excellent time. The lost points are for a) size and b) size (you really wouldn't want to be there when it was busy). I think we will try Eddie Catz next time to compare.

In the ball pool.