Experiences for families with young children

When creating your experience it's important to be mindful of who the experience is intended for. Many families travel together and are excited to try new things, they will actively seek out experiences that they can do together and is enriching for all involved. Gearing your experiences toward family groups is often very rewarding.

There are some things to consider when theming your experience for family groups;

Subject matter: The theming of your experience should be of interest to the entire family or targetted at the younger members. This is because parents will often prefer something that entertains the children over themselves.

Experience pace: The experience should be paced to allow for regular stops or breaks, if needed. These should be in locations where the family can step aside for a moment and have a moment of space.

Adults attention: The adults in the group will likely have their attention divided between the experience subject and the younger members of their group. You should consider this with the component parts of your experience and there should be nothing that is overly taxing or complicated for an adult to complete if children are present.

The young persons attention span: Don’t spend too long laboring on one location or subject, the host will be able to determine when to increase the depth or not. Your experience should provide ample opportunity to move on and keep the engagement high. Engagement with the young person is critical to a positive experience. 

Little legs: Many experiences involve moving between locations, this can be tiring for adults let alone children of varying age. Consider the locations and transport of your experience carefully.

Height: Young people vary in height, it can be helpful to think of the smallest potential member of the group and will they be engaged per location. For example does every location contain stalls that the young person may be too small to see over?

Busy locations: These are often unavoidable and can be an exciting and beneficial part to any experience. Balance busy locations with areas of more calm to ensure there isnt a sensory overload for the family.

Age restricted: As obvious as it sounds, experiences for families should not include age restricted activities or access.

Host consideration: All our hosts are excellent ‘people people’. Some are naturally more comfortable or accepted by young people. During your experience creation if this is something important to you please identify it here. 

Happy families, happy experiences.