A few weeks ago (before I fell ill, disappeared from my blog and then reappeared moaning a lot) I was invited to spend the morning at the Sea Life Centre in Birmingham.
We have been a few times before – once to review the centre and again to see the new penguins. But the Sea Life Centre is one of those places you just can’t get tired of. I can (and do) spend hours staring in at the different tanks and their fascinating inhabitants.
This visit, we were there to hunt monsters! The Moshi Monsters are visiting Sea Life Birmingham until 31 August 2014 and there is loads going on for your children to enjoy. Georgie and Lydia are a little young for the Moshi Monsters concept but they loved the look of the characters, and the fun of the day.
We went around the centre with Bex and her children Lewis & Leah, and had a great time hunting down the small Moshi Monster figurines in the tanks, and answering quiz questions. Each child was given an activity book to mark down the locations of each monster, and to complete the quiz.
The tanks with figurines hidden inside were marked with a large sticker so that we knew where to look for a monster, and the quiz answers were hidden amongst facts on stickers stuck to tanks around the centre. By the halfway point Lewis was running to the info stickers and getting me to read them out loud to everyone so that we could do the quiz question together. The quiz is easy enough for children to work out without being too overly simple and boring.
A Moshi Monsters swap area is positioned half way around the centre so that you can take along your duplicate collectibles and swap them for ones you are missing. It is nicely tucked out of the way so you don’t feel in the way of passing foot traffic, and it was nice to see so many of the different figurines.
A green screen area allows your children to have their photo taken against the blank background, which is then transformed via the magic of photo wizardry to look something like this…
Everyone loved hunting for the monsters and the children were soon running ahead whenever they saw the telescope sticker so they could try to be the first to find them. One or two of them were in slightly sneaky positions – one tank in particular near the end was by the lifts and might not have been seen by people going straight to the stairs. This area gets really busy so I could see this one being missed easily – it might be frustrating for children to miss one.
While we were at the centre we enjoyed saying hello to the penguins again, and this time we went into the cinema and watched the Happy Feet 4D film. Georgie and Lydia both really enjoyed it and they’ve done a good job cutting the film down to a short without losing the feel and so on.
At the end of the visit we were able to meet two of the Moshi Monsters, and Georgie bravely went with Bex and Leah to have her photo taken with them. A play in the small soft play area and then exit through the gift shop, and off we went for lunch – the Birmingham Sea Life Centre is situated in Brindley Place which has a great selection of places to eat.
We had a great time at the Sea Life Centre, and it was lovely to have the centre to ourselves for the first hour of our visit. The Moshi Monsters activities were fun and I would highly recommend a visit this summer if you have a fan of the little monsters amongst your children.
This looks like such a lovely day out, we love an aquarium! x
i love moshi monsters plus i hope i get to get tickets
only joking its for babbies