When there’s not much room for play, you have to make your own fun!

Not sure who had more fun here, Jack or me!  And I must confess, I think I nearly fell in love with a scientist called Adam who just kept setting things on fire as part of the demonstration he was doing.  No matter how frequently I raised my hand to volunteer he always seemed to choose someone under the age of 12.

We spent the entire day here, arriving shortly after it opened and staying till late afternoon.  The handy thing about having an RV around is that afternoon naps are still possible.  There was something for everyone, even Fin. The under 3 play area was great space for him to crawl and climb and work off some of that pent up energy from sitting in a car seat and having little crawling space in the RV.  It had a sensory area, large balls to move around, spinning planets and a climbing and sliding area for toddlers.

Meanwhile the older boys were off in the K’Nex exhibition admiring the models and enjoying building things. Their entire morning was spent with K’Nex.

After lunch Fin and Granpops headed off for a sleep in the van and Granny, Jack and I met Robosapien.  He was the amazing robot, built in England, which Jack was able to interact with using a touchscreen computer.  He was able to program a sequence of movements, coloured lights, head gestures and pre recorded voice messages like crying, chicken sounds and ‘hello’.  He could also program the robot to say phrases he typed, our particular favourite was “hello Jack, go give your Granny a kiss”.  We spent an hour playing with Robosapien, he was awesome!

Next it was the Margaret Zeidler Star Theatre for a film about the space race shown over the entire dome while you laid back and watched in comfy recliner chairs.  Then, with Fin awake it was more playing in the Discovery Area, the under 3 room plus three other rooms designed specifically for children under 8.  There was the airport, where you could x-Ray baggage, scan passengers, fuel and fly the plane; there was also the water area where you had to use a series of levers, blocks and the current to move coloured balls through a water maze; and finally there was the building block area where Jonathan succeeded in building a tower taller than himself

And that was all the fun we had time for – we needed to fit in a liquor store stop as we’d run out of beer.