A birthday party in Bowlplex Nantgarw, Cardiff

Yesterday my husband, our twin girls and I attended a birthday party at Bowlplex in Nantgarw, Cardiff. We’ve taken our twins, who are four at the end of the month, bowling once before and they really enjoyed it. For this reason we were looking forward to the party.

Bowlplex is the largest tenpin bowling operator in the UK. Right next door you’ll find Showcase Cinemas so you can also see a film too! There are a few places nearby where you can eat, but if you’re bowling you can get food and drink served in your lane.

Bowlplex is a state-of-the-art centre with a choice of various packages. The birthday party we attended was very well organised and all of the children appeared to have had a great time. I was curious about how a bowling party would work especially with lots of children having been invited.

Each party had a host who was dressed as a pirate. Before the games began the pirates explained a few ground rules. They also let the children know that if they knocked down the pink skittle they’d win a bag of sweets. Maybe not the best incentive for those children who don’t like sweets, or for those parents who don’t like their children to have sweets, but we’ll let one fly for now!

The party that we were with had three lanes which meant that there were four children per lane so there wasn’t much waiting in between turns. We had one game which lasted around 40 minutes and R won the game in our party! She was pretty happy about that!

After the game had been played, food was served in our lane. A great idea if there’s not many of you, but with lots of children and parents there wasn’t enough room for the children to sit so many ended up sitting on the floor.

The choice of food was good. Before the game started we were asked to choose what food we wanted. Chicken nuggets, fish fingers, burgers etc all served with chips. The food was tasty, but the birthday child’s parents weren’t too pleased when they were originally told they had no hot-dogs, only for them to turn up with hot dogs instead of fish fingers?

After food the pirates helped to orchestrate some dancing and games. Overall we had a great time! The girls loved bowling, as do my husband and I so we’d probably visit again as we don’t live far away.

There’s also an amusement arcade inside the Bowlplex, but the toy grab machines weren’t switched on for some reason.

Overall, we had a  great time!