If you have stumbled upon this post, sadly this business has closed down due to the pandemic.

It’s that time of year, winter months and rainy days, when you need to find ways to entertain your toddler indoors. Luckily in Slough, we have the coolest soft play centre in a really handy location – inside the town shopping centre, opposite Primark.

The centre is run by Activus, but Slough locals may remember it as World of Play. Activus took it over in January this year and it’s had a fab makeover. Check out these snazzy new chairs, they really brighten up the place!

I met the friendly team of Libby, Martyn, Surjit and Lucy. (Locals will remember Surjit from when it was World of Play – she’s still there, hooray!) So, Libby is the manager, and she and Martyn were carrying these boxes of buckets and spades somewhere. I was intrigued and asked what they were doing. It turns out they are making a sandplay area for the future. You see Activus is not just a soft play centre, they want to encourage all sorts of play. They’ve already introduced free crafts and painting, build your own den sessions, and during October half term they’ll be doing Halloween crafts and a disco.

They’re also hoping to do classes in the future, for example adult Street Dance with a creche – I’d be totally up for that 🙂 I also learnt that Activus is owned by Aquaterra who are actually a charity, working on many community projects. Libby has loads of ideas for community projects in Slough which I was really impressed with.

I had a lovely cup of tea in the cafe, whilst Tyler played on the slides and in the ball pit. I could safely see him while I sat down here, so it’s a great place for parents to get a rest from shopping! There are two soft play areas, one big one for toddlers to age 10, and another smaller one for under 3s. This is the bigger one, which Tyler LOVES.

To get in, you have to climb up the padded steps in the above photo. Then if you go past the slide, there’s this area where you can roll under this round things, and you can secretly watch the grown-ups downstairs.

And there’s this mini assault course!

Then you can go down the slide.

At the bottom you have the ball pit.

There’s another tube slide too, which frankly I find terrifying, but it’s popular with the kids!

Back downstairs, there are two picnic tables by the window where children can do colouring in.

And then to the side of this area is a separate soft play area for the under 3s, with space hoppers and giant foam footballs, another ball pit and a wall of reading books. There’s a little slide inside this soft play bit, perfect for 1 – 2 year olds.

The cafe does children’s lunches from £3.50, chips for £1.85, as well as teas and coffees, and slushies too – I do love slushies 🙂

Tyler made friends with a little girl on our visit, it was so cute, they were running after each other, playing hide and seek and colouring in together. That was lovely to see. See, not just a soft play centre, a place to make friends too! And I am totally excited for Activus’s future plans.

If you fancy visiting, here are the details:

Activus Slough, Observatory Centre (opposite Primark), Slough, Berkshire
Opening hours: Fri 10am – 5.30pm, Sat 10am – 5pm, Sun 11am – 4pm
Admission (by child’s age):
under 1 – £1.50, age 1-2 – £3.50, age 3-4 – £4.50, age 5-10 – £5

---

For more posts about Slough, days out in the area, latest on town centre developments etc, click here.

If you are interested in seeing more of the good stuff in Slough, do follow my Instagram page @sloughitsnotsobad.