Discover Children's Story Centre — Attraction in London

Visited in 8/03/2023 around 11 am

Great place, rude judgemental staff who will be commenting on what your child is wearing and passively aggressively criticising your parenting. Do not recommend, especially for sensitive people, women struggling with postpartum anxiety and depression, because staff will ruin your day.

The receptionist ruined my visit even before I came in to the area by starting repeatedly commenting that my baby is cold. Bare in mind my daughter was wearing: tights, jeans, waterproof trousers, body, top, woollen cardigan, balaclava, snow boots and a very thick winter coat. She wasn’t wearing gloves because she hates them and always takes them off, she was in the buggy with the wind and rain cover on top when outside and her hands were warm. But receptionist instead of doing her job and explaining how the centre works repeatedly said that my daughter is cold and that gloves usually help her with cold and said that daughter’s hands were cold. Like she was expecting me explain my parenting choices to her? Stranger, who I see the first time in my live and who supposed to just give me my ticket and explain the rules? For what she knows, I could’ve took the gloves off my daughter when we were waiting for receptionist to serve us, why did she assume I don’t know what is better for my child? I, unlike your receptionist have manners and I didn’t want to go to her level and argue, so I just ignored her rude comments and gave her a look, so then she finally did her job and told me, although very quickly how the place works.

So you see, I have anxiety disorder and when someone meets me at the door with passive aggressive criticism of my parenting (unfair as well because my daughter was warm!!!!) - my day is then ruined and I will expect the staff in this place to be judgemental. And imagine that! In London in 2023!!! I thought mum-shaming was in the past? But obviously not in Stratford.

I was looking forward to this visit and booked it in advance, but couldn’t enjoy it because was met with judgemental passive aggressive critical woman who thought it is her place to tell me how to dress up my daughter. Later when I was inside another member of staff commented on my daughter boots, saying: “They look huge!” as of to say my daughter’s shoes are too big? (surprise surprise, they are HER CORRECT SIZE!!) I just replied that yes, they are big because they are snow boots, the girl said again:”They look massive!” Like she too wanted me to explain myself to her? Which of course I didn’t. I just left left the centre after that and didn’t even attend our booked story time, because I just had enough of this terrible people.

So I would advice to the management of the centre to please train their staff properly and just a bit of advice, always assume that parent knows their own child better than you. We are not coming to the play centre for parenting advice or criticism, especially not from unprofessional strangers who we meet for the first time in our lives and who doesn’t know anything about our child. Can you please teach your staff that it is not their place to give advice and think that they know better how to parent some else’s children please? Also assume that some parents might be sensitive due to psychological conditions(like me) or postpartum disorders, so experience like mine today can really upset them and affect their mental health. I definitely got really upset being a sensitive person and having anxiety disorder, and if your staff thinks this behaviour is normal they are toxic people and shouldn’t be working with kids.

I definitely will not be coming back. Mum shaming and judgemental people who comment on my daughter’s clothes is not the way I want to spend my day, and I am surprised to actually have this experience in London in 2023, where people supposed to know better.

P.S Didn’t want to write a review really but just wanted to complain about members of staff mentioned and I would write an email instead of public review if you had that option on your website,...

It is a real shame that such a wonderfully decorated, engaging and stimulating story center has such a diabolically poor customer service and unpleasant staff. They seem to lack basic social skills, essential level of competence or emotional intelligence in dealing with their customers, children and adults alike. It is almost absurd that a business that would allegedly aim at making children and their parents magically happy by exploiting famous fairytail images could mess up your experience of magic so badly. All the magic ends with the moment you discover the person "in charge", the way he introduced himself. His dismissive tone, inability to listen to the clients and act flexibly in the situation, which everyone could find themselves in, was shockingly upsetting and grotesque. Our small party of 4 kids, including a birthday boy and 4 adults were slightly carried away, lost track of time and as a result we arrived at the cafe shortly before our session were coming to end at 2:30 pm. We just happened to need an extra 10 minutes to round it up. At the cafe they were glad to sell the drinks without any warning that we simply have no time to enjoy them. They made profit of around 80 pounds from our visit, including the session passes and drinks but refused to allow a petiful amount of time in an empty cafe so we could sing a happy birthday song and leave the building in a much happier mood. The man in charge asked us to leave the building as if we were breaking the law by exceeding 2 hour allowance in his story center. He was very delighted at exercising his power of kicking four kids out with no effort to make it right. This is a story of totally mishandled situation and never coming back clients. Our suggestion to your business: may you invest part of your handsome profit in a customer...

I have given this venue 3 stars, because of my experience, which is based on a visit without any additional add on activities, and the age and inclination of my children. As a concept, the Story Centre, is a wonderful magical, playground, allowing children the freedom to stimulate and explore their imagination without any limits. My children are 8, and so at the upper end of the suggested visiting age range, which was telling. Besides the individual installations, they enjoyed the completing the trail challenge, which I feel could be developed further; (perhaps more than one trail sheet; answer questions according to the installation that gets kids thinking about what they are looking at, etc). Also ensuring all the items that they were looking for, are better maintained. The art station was good, but again, to engage the older children maybe competition to create a design and upload to their website, or even writing a short story based on one of the installations from the Centre and uploaded onto the website. My children are have not yet succumbed fully to the technologies, but using some form of interactive app, or digital activity would have been a great draw for the elder kids. They did like the 'Build Your Own Story' with the sentences provided on 1st floor, again something that could be developed further. As avid readers, they did enjoy the visit, and I purposely gave minimal information before the visit, so that I could watch how slightly more independent children make the most of the Centre. In short, to summarise, if your children are 5 and under and not tech zombies, the standalone visit is (with parental guidance), a fun-filled adventure . However, if your children are older, purchasing the add on activities would make more impact as a...