Zip World Manchester
Treetop nets, high ropes and forest tubing in the woods of Heaton Park, and it is outdoors, not indoors. The cheap one is Treetot Nets: an hour bouncing on nets in the trees for ages 1 to 5, from £5, with a grown-up joining in.
Manchester Museum
- Cost
- Free entry
- Ages
- 4 to 11
- Where
- Manchester, Greater Manchester
- Weather
- Works in the rain
- Booking
- Just turn up
A T. rex cast greets you, live frogs blink from the vivarium, and the mummies upstairs deliver the required shiver. University-run, recently rebuilt, and free - it is the right-sized natural history museum for a primary-age attention span.
Start at the dinosaur, ask at the desk for the family trails, and let the vivarium be the reward for good museum behaviour. Oxford Road buses make it an easy pair with the Science and Industry Museum on the same day.
The vivarium is the room that converts sceptics: live frogs, reptiles and other amphibians, many of them critically endangered, with the museum's conservation work on show alongside. Stan the T. rex anchors the fossil hall, the mummies handle ancient Egypt at exactly the right level of gruesome, and it is all free.
It sits on Oxford Road fifteen minutes' walk from the Science and Industry Museum's quarter, which tempts people to do both in a day. Do not. One museum plus Whitworth Park's playground is a good day; two museums is a meltdown with exhibits.
Know before you go
- Start at the T. rex - it anchors the visit and everything else hangs off it.
- Ask at the desk for the family trail sheets.
- Closed on Mondays. On Saturdays the doors open at 8am for a quiet time, but most galleries, including the dinosaurs and the vivarium, open at 10am.
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What visitors say
★★★★★ 4.7 across 10,653 Google reviews.
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Also in Manchester
Science and Industry Museum
Working steam engines, the story of Cottonopolis, and hands-on galleries in the world's oldest surviving passenger railway station. Free, and the live demonstrations are the bit kids actually remember.
National Football Museum
Shirts, trophies and match footage across four gallery floors, with a penalty shootout and skills games that football-mad kids refuse to leave. If yours do not care about football, skip it: it is exactly what it says.
Runway Visitor Park
Watch jets take off close enough to feel them, with Concorde parked by the fence. Free in, pay for parking, and there is a play area and cafe for the wait between planes.
Heaton Park
One of the biggest municipal parks in Europe: a free animal centre, a boating lake, playgrounds and enough space to lose a whole day in. You will not do all of it in one visit.
Wythenshawe Park & Community Farm
A big south Manchester park with a proper community farm - pigs, goats, horses - a Tudor hall, and enough playground to earn the trip on its own. All free.
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