Jumpin Fun is the perfect place to throw a birthday party where kids will have an amazing time bouncing, eating, and playing!
Birthday parties for kids should be high energy (to burn off all that sugar!) and a ton of fun. What better place to have a birthday party than a giant inflatable park?
Disclaimer: Jumpin Fun Salisbury kindly gifted this party, though everything was exactly as it would be for any birthday party. All opinions – and pictures – are our own.
We are very lucky to have a Jumpin Fun near us in Salisbury, Wiltshire. (There are two others, in Derby and Burgess Hill)
We visited when it first opened in the summer, we spent a happily exhausting couple of hours bouncing around like maniacs. (Yes, grownups are allowed to bounce too.)
Little C loves action-packed parties, so when she discovered Jumpin Fun hosts parties, she knew it would be the perfect place for her 9th birthday celebration.
A Jumpin Fun birthday party involves inflatable bouncing, a party host, private room for the birthday tea, and everything except cake is included.
Jumpin Fun parties are officially 1 hour and 45 minutes, with an hour bouncing on the inflatables plus 45 minutes in the party room. But we all know there’s no way kids are going to spend 45 minutes eating. Fortunately once they’ve stuffed themselves they can go back out and play in the (massive) ball pit until their parents arrive.
Oh, and parents can stay if they like. There’s a cafe upstairs where they can hang out while the kids are going nuts on the inflatables.
The booking process is online and pretty simple. You choose your date, time slot, number of guests (max. 20), and food, which are kid-friendly chicken nuggets or pizza.
When your guests are confirmed you need to log back in and fill out a disclaimer for each one, which means you just have to add their name and date of birth. It’s a safety/legal thing, but you don’t need to do this until a few days before the party. (We all know those parents who are crap about RSVPs, right?)
So, the Jumpin Fun party is booked, the kids are arriving, and you check in at the desk.
I love how even the barrier is padded, because you know the kids are going to be climbing on that right away!
Each child is given a wristband, which is checked as they go in and out of the inflatable part.
Every Jumpin Fun party also has their own host, who will look after you in the party room, and keep an eye on the kids when they are on the inflatables.
Our host was Ebony, who was fantastic, incredibly sweet with the children, and very organized and competent.
That’s her at the front, attaching a wristband.
The first thing they have to do is watch a brief safety video. Everyone who bounces at Jumpin Fun has to watch it, whether you’re there for a party or not.
Then they’re herded into the party room to take off shoes and coats.
The Jumpin Fun party room is brilliant!
I hadn’t realised it had a disco ball, which is so simple, but utterly delightful to the children.
The party room is essentially your base. There are handy baskets for shoes, the main table, plus a table to the side where you can put cake/party bags/presents.
It’s likely that at least one of the party parents will be in there, but if you’re concerned about security there are lockers in the hall where you can leave valuables. My husband mostly stayed in the room chatting with a couple of others while I braved the inflatables to take pictures.
Anyway, once the shoes are off, the children are let loose in the park!
I should say now that taking pictures in a place where everything is wobbly is challenging. And let me tell you, when kids are having this much fun they really don’t want to stop and pose for a pretty picture. So they’re not the most perfect quality pictures. I did make a few gifs for action shots, so you can see some of the cool stuff there.
This is the view from the cafe. Isn’t it huge?
The ball pit is at the front, on the right is this amazing thing where they have to jump over moving arms. Further back are the inflatables, which is where they have their first hour.
There’s so much to do!
I’m exhausted just watching them!
The climbing, slides, and drops are open, then there are also sections which are netted in, such as obstacle courses and even a football-ish section.
There’s even a spot where two kids can battle Gladiator-style, though it has to be said that the battles don’t last very long, as it’s damn hard to keep your footing!
You can also see the massive slide in the background, which is really cool. (I know, I’ve been on it.)
So anyway, the kids spend an hour or so jumping, sliding, dropping, climbing, tumbling, and generally having a marvellous time.
In the meantime, your host has popped back to the party room to get the food ready, before coming back to herd the kids inside.
There’s a bluetooth system if you want to play music through your phone, but to be honest we didn’t bother, because twelve kids produce quite enough racket on their own without adding Baby Shark or some other such horror to the mix.
The disco ball is on, and the kids are hoovering up the food like mad. I meant to get a pretty shot of the table before they came in, but I was about ten seconds too late and they had fallen on everything like locusts.
About the food: it’s really good!
We chose the mixed pizza option, but that’s not all you get.
There are also cheese and ham sandwiches, crisps (the proper party kind like cheese puffs and bacon fries) plus plates of biscuits and little cakes. There’s also the obligatory nod to health in the form of cucumber sticks.
Everything had clearly been freshly prepared, not sitting in the fridge for hours getting soggy.
And of course there’s plenty of water and squash, because all that bouncing and yelling is thirsty work.
The pizza was really impressive. Each child had their own little pizza in a box, plain and pepperoni, so they could swap and share as they liked. It was clearly freshly made, proper pizza, rather than some dodgy frozen supermarket kind. So big kudos for quality food!
As I said, all we had to bring was the cake.
You can bring candles but not sparklers, as apparently they mess with the smoke detectors. Fair enough. They even provided a knife to cut the cake.
Anyway, once the children were filled with pizza, sandwiches, crisps, and biscuits, they headed back out the the ball pit.
As well as the ball pit, there was also a thing (I have no idea what it’s called) with large rotating arms that the kids either had to jump over or duck under.
These two activities are great to spend the last half hour of the party. Still plenty of fun, but not so risky as postprandial inflatable bouncing!
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I really cannot overstate how incredibly impressed we were with this party.
The lovely host, the excellent party room, wonderful food, and the fantastic inflatables themselves.
The whole place was clean and well-looked-after, and the staff were friendly and competent.
As an extra bonus, we got to take any leftover food home, so we ended up with a little pizza, plus a few sandwiches and biscuits to snack on.
The children all had a fantastic time, and I got great feedback from parents too! Several of them hadn’t heard of Jumpin Fun before, and there were lots of plans being made for holiday bouncing, as well as adding to the list of future party venues. Jumpin Fun is a wonderful activity for weekends and holidays, and they also have special toddler-friendly and SEN sessions.
We loved every minute of our Jumpin Fun birthday party! Get booking for your next awesome party!
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If you’re planning on making party bags, check out this post.
Finally, a HUGE thank you to Jumpin Fun Salisbury for hosting this brilliant party.
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