As a family we are pretty keen on science-related days out so we were looking forward to this one! The National Space Centre in Leicester was quite a long way to go (over an hour and a half each way) but was worth it. We got our toddler into his pyjamas for the way home and he did fall asleep (and transferred to his cot when we got back – hurray!). As usual, we took our own lunch and there was a dedicated room to eat this in. It was pretty busy (it was half term) and the queue for food seemed fairly slow so we were pleased we had brought our own. There was loads to look around here. We worked our way around the different areas downstairs first. There was a lot to interact with in all areas – the kids loved it. As usual, us adults would have enjoyed more time to read some of the information but this is hard to do when you are running around after a toddler.

There were various different areas downstairs, the Home Planet, Into Space, Our Solar System, and The Universe. We had a good look around a lot of this. My husband then took the older two on a ride in there that had a 20 minute queue. Some of it was a simulator style experience and for some of it they worked on puzzles in teams. The minimum age for this was five. The little one and I went for a drink in the cafe area. You can sit right near the rocket. The booster fires up at regular intervals. All the children there loved this. When they caught up with us we were all hungry so we all got some hotdogs from the cafe, the queue was fairly quick now it was 3pm!

We enjoyed our hotdogs and then headed upstairs. There was more upstairs than we realised and we didn’t manage to get around it all in the time we had, so we are definitely planning on another trip here. We didn’t realise until we arrived that your ticket allows another free visit within the year so this a good perk! Upstairs we saw the Soyuz Capsule which was very impressive and then a lot of information about the moon and the history of the moon landings. Our son is really interested in this so he enjoyed it and it’s very educational. Again there was some hands on things to do and some good photo opportunities. We could also go up and down the side of the rocket tower in a glass lift to get between the floors which was fantastic! We had to miss one of the floors out due to time as we had prebooked to go to the planetarium. We will hopefully pick up what we missed next time we go.

There seems to be various shows at the Planetarium. We booked the night before and there weren’t too many options left. We saw ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ which was about climate change etc. It was fine and even the little one sat through it, but we were hoping for a space based one! The cost of the day was £65.80 (not including parking and money spent in the cafe) and since you can return once more within a year for free with your ticket, I think this is good value for money. There was a good gift shop here with lots of space based toys etc. We could have spent a bit longer in here but we needed to get going with our long journey. A great day out.