Sometimes you just want to let loose and have some fun, and Liverpool has plenty to offer in this department. Nerf guns, trampolining, watersports and even zombies – there are places all around the city set up for kids, and big kids, to wear themselves out. Here are a few of the best options.
Remember chasing your siblings around the house and firing foam bullets at them with a Nerf gun? Well in Liverpool, there’s a place you can go to do that. In a padded indoor battlefield in Vauxhall, a 10-minute walk from the city centre, the Nerf Centre allows visitors to let loose in a room full of crash mats with a nearly limitless supply of toy guns and ammo. What more do you want?
How do you make crazy golf more enticing? Simple: add a cocktail bar. Ghetto Golf is a brilliantly designed indoor course with cocktails, great music and holes covered with graffiti and built using rescued furniture. Given the space required, you’ll need to travel down to the old warehousing district in the Baltic.
Gaming bars are becoming more prevalent in big cities, and NQ64 is the latest to pop up in Liverpool. It’s furnished with ’80s arcade machines and old-school consoles, catering to anyone with itchy thumbs. Less than 20 minutes from Liverpool Central station, it’s a great place to sit back, play a few rounds of Street Fighter and knock back a signature cocktail or craft beer.
For anyone interested in something more outdoorsy and, well, wetter, Liverpool has you covered. The Liverpool Watersports Centre lies near Albert Dock and offers everything from an inflatable obstacle course to wakeboarding lessons. All you need to do is follow the dock about 1.5mi (2.4km) south, and you’ll find it. Book activities online, or you can just turn up in person and see what’s available.
Perhaps all these other options were too soft for you, and you need something a bit more thrilling. Well, how about spending three hours trapped in a derelict hospital wing being menaced by flesh-eating zombies? The Zombie Asylum is a truly terrifying experience built into Newsham Park Hospital, 15 minutes by car from the centre. You’ll be armed, briefed and sent into an immersive live experience with actors, movie-quality makeup and sheer, abject terror.