Fidgets, Our New Favourite Playground

One of the great things about living in the tropics is the weather. It's always warm (sometimes too warm) and even when it rains, the temperature never drops below about 26 degress. Ah yes, the rain. Well, maybe there is something less than great about this aspect of the weather. When we were living in Holland long grey days of drizzly rain were not uncommon. But here, when it rains, it absolutley completely POURS down. There doens't seem to be an in between on the equator: you're either dry or you're one blocked drain away from swimming.

It's a hassle when you've got young kids generating enough excess energy to make it worthwhile selling to the national grid . Our boys need to move, and move a lot. For this reason we've become well acquiainted with most of the indoor playgrounds around the island. So far our favourite is SAFRA at Toa Payoh (Lorong 6), which has a large multi-level play structure and is very reasonably priced at about $7 for unlimited time. The lack of any facilities other than toilets mean you need to take your own drinks and food which keeps it cheap, and healthy too. We've been to Go Go Bambini at Dempsey Hill a couple of times but find it quite pricey and always too busy and incredibly ear-splittingly noisy. Just too many kids in too small a space, although the facilities (cafe and play area) are very nice and quite new.

However now there's a new kid on the block and it's become a firm favourite: Fidgets at Turf City. This is the biggest indoor playground I've found here, getting close in size to the structures you see in New Zealand and Aussie. Not surprisingly, it has been imported from Australia. With two long slides and a couple of cool innovations like the giant ball pen and large plastic bubbles fitted with steering wheels the kids can sit in, there is plenty to keep the kids happy.

Parents will be pleased to know there is an automatic ball washing machine in the ball pit; the kids put the balls into a transparent tube which sucks them up, whizzes them along the side of the structure and shoots them through a machine which washes and disinfects them, then blows the cleaned balls back into the pit. The mechanisms relies on kids feeding it balls but believe me, this isn't a problem.

Another plus for us long-suffering parents: there is a cafe serving a range of muffins and cookies, plus some reasonably healthy sandwhiches, although the selection (roast chicken with apricot sauce, roast beef with horseradish, and egg mayonnaise) wouldn't appeal to most young kids so next time I'm taking our own sandwhiches (Fidgets staff if you're reading this: sell plain Vegemite, peanut butter or jam sandwhiches and you'll make a fortune!) Finally, comfortable seating for us weary mums. So many places neglect to provide somewhere comfortable to sit and before you start thinking I'm going soft, on our second visit to Fidgets we stayed for FIVE HOURS, so imagine how you'd feel if you had nowhere decent to sit.

Price-wise the place isn't exactly cheap at $15 per kid, but this is for an unlimited play time and the facilities, such as the kid-sized toilets and hand basins and the large flat screen tvs hooked up to cameras so you can watch the kids play from the comfy sofa lounge, are by far the best I've seen.

The boys and I give Fidgets a big thumbs up. Next time you're there I'll be the harassed looking Mum listening to her iPod and writing her next blog entry long-hand in a notebook to fill in time.