Discover Children’s Story Centre Review
Over the summer break, Ryan, my parents who were visiting from Australia, and I went to Discover Children’s Story Centre.
I didn’t know much about Discover Children’s Story Centre before visiting, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
All I knew from what I saw online was that it looked like a lot of fun, and that it had an interactive play focus.
Here’s my Discover Children’s Story Centre review from our recent visit, which I hope will help you decide if it’s somewhere that you’d like to visit as well.
In this review I’ll cover:
I hope you find this review helpful, and would love to know if there’s anything that you think I can add to it to ensure that it’s as helpful as can be.
Where is Discover Children’s Story Centre?
Discover Children’s Story Centre is located at:
383 – 387 High Street
Stratford
London E15 4QZ
Stratford is in East London, within Greater London, and is accessible by car, bus, or train.
The closest train station is Stratford Station, 5 minutes walking distance from the Centre.
What is there to do at Discover Children’s Story Centre?
There are many things to do here, which include:
Story Worlds
Story Worlds is the heart of what the Centre offers, which are two floors of immersive, exploratory play spaces, where children can be creative, use their imaginations, and explore freely.
The ground floor houses the Centre’s resident alien Hootah’s belongings, which children are free to learn about and play with.
This floor has Hootah’s hollow in it, a cave with colourful floor lighting, which makes sounds when touched, a hill to climb, a boat to ride, reading corners, mirrors, a puppet castle theatre, beach, and arts and crafts.
This is the first floor that we explored, and Ryan spent the majority of his time at the crafts and crafts section, where he made a spoon person, and decorated paper with feathers.
The ground floor was more suited towards babies and toddlers than it was older children, due to having spaces for them to crawl through, and areas that lit up.
The upper floor also had a Hootah theme, but there was a focus on spaceships and clouds.
On this floor there was a spaceship, slide, light boxes, cloud seats, reading corners, and a story factory.
Ryan really enjoyed the upper floor, so we spent quite a bit of time there.
In my opinion, this floor was suited towards school aged children, as there were activities that allowed them to make up their own stories, either using magnets, or writing them down.
Story Garden
Accessible from the ground floor was the Story Garden, an outdoor area with seating and play equipment, which children could climb, slide down, walk through, and make noises with.
Events and Exhibitions – The 100 Story Hotel
The Centre has different events and exhibitions at different times throughout the year, which you pay for in addition to the admission price.
On the day we visited there was an exhibition called The 100 Story Hotel, which cost £3 per person, ran for 45 minutes, and was suitable for children up to 8 years old.
Just before our session started there was a reminder on the loudspeaker system, so anyone attending the session could hear it, no matter what floor they were on.
Once it was time for our session to start, we made our way downstairs and entered a room, where we sat down on a large rug and the 100 Story Hotel’s gardener told us that someone had stolen the hotel’s 100th story, which she needed our help to find.
The gardener asked all the children to get a pencil, and she then gave them a piece of paper where they had to walk around the hotel to search for letters.
Once a letter was found they had to write the letter on the piece of paper, and at the end they had to reassemble the letters to discover who had stolen the book.
A door then opened to the hotel, which consisted of multiple colourful, beautifully designed, interactive rooms where the children and their adults had to walk through to find the letters, as well as play with whatever each room had in it.
I was really surprised when the door opened to these rooms, I had no idea what to expect, and certainly didn’t expect the room to be as big as it was.
This exhibition, and the rooms within it were by far my favourite part of our visit.
There were so many rooms, some included a laundry room with mops, brooms, and cleaning materials that children could play with.
There was an underwater room, with sea creatures, a ring toss game, and dress ups.
There was also a performance room, where children could rate the performance of some cut out bears.
It was a fantastic exhibition, and one I’m glad we did, as I nearly didn’t book it because I didn’t think it would be as great as it was.
Bookshop
At the Centre’s entrance is a bookshop, which you can visit even if you don’t have a session booked.
Here you can buy books for all ages including classics and modern stories, stationery, toys, games, and much more.
Food options
Discover Children’s Story Centre has a café selling hot and cold drinks, sandwiches, snacks, and baby food. They don’t sell hot food.
There are also indoor and outdoor seating areas, where you can eat food you bring with you, which is what we did.
Facilities
Discover Children’s Story Centre is wheelchair accessible, with step free access throughout, and a lift serving all floors.
There are also accessible toilets on each floor, toilets, and baby change facilities.
Just behind the bookshop was a buggy storage area, as buggies aren’t allowed on each floor, so if you have a baby it’s best that you bring a sling.
At the buggy storage area are also many lockers, some large, some small.
The small ones cost 20p, which we used to store our bags and lunch, which was really handy. If you wanted to access something and then lock the locker again, you needed to pay another 20p.
There’s also birthday party, meeting room, and away day facilities onsite.
Opening times
On the day we visited the Centre was open 10am – 5pm, 7 days a week.
Ticket prices
The length of your visit depends on whether you visit during a peak, or off peak session.
Peak sessions run for 3 hours and 15 minutes, starting at 10am or 1.45pm, and run during school holidays and weekends.
Off peak sessions are all day, 10am – 5pm, there’s no time limit, and run during term time weekdays.
Both sessions are the same price.
The cost of admission gives you access to the Story Worlds, Story Garden, and café. Tickets are available up to 6 weeks in advance, and pre booking is essential.
There’s an additional cost for any events or exhibitions that you want to take part in on the day you visit, which you pay for when buying your ticket.
You need to know which event or exhibition you’d like to do before buying your ticket, so visit the Centre’s things to see and do page before buying your ticket.
At the time we visited ticket prices for admission only, not including any events or exhibitions, were:
- Under 1s free
- 1 year olds £2.50
- Adult and children £8.00
- Groups of four £27.00
There are also annual passes from £42 per year per person, and gift vouchers available to buy online.
You can book tickets here.
Parking
There isn’t any onsite parking at the Centre.
However, the closest car parks are:
Stratford multi story car park, which is a 5 minute walk away, open 24 hours, and is located at Service Rte No 1, London E15 1XE.
On the day I visited prices for this car park were:
- Up to 1 hour £2.30
- Up to 2 hours £4.60
- Up to 3 hours £5.80
- Up to 4 hours £9.20
- Up to 6 hours £17.30
- 6-10 hours £23.00
- 10-24 hours £28.80
Stratford Westfield Shopping Centre, which is a 10 minute walk away, open 24 hours, and is located at Montfichet Rd, London E20 1EJ.
On the day I visited prices for this car park were:
Monday – Friday
- Up to 1 hour £3.00
- 1-2 hours £6.00
- 2-14 hours £8.00
- 14-24 hours £16.00
Saturday and Sunday
- Up to 1 hour £3.00
- 1-2 hours £6.00
- 2-3 hours £9.00
- 3-6 hours £10.00
- 6-8 hours £13.00
- 8-14 hours £14.00
- 14-24 hours £16.00
How long you’ll need for your visit
We stayed at the Centre for the entire time we were allowed there, which was during peak time, so it was 3 hours and 15 minutes.
I think we would have only stayed for a couple of hours if we didn’t have the 100 Story Hotel exhibition booked.
As Discover Children’s Story Centre is located on Stratford’s High Street, there are many surrounding shops, cafés, and Westfield Stratford City within walking distance, so you can easily spend a whole day in the area if you’d like to.
What age is Discover Children’s Story Centre suitable for?
The website says the Centre is suitable for 0 – 11 year olds and their grown ups.
However, in my opinion I think children over 7 would get bored here quite fast, because they tend to need more challenging interactive activities, which the Centre doesn’t have a lot of.
I also think that children aged 3 – 5 would get the most out of the Centre, due to the colours, interactive play areas that are at their height, dress ups, and sensory areas.
My thoughts on our day at Discover Children’s Story Centre
Overall I had a fantastic time here, and I’m glad we visited.
It was one of the more unique places that I’ve taken Ryan to so far, in the sense that it wasn’t themed around a particular subject he’s leaning about at school.
He also wasn’t forced into playing with things a certain way, he could explore at his own pace, and he didn’t have to wait to see or play with anything.
Highlights
All of us loved The 100 Story Hotel, it was colourful, fun, and had a problem solving element to it, which we all loved doing together.
I also really liked the layout of the Centre, it was easy to navigate, and there was no way that you could miss anything.
There was also no pressure to hurry, there was nothing that could be easily broken, and children could touch everything.
Lowlights
I didn’t research parking before we visited, so it took my dad just over 30 minutes to access the parking app he needed to pay for our nearby parking spot, which was a lowlight for me.
However, now that I know about other surrounding car parks, this would no longer be a lowlight if I re visited.
What’s your favourite interactive place?
