A few people had mentioned that it was worth visiting the National Waterfront Museum, so when a rainy day came, I thought we’d give it a go!
General Information
As this is a museum, it’s free to go in, which is always great 3 weeks into summer holidays!! There’s a cafe and a gift shop and toilets with a designated baby change and feed area. The major down side for me was the parking situation! The appeal of going to a museum is being able to go somewhere dry with the kids on a rainy day, but because there’s nowhere to park that’s right by the museum, you have to walk through the rain to get there! We parked right at the bottom of the harbour and crossed the bridge and my friends parked in the LC2 car park, which is where I think I’d park too if I came again.
What’s there for children to do at the museum?
I must admit, after about 10 minutes, I felt a little disappointed with what there was to see and do for the children. There’s no denying that there’s SO MUCH to see and read here, but my kids at 7 and 1 years of age are not at that point just yet!! I thought we’d be out of there within half an hour. However, the more we explored the more we found certain areas where there was a notable effort to make the museum appealing for children.
Unfortunately, on the day we went, there must have been something on as all of the display cases in the main room upstairs were pushed to one side and you couldn’t get at a lot of the interactive tables. The ones we could get at didn’t seem to work properly either, which was a shame.
There’s a small corner in the main room upstairs where children can play Lego and trains and at the other corner of the room there’s a teepee and some small armchairs for them to read books. So, in truth, you could probably kill half an hour on a rainy day just in this area!
There were a few areas around the museum where there are little activities for the children, levers to turn, buttons to push etc but we found the interactive areas quite glitchy and difficult to operate.
There was a transport section that the children enjoyed looking around and Ralffi loved sitting in the Red Robin replica (getting him off it was great fun!!)
There’s a lifeboat in the main foyer downstairs that they can dress up and sit in too. It was quite busy the day we went (probably because it was raining) so we didn’t spend much time there, but I’m sure the kids would have enjoyed some time in there if it wasn’t so crowded.
There’s a cafe there (although we didn’t have anything so can’t comment on that) and a small gift shop too.
So, do I recommend going?
The short answer to this is, yes. I would recommend going if you’re looking for something to do to kill an hour or two in Swansea in the rain. I think I went with too high expectations (this is notoriously me!!) so if I went again I’d know what to expect, but it’s not, in truth, somewhere I would imagine Cooper would ask to go back to soon, although he was happy enough running around and exploring when he was there - the fact that he had company helped there for sure! Maybe, if I had gone with just Cooper, I’d have had more time to read and discuss things with him, it’s a great museum for Welsh culture and heritage, but that just isn’t possible with a Wreck it Ralff running around with you too!
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