If you’re thinking of what you can do with your little ‘uns that won’t break the bank, here are some ways to spend less on days out and activities.
Days out aren’t cheap so here I’ll share special offers where you can bring down the price of tickets, as well as any special free events and activities. I’ve also had a look at schemes such as Kids Pass and Little Bird and shared whether I think they’re any good.
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Day out ticket discounts
National Rail: 2-4-1 days out
If you’re travelling by train to an attraction, you might be able to use it for a discount on your entry. Details here.
Heinz Dayz Out: 2-4-1 and free tickets
From 28 June 2023, you can get free or discounted days out with promotional Heinz sauces and meals. There are a number of different days out available, including museums, swimming, paintballing, dance classes and athletics.
Some of the activities are 2 for 1 or will get you free tickets when you purchase a number of full-price tickets, but you can get some good discounts over the summer.
To get the offer, look out for promotional Heinz packs.
National Lottery Days Out: £25 voucher (expired)
Buy a Lotto ticket or scratchcard and you’ll be able to claim a £25 off voucher to use at attractions across the UK, including Legoland, Titanic Belfast, Merlin theme parks and more.
It’s one voucher per person, regardless of how many Lotto tickets you have. You’ll need details for your ticket or scratchcard to claim the voucher.
The Lotto ticket must have been bought after 1 January 2023. You can use the voucher until 30 September 2023.
National Trust & English Heritage offers
National Trust: Free autumn pass
You can claim a free autumn pass to visit a National Trust site between 18 September 2023 and 20 October 2023 – though it’s only while stock lasts.
Each free visit ticket is single-use only and allows entry for two adults and up to three children, or one adult and up to four children.
You may need to book in advance before heading to a site so be sure to check before you travel there!
National Trust: Get a one-day family pass (expired)
In Your Area is handing out a free day pass for 2 adults and 3 children or one adult and 4 children to visit a National Trust location before 15 December 2023. There are 100,000 available from 9am on 30 August until 14 September, though it’s first come first serve so they could go sooner. Claim your pass here.
“Open House” events
In September each year many buildings open their doors for free across the UK. Here are some of the main organisations, but do check locally to see if there are other places offering something similar.
Open House London (expired)
From 6 to 17 September 2023 you can get free or discounted access to hundreds of buildings and gardens in London, many of which are normally closed to the public. Details here.
Heritage Open Days (Scotland) (expired)
From 9 to 18 September 2023 there’s a similar open day festival in Scotland giving you access to buildings and events across the country. Details here.
Doors Open Days (England) (expired)
On weekends from 2 September 2023 Heritage Open Days will provide free access to events celebrating England’s history and culture. Details here.
Open Doors (Wales) (expired)
Throughout September 2023 you can get free entry and guides tours to more than 200 historic sites in Wales. Details here.
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Gardens
BBC Gardener’s World magazine: 2-4-1 entry card (expired)
If you buy the May 2023 edition of Gardener’s World magazine (out 13 April) you’ll get a card that’ll get you 2-4-1 entry to 416 gardens in the UK and Northern Ireland.
This includes:
- Kew Gardens
- Leeds Castle
- Warwick Castle
- 67 National Trust gardens
- 27 National Trust of Scotland gardens
- 12 English Heritage gardens
The magazine costs £8.50 and you can buy it in shops or online (there’s £1.49 postage on this option).
The pass is valid until 5 April 2024 and can be used as many times as you like.
Theme park deals
Check out my separate guide to paying less for theme park tickets such as Alton Towers and Legoland.
Kids membership offers
There are more details on how these work further down the article.
Day Out With The Kids Pass: 3 months free
Lidl Plus members can get a free 3-month Day Out With The Kids Pass membership. You’ll get exclusive access to discounted days out and events across the UK.
You have until 30 September to create an account.
Memberships will auto renew after the 3 months are up at the discounted price of £9.99 (usually £29.99) a year if you don’t cancel before then.
Kids Pass: One year for £28
At full price – £40 a year – it’s possibly a bit pricey. However, there are ways to save which make it worth a go.
Living Social is selling an annual pass for £27, plus a £1 admin fee. This saves you £11.99 on the standard annual price.
Kids Pass: get paid for a 30-day trial
Alternatively, if you go via TopCashback or Quidco you’ll get more than £1 back in exchange for a trial (duration can vary when you click through).
Little Bird: 30-day trial for £1
There’s also a 30-day trial for £1 offer. After this, it renews at £34.99.
“Days Out” offers
Another scheme is the Days Out website. This works slightly differently as there’s no membership, but you might find discounted tickets.
Whare are Kids Pass and Little Bird?
What do Kids Pass and Little Bird do?
Both Kids Pass and Little Bird are essentially memberships which gives you discounts on the places and things kids like to do.
Kids Pass promises:
- Up to 57% off at “family days out” such as theme parks, bowling and play centres
- Up to 40% off at cinemas, seven days a week
- Kids eat free or for £1 at hundreds of restaurants
- Savings on places like Butlins and Haven
You only need one card per family, rather than per child.
Little Bird promises similar offers, as well as a shop to buy discounted tickets.
Are they any good?
The discounts generally look pretty decent, especially the restaurants and cinema deals. They’re pretty similar too, though Kids Pass seems to have more options – possibly because it’s been around longer.
Restaurant deals
Some of the restaurant chains involved are Giraffe, Garfunkels, Barburrito, Handmade Burger Co, and Bella Italia each offering free food for kids or £1 meals. There’s also BOGOG at Pizza Hut (delivery) and second pizza for £1 at Papa Johns. There are hundreds of independent ones too. You can see those involved without getting a membership.
Cinema deals
The cinema discounts through Kids Pass are available at most of the major chains and various independent places. You get up to 40% off tickets for kids and adults, making it a good option even if you don’t have kids. A quick look at a few different chains and it generally works out as £8 per adult ticket.
Little Bird has fewer cinema chains, with only Vue and Odeon included. At the time of writing, you’ll pay:
- Odeon: £7.78 or £9.51 (inside the M25)
- Vue: £4.25 or £8.50
Do make sure though that it’s not cheaper to buy your tickets with a different deal. For example, my local Vue in York now charges £4.99 for all showings all the time, but when I last checked it would cost more than £8 via Kids Pass.
You’ll need to buy your tickets through the website or app – you can’t just show your pass at the box office.
Other deals
The theme park and other family activities look good, though as with most entertainment it’s worth shopping around for other offers. It does look like it includes all the major theme parks and places like MadameTussaudss and London Dungeon.
You can also save up to 50% at places like Eurocamp, Haven and Butlins.
I assume the Ntional lottery £25 deal is no longer available or I am completely missing the location to claim the voucher!?
Despite me complaining twice about their tactics, and conversing with them over email. Kidspass refuse to change their advertising to reflect their true offer price. This ‘up to’ malarkey is a scam.
They offer up to 40% on Drayton manor tickets. Well I know for a fact they haven’t done over 7% for 2 years as I brought it up last year too and its the same code as this year (DMP07) Drayton manor give this code out to literally everyone.
Kids Pass might as well put ‘up to 100% off’ as thats as about likely to happen as 40%.. ie…never
Odeon tickets are pointless too, by the time you pay the add-on fees from them (Odeon) you are saving approx 5-7% there too.
Factor this in with Kids Pass Archaic website and broken search function its literally not worth the aggravation for the time and membership fee spent to spend forever booking tickets to save practically nothing.
As many other people say -DO NOT USE KIDS PASS!!!!!
Is this site receiving money from kidspass? They should be ashamed they are associated with them.
They said they hadn’t any record of cancellation, I sent them phone screen shot proof but they weren’t interested, it seems no one gets money back. If you have signed up contact your bank and make sure you tell them to stop any future payments to them.
I can’t believe with everything going on the world, we can’t go abroad, just want a cheap day out with the kids that they are out to rip people off. Btw don’t be fooled by the five star reviews, they’re obviously completely fake.
Hi Pete, no, I’m not paid by Kids Pass. You could try chargeback from your bank? Let me know if that works
Where is the cancellation button? I can’t find it all!
Kids pass is great I used it 2 years ago saved me a fortune with the kids and with my wife. We go cinema ticks and food all year was great. Always read T&C.
An absolute con! Do not use Kids Pass! I took up the 1 month free trial for £1. They’ve now taken £39.99 from my account, without warning. I contacted them immediately but they refuse to refund me. Some may say it is my own fault for not cancelling before the end of the trail period but I argue that I am always very careful about these things, T&C’s, etc, and there is nothing clear about this being an automatic subscription. There is no reminder either as you would get from any lawful site, if you look about there are many other parents caught out by this! The offers are nothing that you can’t get anywhere else for free from newspapers, cereal boxes and sweet wrappers. DO NOT USE KIDS PASS IT IS A CON!
I agree with Jade’s comment. Had the same experience. I have never used kids Pass not sure if I ever will £39.99 gone in vain.
Signed up for The time £1 trial. However I did not get a voucher for Legoland. The times is not mentioning it either.
You need to go into the Times+ part of the website and search for the deals. It’s there!
The link is also in the info above, but here it is again https://www.mytimesplus.co.uk/public/offers/get-two-legoland-tickets-for-20-worth-up-to-120
great. Thanks!
Lots of negative comments, but if you’re organised I doubt there’s anything to worry about.
I’m currently on my 3rd £1 trial.
I cancelled a couple of days before the end of the previous two following their instructions, and immediately got an email confirming the cancellation.
A month or so later, they email me again and ask me if I want another £1 trial!
My advice – put a notification in your calendar at least 2 days before the end of the trial. Follow their process to cancel and make sure you get a confirmation email – if you don’t ring them BEFORE the trial period is up to ask why.
Just signed up for this £1 trial and feel extremely disappointed. I wanted to book 2x adults and 1x 4 yr old kid tickets for Edinburgh zoo. They just lie by saying you save £ 13.95. They charge me £ 37.5. The Zoo website would charge you 40.7. Poor service and would not recommend
DO NOT USE KIDS PASS. It is a scam. THE £1 trial is to lure you in and then they steal money from your account. PLEASE DO NOT SIGN UP. YOU’ll REGRET IT
Appalling, it’s great when you use it fine, but when it comes to any issues with the payments they are appalling.
I initially got a free KidsPass membership via my membership on childcare.com. The year ended and I did not renew my membership. After getting bombarded by their emails non stop, I decided to sign up to a £2.99 / month membership.
I noticed when I was looking through my bank statements that they had taken £39.99 out of my account. I wrote to them to question this. They informed me that I had taken up the £1 trial offer.
I was a little perturbed as I did not recall doing this, especially not on a day where I was travelling!
I then took a look at my bank statements, and saw the £2.99 was taken out in 3 consecutive months. I then noticed that the day immediately after my last £2.99 payment, a £1 payment was taken out. Why would I take out a £1 trial offer whilst I was still on a monthly membership? On a day where I was out of the country, and was going to be away for a week? And sign up to an agreement in which I would be worse off? (£2.99 / month = £38.87 for 13 months, vs £40.99 (£39.99 per year + £1 for the trial month).
I informed them that there must have been a technical glitch on their side. But the response I kept getting was “As you had signed on to the £1 trial offer and did not cancel after 30 days, you are liable for the £39.99)
I did not sign up to this!!!!!!!!
I’ve even checked all my emails, and I never received any email from them on the said sign-up date of any receipt or terms & conditions!
I’m sorry, but this is completely farcical. But really, where I’d been happy to pay £2.99 a month for this membership (which is close to what the annual amount is), and continue with this membership, I would not be looking at renewing this any more!
What a nightmare. Did you email or phone them? Sometimes I find if you can get someone on the phone they’re more helpful. Or you can ask about escalating a complaint.
I followed their cancellation process, it’s at the bottom of the Account page online – entered card number and clicked cancel – got an email confirming. Job done – if they take any more money, it’ll be easy to get it back as I have proof.
Note – the Amazon deal is now correct at 2%, but they currently have Tesco vouchers which are listed at 2.38%, but actually billed at 4% off. You can use these to purchase Amazon vouchers at Tesco, although you don’t get rewards points for doing so!
Thanks Tony. Yeah I spotted the Amazon reduction yesterday have have updated the deal. Interesting about the Tesco error! Hadn’t thought about using it to buy gift cards in-store. They can sometimes be funny about that (apparently gift cards are often used for money laundering), but I’ve done it a few times.
WARNING! DONT sign up with Kids Pass they are scum! I got my trial subscription and never signed up for anything more, 1 year and 3 months after they take money from my account. When asked to cancel and refund the money i was sent an automatic email saying that they dont refund money its in their policy apparently. When emailed to ask for a cancellation from now on, they dont even reply to confirm.
I want to cancel my kids pass and my returned , you have took 29.99 out of my back which as left me no money for my gas and electric. I was not aware you would take this much out of my bank
Hi Jo, I’m not part of or connected to Kids Pass so I can’t help you cancel it. You need to contact Kids Pass ASAP. However, it’s worth calling up your energy company and explain the situation and ask them if they will give you a break for a month, or reduce the payment for a month. You can also get in touch with organisations such as Step Change or the Money Advice Service if you feel you need help keeping on top of your budget every month. Hope you can get it sorted. Andy
Did you get your money back? They did the same to me. Im pulling my hear out,£39.99 godness! I never even used them.